Figure 1
The icons of the 16 Wikimedia projects21
Figure 2
The ‘Article milestones’ section on the Talk page shows the formal reviews to which the Amphetamine article was subjected before earning its ‘featured article’ badge. Screenshot with article milestones expanded26
Table 1
The goals of universities and how they can utilize Wikimedia
| Universities want: | … and can: |
|---|---|
| impact for research projects | share openly licensed text and images to improve Wikipedia articles. |
| use of institutional repositories | make sure links are included in Wikipedia citations and Wikidata bibliographic records. |
| create researcher profiles in Wikidata. | |
| engaging assessment for students | use Wikipedia or Wikibooks as a platform for writing assignments. |
| use of library special collections | share images and data to help create educational materials and encourage incoming links. |
| use of specialist databases | share surface-level data from the database with Wikidata and create links. |
| public engagement | run events or campaigns where attendees improve coverage of a topic on Wikimedia platforms. |
Figure 3
Datamodel in Wikidata41
| Which part(s) of your university or organization engages with Wikimedia? | What type of activity does your university or organization undertake? | Please tell us a little more about how your university or organization uses Wikimedia | What do you think are the barriers and/or incentives to your university or organization using Wikimedia? |
|---|---|---|---|
| GLAM Division (Libraries, Museums and Gardens) | Sharing content on Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons | There is a Wikimedian in Residence, hosted by the Bodleian Libraries but working across the wider university, especially with museums. We’ve done editathons in the past, but not recently. I run training events and presentations to different categories of staff | Barrier: misgivings about sharing intellectual property on free platforms. Incentives: enormous reach that outstrips the platforms created by the University |
| Learning Technologies, students’ associations, equality and diversity teams, staff development teams, development and alumni.; Library; Faculties and schools; Archives or Special Collections; Other professional services (IT, Web team) | Publishing library and archive collections as Wikimedia and Wikidata; Regular editathons;Training on Wikimedia tools; Use in teaching and assessment | In support of our digital transformation, civic engagement and open educational resources activity | We have more demand than we can currently satisfy |
| Faculties and schools; Archives or Special Collections | Use in teaching and assessment | I know there is a (just the one!) lecturer who uses Wikimedia in his courses and gets students to actively engage but I’m unclear on the specifics. I’m in the University Archive and tend to take part in things like 1Lib1Ref and do intend to try and rustle up an editathon/train up some staff/interested parties on how to edit Wikipedia | I think no-one really sees it as a priority or sees the use of engaging with it? I ran a talk for academics on why they should be engaging and engaging students too which went well message-wise but was poorly attended |
| volunteers (students); Library; Faculties and schools | Occasional editathons;Training on Wikimedia tools | The University Library conducts a GLAM project and organizes training on Wikimedia tools for librarians. Wikimedia Serbia has a network of Ambassadors at faculties. They organize training for students and staff | the main barrier: prejudiced senior academic staff |
| Library; Faculties and schools; Archives or Special Collections | Use of, linking to and enhancement of open access resources in research projects; Regular editathons; Training on Wikimedia tools; Use in teaching and assessment | editathons as engagement for ‘Women in Red’, exposing collections, improving digital skills for staff, assessments using wikipedia editing, enhancement of research resources using wikimedia content and contributions back to wikimedia, semantic web access and linking, etc. | There is still some prejudice around use of Wikipedia as a source, misunderstanding as to its role as a secondary/tertiary source rather than primary; Wikipedia as a peer-review system is gaining ground |
| Researchers, visitors; Library; Archives or Special Collections | Uploads to Commons; Regular editathons; Training on Wikimedia tools | Editathons on themes coinciding with exhibitions, editathons (which we call diversithons) to increase the visibility of women/LGBTQ+ people/BAME people/people with disabilities. We’ve previously had a mass Commons upload and will do again soon when our catalogue data is improved. We are planning a Wikidata upload and looking at how Wikidata will enable us to link our collections information with that of other organisations. We have Wiki-training sessions for staff (especially library staff) and for people coming in on the Graduate scheme, and are about to launch training specially for visitor experience assistants. We offer training to researchers who receive funding from us and to researchers at local universities and organisations and often host events at these places as well as in our own buildings | We had an IP block for a long time that prevented people from being able to create accounts, which was very frustrating and put some people off. Time is the biggest barrier though – people often say that they would do more if they could. They are incentivised to find the time and make Wikimedia a priority when events or training have an explicit focus on diversity |
| Library; Faculties and schools | Occasional editathons; Use in teaching and assessment | Publishing recently delivered an entire module structured around the use of Wikipedia, as a way to teach the students about content creation, editing content, working in a collaborative environment, research and writing skills | Still some scepticism about the value of Wikipedia within education |
| Faculties and schools | Occasional editathons; Training on Wikimedia tools; | As part of one doctoral researcher’s funded project, a sort of substitute for a Wikimedian in Residence | Wikipedia is (sadly with justice) associated with lazy student research; we don’t like to model its use because students tend to use it badly. Its avoidance of original research also makes it bad for those who are genuinely expert and contributing to knowledge; it favours use by the educated, not the educators. The Commons resources, on the other hand, are an absolute godsend, but not always as copyright-free as their contributors think … |