Submissions:2021/WikiProject Clinical Trials, Wikipedia for Research

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Etherpad

Title:

WikiProject Clinical Trials, Wikipedia for Research

Theme:

Global & Local, Relationship Building & Support, Inclusion & Diversity

Type of session:

Presentation

Abstract:

This talk has two parts: a specific presentation of WikiProject Clinical Trials, and a general discussion of Wikipedia's future as a platform for research.

WikiProject Clinical Trials is a Wikidata project which began with the import of the United States government medical research database at ClinicalTrials.gov. We give an overview of what we took into the Wikipedia ecosystem and how we matched content there to a wiki data model.

While clinical trials and medical research are important in themselves, and even while the world became much more interested in medical research such as vaccine clinical trials in the context of COVID-19, we advance the discussion of how Wikipedia is affecting research. By importing clinical trials data to the Wikipedia ecosystem, we change the nature of the data by adding content which otherwise is less easily accessible. In the original database the researchers, sponsors, research institutes, and medical conditions are names and terms, whereas in Wikipedia, they become biographies, organization profiles, lists of related publications in WikiCite, points on maps which communicate research trends, and interconnected information with other things we know about treatment and disease. Although in this case we profiled medical research, the same process will someday model research projects of any kind whether in humanities, sciences, or civics.

This is a presentation for everyone and requires no background in medicine, data science, or Wikidata.

Academic Peer Review option:

Yes

Author name:

Lane Rasberry

E-mail address:

rasberryvirginia.edu

Wikimedia username:

bluerasberry

Affiliated organization(s):

University of Virginia

Estimated time:

presentation preferred, lighting talk possible

Special requests:

Have you presented on this topic previously? If yes, where/when?:

no

If your submission is not accepted, would you be open to presenting your topic in another part of the program? (e.g. lightning talk or unconference session)

yes