Submissions/Wikimedians share; Researchers should too
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After careful consideration, the Programme Committee has decided not to accept the below submission at this time. Thank you to the author(s) for participating in the Wikimania 2015 programme submission, we hope to still see you at Wikimania this July. |
- Submission no.
- 4025
- Title of the submission
- Wikimedians share; Researchers should too
- Type of submission (discussion, hot seat, panel, presentation, tutorial, workshop)
- Presentation
- Author of the submission
- Yana Welinder, Manprit Brar, Daniel Mietchen, Parker Higgins
- E-mail address
- ywelinder
wikimedia.org, mbrarwikimedia.org, daniel.mietchenokfn.org, parker@eff.org
- Username
- ywelinder (WMF), mbrar (WMF), Daniel Mietchen
- Country of origin
- United States, Germany
- Affiliation, if any (organisation, company etc.)
- Wikimedia Foundation, Open Knowledge Foundation Germany
- Personal homepage or blog
- Abstract (at least 300 words to describe your proposal)
We are launching an Open Access policy to maximize the availability of accessible and freely licensed research that can be reused on the Wikimedia projects. Paywalls and copyright restrictions can place significant hurdles on public access to research findings. Institutions, like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, are addressing this problem by implementing open access policies. These policies allow researchers to stand on the shoulders of giants by giving them access to previous work that they can learn from and build upon.
Wikimedia projects contain a lot of information that can be used in valuable research about how users access and create knowledge. It's no secret that our projects run on a philosophy of free and open knowledge that can be shared freely and built upon to create an even more complete repository of knowledge. So, it is only right that when we give researchers access to the way that knowledge is compiled, we should be asking them to share the results of their research in an equally free and open manner.
Our new Open Access policy will require researchers that use Wikimedia Foundation resources in their research to release their findings to the public under a free license. This will ensure that research we support is maximally beneficial to society right away and is not hidden behind paywalls and copyright restrictions.
- Track
- Legal & Free Culture
- Length of session (if other than 30 minutes, specify how long)
- 30 minutes
- Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?
- Yes
- Slides or further information (optional)
- Blog post announcing the policy
- Signpost article about the policy
- The actual policy
- FAQ on the policy
- Special requests
Interested attendees
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