Create 2021/Current developments in Wikipedia-integrated academic journals: Submissions:2021/Editing seems too hard

This submission has been accepted for WikiConference North America 2021.

Bridging the academia-Wikimedia divide from both sides of the river: Current developments in Wikipedia-integrated academic journals

Despite the clear importance of Wikipedia in the contemporary knowledge ecosystem, academics, scholars and experts rarely contribute to creating, improving or curating its content. One key method of encouraging greater involvement therefore involves rewarding experts with citeable academic publications. WikiJournals couple the rigour of formal academic peer review with the massive reach and impact of Wikipedia by dual-publication of review articles in both the journal and into Wikipedia. Peer reviewer comments are also published to enhance transparency and auditability of the review process. As well as articles written from scratch, existing high-quality Wikipedia articles can be submitted for the same process as a form of quality control. The published journal article acts as a stable, indexed, cite-able version of record. The version copied into Wikipedia is a highly visible, living version and contains a prominent link to the journal publication for any readers that wish to cite the reviewed version or check reviewer comments.

Example in Wikipedia as: Radiocarbon dating

Example in Wiki.J.Sci. as: Christie, M; et al. (2018). "Radiocarbon dating". WikiJournal of Science 1 (1): 6. doi:10.15347/wjs/2018.006

The journals additionally pioneer several uncommon features. Most notably, they are able to publish open access without fees to authors, since web hosting is provided by the WikiMedia Foundation and all editorial staff are volunteers. Using the same MediaWiki software as Wikipedia also enables easy transfer of content between the two sites. Any content incorporated from Wikipedia via a creative commons license is fully attributed, including contributions of anonymous or even automated authors. Authors also have no ownership over the Wikipedia version of their work, which will be freely edited and updated by others over the following years or decades.

The WikiJournal User Group now includes:

• WikiJournal of Medicine (flagship), www.WikiJMed.org
• WikiJournal of Science (STEM topics), www.WikiJSci.org
• WikiJournal of Humanities (arts, humanities and soc. sciences), www.WikiJHum.org

WikiJournals therefore benefit both academic and wikipedic communities. The encyclopedia gains high quality work from authors and reviewers who would not otherwise have contributed. Authors, are rewarded with citable, indexed publications that have a greater reach than is normally achieved through traditional scholarly publishing.