User:Donald Trung/Feedback for the initial concept version of Wikiscientifica

This page exists to ask feedback from other users regarding the "Wikiscientifica" sister project proposal.

Introduction

I believe that "the wiki-infrastructure" is actually well-equipped to handle scientific publishing, scholarly publishing shouldn't be entirely dependent on commercial interests, in fact most research is often government-sponsored and because of the current commercial system researchers often have to pay to have their research behind a paywall, this is not a desirable situation. This proposal is to empower people who don't have the money to go behind paywalls, it's for people that want to do research but don't have an academic subscription but wants the information, it's for everyone that wants to be able to read scholarship.

I have great admiration for the Kazakhstani scientist (and internet pirate) Alexandra Elbakyan and her Sci-Hub shadow library that makes research available for scholars in poor countries, while Wikimedia websites could never do this as no other websites take copyright as serious as Wikimedia websites, I would lie if I would say that I wasn't at least partially inspired by the innovative and progressive works of the Sci-Hub website and how it challenges the current academic publishing establishment. But Wikimedia's solution must be different, it must somehow be attractive. But the end goal of this is exactly what Jimmy Wales said in the quote below:

"Frankly, and let me be blunt, Wikipedia as a readable product is not for us. It's for them. It's for that girl in Africa who can save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people around her, but only if she's empowered with the knowledge to do so." - Jimbo Wales, Foundation-l mailing list (23 October 2005).

General concepts
(Spirit of the website or "Sitegeist")

I believe that the "Wikiscientifica" website should be significantly different from other Wikimedia websites in a number of ways, namely:

• It should not be connected to the Wikimedia SUL account system and have a form of system where people can register in two groups "Scholar" and "Non-Scholar" (I should probably come up with a better name for that), "Scholars" are vetted by showing their university credentials through a VRTS-like system to verify that they actually are researchers, they have to register accounts under their real name, and I am personally of the opinion that things like indefinite blocks and global bans shouldn't apply here, but that access could be revoked and that users can then only return with "university sponsorship" (as in that they actually get a recommendation), but then again, this might just be my inclusionist nature talking here.

• It should include the ability to add fair use media, as researchers often include copyrighted things which are often not their own copyrights.

• One thing to note is that like other Wikimedia websites published articles there should have talk pages which would then be used by people to critique the works ("critique" in the broad sense including the positive interpretations of the word) and serve as "an internet comment section" like under YouTube video's or Facebook posts where people can generally discuss the content, as this could allow people to point out faults with the study or its methodology or ask for authors to clear up some things. Perhaps talk pages can even be called a "Forum" (Marketplace) to reflect that they are "Marketplaces of ideas".

• http://web.archive.org/web/20210920184108/https://libguides.fau.edu/c.php?g=325509&p=2182110

• The governance of the website should ultimately fall onto its community, but the website should have a lobby and organisational arm that can serve as a mediator between it and other interest groups, this could be done in the form of a new international chapter called Wikimedia Science (WMSC), or perhaps the Wikimedia Academic Federation (WAF). I envision this organisation to be a co-operative group that works together with the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) and universities. Its board of trustees should comprise of an equal amount of university representatives from various parts of the world and WMF members (including local chapter members) and it should include elected members, both eligible "accredited users" and "unaccredited users" should be able to vote for them. WMF Global Bans should not affect people from attending events sponsored by Wikimedia Science (WMSC) and I would go as far as saying that WMF bans should not affect Wikiscientifica at all. Access to Wikiscientifica should only be revoked if universities revoke degrees for misuse, like happens for those that issue fraudulent studies.

Certain schools like the University of Ljubljana (Slovene: Univerza v Ljubljani) already require papers published through them to have the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license which would make importing these studies to the Wikimedia Commons and re-posting them on Wikiscientifica easy. The most important thing would be to attract new people rather than just importing old papers, those old papers most certainly have a place there, but if the website is just a bunch of old studies with no new active scholars it is essentially just "an archive of free studies" and not the solution to most of the issues in scholarly publishing we are facing today.

Accreditation and the peer review process

The most important aspects of user registration is accreditation, unlike other Wikimedia websites the different classes of users are very much so by design, "accredited users" differ from "unaccredited users" in several aspects, namely only "accredited users" (hereafter AU's) can submit and/or review studies (in their field(s)) while "unaccredited users" (hereafter UU's) can't. AU's must declare their real names and affiliations in order to participate. The peer review process could be identical to other scientific journals or it could be more intricate, the latter would be to lower the risk of "bad scholarship" getting undeservedly reviewed.

How the peer review process works.

As AU's register with their diplomas in their field so they will be able to review studies exclusively from their fields, so biologists will be reviewing biology draft papers, mathematicians will review mathematical draft papers, Etc. However, I think that this process might better work as the English-language Wikipedia's article submission, a user needs to register to submit an article and users can add them directly to the mainspace or draftspace, bad articles in the mainspace are likely to be removed, while less experienced users may first submit a draft to the AFC.

Once submitted I think that "peer endorsement" can become a thing, but the last thing we should do is "gamify" the system and turn it into a popularity contest.

I think that as the website grows that we can have a special "reviewer" user group but that might be too exclusive.

The role of UU's.

While UU's can't participate in the peer review process or submit research, they can interact with both the AU's and comment on their works, I think that UU's will likely be writing and submitting freely licensed imported studies from other websites and offline sources, basically using it like "Wikisource for academic papers" with files being uploaded to the Wikimedia Commons and the studies and other academic papers being written here.

Citations and categorisation.

Many existing scholarly websites already count how often an article has been cited on the website, Wikiscientifica should wholly import this feature, any citation within a paper can link directly to the cited paper and cited page.

