@WikiResearch - Nihil de nobis, sine nobis

There is this wonderful notion how Research is going to tell us what to do in light of the strategic Wikimedia 2030 plans. Wonderful. There is going to be this taxonomy of the information we are missing.

Let me be clear. We do need research and the data it is based on, it is to be available to us. There is no point in a future taxonomy of missing knowledge when we have been asking for decades : "what articles are people looking for that they cannot find". If there is to be a taxonomy what else should it be based on?

When we are to fill in the gaps of what Wikipedia covers, we can stimulate more new articles by indicating what traffic they get in the first month. Stimulate our readers to learn more by showing what Wikidata has to offer and show its links to texts in other languages. It may even result in new stubs even articles in "their" language. This technology has been available for years now.

The WikiResearch is full of arguments on the importance of citations and Wikidata as the platform for all Wikipedia sources, why then are the WikiResearch papers not in Wikidata from the start. What is it, that WikiResearchers consider that Wikidata is not about them? Just as it is about any other subject Wikidata covers? What is it that makes their work less findable (FAIR) than what is known to have been published as open content by the NIH?

The point I want to make is that no matter how well intended it is what the WikiResearch aims to achieve, they lose the interest, involvement and commitment of people like me, the people they need to get the results they aim for.

Yes do research, but we should not wait for its results, we know how to stimulate people to write new articles.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#Wikidata - A quick and dirty "HowTo" to improve exposure of a subject in Wikidata

When you want to expose a particular subject, any subject, in Wikidata. This is the quick and dirty way to expose much of what there is to know. There are a few caveats. The first is that the aim is not to be complete, the second that it is biased towards scientists who are open about their work at ORCiD.

You start with a paper, a scientist. They have an DOI / ORCiD identifier and, they may already be in Wikidata. First there is the discovery process of the available literature and the authors involved. The SourceMD tool is key; with a SPARQL query or with a QID per line, you run a process that will update publications by adding missing authors or it will add missing publications and missing authors to known publications.

When you treat this as an iterative process, more authors and publications become known. When you run the same process for (new) co-authors, more publications and authors become known that are relevant to your subject.

To review your progress, you use Scholia. it has multiple modes that help you gain an understanding of authors, papers, subjects, publications, institutions.. You will see the details evolve. NB mind the lag Wikidata takes to update its database. It is not instant gratification.

A few observations, your aim may be to be "complete" but publications are added all the time and the same is true for scientists. People increasingly turn to ORCiD for a persistent identifier for their work. The real science is in designating a subject to a paper. Arguably the subject may be in the name of the article but as an approach it is a bit coarse. I leave that to you as your involvement makes you a subject "specialist".
Thanks,
       GerardM

#Wikidata - Naomi Ellemers and the relevance of #Awards

In a 2016 blogpost, I mentioned the relevance of awards. At the time Professor Ellemers received an award and it was the vehicle to make that point in the story.

Today in an article in a national newspaper, Mrs Ellemers makes a strong point that the perception of awards is really poblematic. What they do is reinforce a bias that American science is superior. It leads to a perception by European students that it is the USA "where it is all happening". A perception that Mrs Ellemers argues is incorrect.

NB Mrs Ellemers is the recipient of the 2018 Career Contribution Award of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.

Wikidata re-inforces this bias for American science by including a rating for "science awards". This rating values awards by comparing them. This rating is done by an American organisation and the whole notion behind it is suspect because the assumptions are not necessarily / not at all beneficial for the practice of science.

How to counter such a bias? As far as I am concerned there is no value in making a distinction between awards and "science awards" and biased information like this should be removed. Just consider, when European science is considered less than American science... how would  African science be rated?
Thanks,
     GerardM

Dr Matshidiso Moeti, an exeption to my rules

When I add scientists to Wikidata, I really want something to link to, an external source like ORCID, Google Scholar Viaf.. When I link publications it is the data at ORCID I link to, I don't do manual linking.

From the sources I have read, Dr Moeti is the kind of person who deserves a Wikipedia article. Her work and the people she works with, the cases she works not only deserve recognition it is imho vitally important that they do, that you learn about them. This is why I made exceptions to my rule.

This is her Scholia, this is her Reasonator and please, take an interest.
Thanks,
      GerardM

The case for #Wikimedia Foundation as an #ORCID member organisation

The Wikimedia Foundation is a research organisation. No two ways about it; it has its own researchers that not only perform research on the Wikimedia projects and communities, they coordinate research on Wikimedia projects and communities and it produces its own publications. As such it qualifies to become an ORCID Member organisation.

The benefits are:

• Authenticating ORCID iDs of individuals using the ORCID API to ensure that researchers are correctly identified in your systems
• Displaying iDs to signal to researchers that your systems support the use of ORCID
• Connecting information about affiliations and contributions to ORCID records, creating trusted assertions and enabling researchers to easily provide validated information to systems and profiles they use
• Collecting information from ORCID records to fill in forms, save researchers time, and support research reporting
• Synchronizing between research information systems to improve reporting speed and accuracy and reduce data entry burden for researchers and administrators alike

At this time the quality of information about Wikimedia research is hardly satisfactory. As is the standard; announcements are made about a new paper and as can be expected the paper is not in Wikidata. The three authors are not in ORCID, as is usual for people who work in the field of computing so there is no easy way to learn about their publications.

What will this achieve; it will be the Wikimedia Foundation itself that will push information about its research to ORCID and consequently at Wikidata we can easily update the latest and greatest. It is also an important step for documentation about becoming discoverable. It is one thing to publish Open Content, when it is then hard to find, it is still not FAIR and the research does not have the hoped for impact. It also removes an issue that some researchers say they face; they cannot publish about themselves on Wikimedia projects. 

Another important plus; by indicating the importance of having scholarly papers known in ORCID we help reluctant scientists understand that yes, they have a career in open source, open systems but finding their work is very much needed to be truly open.

Thanks,

       GerardM