Outreach/Open scholarship/Wikimedia engagement with open access

This is a brief history of Wikimedia's engagement with open access so far. See also: Wikimedia and Open Access — a rich history of interactions.

The origins of the article about Open Access on the English Wikipedia date back to November 2003.

The Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities has been signed by the following Wikimedia-related organizations:

• Wikimedia Deutschland (16.06.2006)
• Stowarzyszenie Wikimedia Polska (01.02.2007)
• Wikimedia Foundation Inc. (10.02.2007)

The first picture from Open Access sources reached featured status on Wikimedia Commons in March 2007. Currently, there are four.

• 
  2 March 2007 (Finalist in the 2007 Picture of the Year contest)
• 
  4 March 2007
• 
  20 August 2009
• 
  23 April 2013

The article "Ten Simple Rules for Editing Wikipedia" was published in PLOS Computational Biology on September 30, 2010.

A Research Committee subgroup was formed that was dedicated to developing an open-access policy as a requirement for research projects which receive significant support from the Wikimedia Foundation (draft policy).

• WikiProject Open Access is launched on the English Wikipedia on January 10, 2012

The Research Committee of the Wikimedia Foundation submitted a response to the White House Request for Information on Open Access on January 12, 2012.

The Wikimedia Foundation endorsed the Access2Research petition to the White House in 2012.

Jimmy Wales has been consulted by the UK government on open access.^[1][2]

OAI8, the CERN Workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication, was held at the University of Geneva on 19-21 June 2013. There were some Wikimedia participants who put together this information about it. It was written up in the GLAM Newsletter. The Wikimedia participants were:

• User:Aubrey
• User:Bluerasberry
• User:Daniel Mietchen
• User:Mattsenate

At Wikimania 2013 in Hong Kong there was a panel called Open Access & Wikipedia: Opening the world's academic research to improve the world's most popular reference source. The proposal is a great summary of why the purposes of Wikipedia and open access are aligned. The panelists were:

• Leslie Chan: at the University of Toronto
• Nick Shockey: on SPARC website
• Lane Rasberry: User:Bluerasberry
• Andrea Zanni: User:Aubrey
• Daniel Mietchen: User:Daniel Mietchen
• Phoebe Ayers: User:Phoebe (moderator)

1. ↑ Jump, Paul (2012) 'Willetts turns to Wikipedia founder for advice on open access'. Times Higher Education. 2 May 2012. Accessed: 2013-08-27.
2. ↑ Vrieze, Jop de (2012) 'U.K. Government Enlists Wikipedia Founder for Open Access Policy'. Sciencemag. 2 May 2012. Accessed: 2013-08-27.