The general categorisation should follow most Wikimedia standards which I believe because of their editable nature and flexibility are already superior to anything produced on any current academic websites. I also expect a lot of scientifically literate UU's to help with categorisation.

Website organisation and layout

Primary namespaces. (Studies).

• (Paper) (Honestly, after reconsidering I think that these should be the mainspace).

• Open study (Basically a researcher "calling other researchers").

• Draft (Unlike Wikipedia's drafts won't get automatically deleted).

• Essay.

• Meta-analyses.

• Retracted / Rejected (possible option, please see below).

Secondary namespaces. (The paraphernalia of studies).

• Author (scholars, researchers, Etc.).
  • Perhaps authors can maintain academic blogs, this would be as "Author:Dr. Tiffany J. Poilièvre/Blog/My findings on...", but such things are open for debate.

• Review.
  • Perhaps the software can recognise if an author being whose work is being "reviewed" and then respond via a special button, or the talk page can fulfil this function.

• Conference (for conference papers and planning, people can also register here for events akin to the Facebook or show interest).
  • This should also be the namespace for conference papers, conference planning, attendance listings, Etc.

• Category. (Fulfils the same functions as on other Wikimedia websites).

• Institution (this namespace is for universities and other institutions, generally maintained only by those who work there and the ability to edit these pages may be "invite-only" to those with relevant positions there).

Meta-namespaces. (The paraphernalia of the wiki).

• Wikiscientifica (same as "Wikipedia:", "Commons:", "Wikidata:", Etc. on other Wikimedia websites).

• All other namespaces supported by the MediaWiki software.

I think that all namespaces should be translatable and that users should be able to switch between languages whenever possible, while I believe that Wikiscientifica should be a single multilingual website, I think that it should utilise the "left-hand language option menu" from other Wikimedia websites to switch between languages because this is more intuitive than any "hidden menu" and I also don't think that we should "default to English", but judging by how other multilingual Wikimedia websites operate I am not sure if it is even possible to have a truly multilingual project, that or the Anglophones just hijacked them all and called it "multilingual", accessibility should be as broad as possible to not exclude any scholars based on things like geography or linguistic abilities.

Structured scientific data on Wikiscientifica (Wiki-SSD)

I think that this will have to be built through either volunteers with the technical skills to do so, Wikimedia Deutschland (WMDE) and the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), or perhaps through a grant by university donors that see the potential in this project... though I think that it would probably have to utilise all of the aforementioned options. But this system would not be too different from the Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons (SDC) programme and might already attempt to utilise a lot of its existing infrastructure to save costs, but due to the fundamentally different natures of scholarly publishing and media I think that a lot of unique tools will have to be developed.

The Structured scientific data on Wikiscientifica (Wiki-SSD) programme will utilise Wikidata for a lot of its infrastructure from categorisation, to dictionary definitions (which could be linked to via the Wiktionary), to other instances of data. This system will create what I term "an information positive feedback loop" where more data from Wikidata will enhance Wikiscientifica and more data from Wikiscientifica (which unlike Wikipedia would be considered to be a reliable source) could enhance and help grow Wikidata. This mutually beneficial relationship will give Wikiscientifica a unique advantage over existing solutions in the field of academic publishing that often treat published papers as "islands" excluding citations, but the Structured scientific data on Wikiscientifica (Wiki-SSD) programme can aid both discoveribility and fact-checking. Of course, how far we can actually use the Wiki-SSD will be wholly dependent on the resources available and the people working on it, but I think that in the long-term this will be "the killer feature" that will make Wikiscientifica better than other academic websites.

Retraction and rejection

Papers that fail to meet peer review or are found out at being wrong typically get either rejected or the author(s) themselves retract them, I think that these can have their own namespace(s) and are moved from Paperspace / Articlespace.

Authors may choose not to have these works indexed by internet search engines, but I would advise against blanked no-indexing them as they can serve as a warning sign that both bad scholarship, plagiarism, and/or fraud will be rejected, basically showing that there's quality control to the outside world.

Also, they should automatically be moved into appropriate categories, for example once a paper is moved from mainspace to retractedspace it will go from "Category:Neuroscience papers from 2018" to "Category:Retracted neuroscience papers from 2018".

A comprehensive Wikimedia infrastructure

Wikipedia's.

As these academic papers can be peer reviewed and seen as "authoritative" I believe that they can actually be used on Wikipedia's as citations and references within articles. Today Wikimedia websites already have a "Cite this page" option but a standardised Wikipedia-centric version could be introduced that is localised for every language edition of Wikipedia.

Account registration

I believe that people should be able to register for either a "Scholar account" or a "Wikimedia Single Unified Log-in (SUL) account", users with Wikimedia SUL accounts do have to confirm when entering their website to have an account created, unlike the automatically local accounts on current Wikimedia websites, during this process users can read what the website is about and agree to it.

Scholar accounts have to be requested and approved, this is done through a VRT-like system that checks diploma's or other papers necessary for scholars in real life, universities may be consulted to confirm authenticity.

If a scholar account gets blocked sitewide for disruptive behavious they should still be able to submit new papers (unless this specifically gets abused) and no scholar account may be blocked for more than a year, but after the third one (1) year block a five (5) year block can be issued.

Note: This is already how the Phabricator works where users can register either with the Wikimedia SUL accounts or with a Developer account, so there already is precedent for this.

Possible social impact

On poor scholars

Since many universities in poorer countries don't have the finances to pay for the high prices of scholarly library subscriptions in the hands of for-profit Western companies their students often can't examine cutting edge research behind paywalls, this will essentially "democratise scholarship".

On dictatorships

If it will ever become the standard for universities to work with Wikiscientifica then it might become unattractive for universities in dictatorships to not interact with the platform, if a dictatorship blanket bans all Wikimedia websites then universities within their borders might lobby for this blacklisting to be undone, benefiting everyone.