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Arrangement With Science Publisher Raises Questions About Wikipedia's Commitment To Open Access
Applehu Akbar writes: Elsevier, the science publisher notorious for maintaining high-priced research journals in a time when web technology can accomplish the same tasks for a fraction of the price, has donated free ScienceDirect accounts to a select group of "top Wikipedia editors" as an incentive for citations referencing its paywalled journals. This arrangement is being criticized for its effect on Wikipedia's accessibility and openness. Ars reports: "...Michael Eisen, one of the founders of the open access movement, which seeks to make research publications freely available online, tweeted that he was 'shocked to see @wikipedia working hand-in-hand with Elsevier to populate encylopedia w/links people cannot access,' and dubbed it 'WikiGate.' Over the last few days, a row has broken out between Eisen and other academics over whether a free and open service such as Wikipedia should be partnering with a closed, non-free company such as Elsevier."
Elsevier is the target of a boycott that's been going on for over 3 years now :
http://thecostofknowledge.com/
(I've personally declined reviewing articles when I realized it was for an Elsevier journal).
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
I run the Wikipedia Library program at the Wikimedia Foundation. We work with over 40 leading publishers including from multiple fields and languages, including Elsevier. We value this debate and the series of issues it raises.
The Twitter discussion we had last week with Mr. Eisen was quite lively and included several responses from our perspective, including support from some prominent Open Access advocates who understand the pragmatic necessity of gaining access to these resources.
This is a very important discussion for us--because Wikipedia itself is an Open Access, Open Knowledge project; yet, we are tasked with writing the best possible encyclopedia with the sources that exist today--so many (too many) of which are behind Paywalls.
Our work with publishers brings that content to the public in a usefully summarized form whereas it otherwise would be completely unreachable for many. It's not perfect, but it's better than the alternative.
We are also looking forward to a world in which knowledge is more truly free (including the sources and data underlying it), but meanwhile, we have an encyclopedia with 500 million monthly readers to write. In 2013 our medical pages alone were viewed 4.8 billion times--we cannot just wait for the publishing industry to transform, we also have readers who are coming to and relying on us today.
We're trying to advance on both fronts, by working collaboratively with publishers, helping them to realize the value of opening up their content to the world.
At the same time we are promoting open access as the future shape of knowledge in a world with fewer barriers for those who want to learn, research, and create.
We have published guides to finding and supporting OA publishers on our Library main page, we promote full-text discovery tools like the Open Access Button, and we are co-hosting the upcoming Open Access Week global OA editathon with SPARC this October. Wikipedia also has its own very progressive open access policy regarding our publications and the research that we enable or fund.
You can find all the information you need about our program and the eyes-open choice to work with publishers here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:WHYNOTOA1
Thank you for bringing attention to this issue. It's important that the public engage in it and have a nuanced understanding of how complex and critical the evolving state of knowledge is today.
--Jake Orlowitz, The Wikipedia Library (jorlowitz@wikimedia.org, @WikiLibrary)
Just want to clarify that I wrote the above post before creating an account.
Calling this issue "WikiGate" reflects a rather single-minded focus.
A few days ago, we learned that there was an extortion ring operating in Wikipedia – see http://www.theregister.co.uk/2... or http://www.independent.co.uk/n... and many others.
A few months ago, we learned that a hoax article had survived for ten years on Wikipedia, and that its content had come to be cited in numerous places, among many other hoaxes: https://www.washingtonpost.com... see also http://wikipediocracy.com/2014...
A few weeks prior to that, we learned that an administrator had managed to manipulate Wikipedia's articles on a bogus Indian business school over a period of years, with an Indian journalist estimating that Wikipedia had messed up thousands of students' lives by lending its brand's supposed credibility to the school's misleading propaganda: http://www.newsweek.com/2015/0... and http://scroll.in/article/71429...
Each of those would have deserved the title WikiGate more than this non-issue, which if anything actually helps improve Wikipedia's reliability.