Citations and references are the building blocks of Wikimedia projects.
However, as of today, they are still treated as second-class citizens.
Structured data bases such as Wikidata offer a unique opportunity
<https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_Source_MetaData> to
turn into reality over a decade of endeavors to build the sum of all
citations and bibliographic metadata into a centralized repository. To
coordinate upcoming work in this space, we're organizing a technical event
in late May and opening up applications for prospective participants.
*WikiCite 2016 <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiCite_2016>* is a
hands-on event focused on designing data models and technology to *improve
the coverage, quality, standards-compliance and machine-readability of
citations and source metadata in Wikipedia, Wikidata and other Wikimedia
projects*. Our goal, in particular, is to define a technical roadmap for
building a repository of all Wikimedia references in Wikidata.
We are bringing together Wikidatans, Wikipedians, software engineers, data
modelers, and information and library science experts from organizations
including *Crossref*, *Zotero*, *CSL*, *ContentMine*, *Google*, *Datacite*,
*NISO*, *OCLC* and the *NIH*. We are also inviting academic researchers
with experience working with Wikipedia's citations and bibliographic data.
WikiCite will be hosted in *Berlin* on *May 25-26, 2016*. Participation to
the event is capped at about 50 participants and we expect to have a number
of open slots for applicants:
- if you were pre-invited and have already filled in a form, you will
receive a separate note from the organizers
- if you have not been invited but you would like to participate, please
fill in this application form <http://goo.gl/forms/Yv6rve2wCt> to give
us some information about you and your interest and expected contribution
to the event.
Please help us pass this on to anyone who has done important technical work
on Wikimedia references and citations.
*Important dates*
- *March 29, 2016*: applications open
- *April 11, 2016*: applications close
- *April 15, 2016*: notifications of acceptance are issued (if you
applied for a travel grant, we'll be able to confirm by this date if we can
cover the costs of your trip)
For any question, you can contact the organizing committee:
wikicite(a)wikimedia.org
The organizers,
Dario Taraborelli
Jonathan Dugan
Lydia Pintcher
Daniel Mietchen
Cameron Neylon
*Dario Taraborelli *Head of Research, Wikimedia Foundation
wikimediafoundation.org •
nitens.org • @readermeter
<http://twitter.com/readermeter>