Talk:WikiJournal User Group/Archive 2019

Budget update
As an update, the grant committee responded that the total sum we can request has to be below $2,000 even including our $400 remaining from last year, so I had to propose it again with only $1,000 for a technical editor. Still, we can submit another rapid grants request if we find we need more funds for that purpose. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 21:23, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

XML generation
So far only a handful of articles have their XML header data posted (example). This is largely because it's an additional non-intuitive manual step upon generating the doi via the crossref webdeposit form.

I've now managed to implement a template that will automatically create the XML data straight from the info already listed in the article page. The right hand side of any article that does not yet have XML data deposited, will now include a "Deposit" link that generates the XML header when clicked. (For those interested in the workings, this is by substitution of the new  template).

Eventually, I would like to have the entire text of each article also presented in a full JATS-compliant XML format (examples), but currently I can't see how to achieve that. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 15:06, 31 December 2018 (UTC)


 * Thanks T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo). This was long needed. Keep up good work. Diptanshu &#128172; 16:03, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

Plan S RfC
The Plan S open-access initiative is requesting feedback about itself on questions that may be of interest to people here:

"#Is there anything unclear or are there any issues that have not been addressed by the [Plan S] guidance document?
 * 1) Are there other mechanisms or requirements funders should consider to foster full and immediate Open Access of research outputs?"

Feedback is open until the 8th of February.

The plan launched in September and has a large proportion of European research funders and a couple of US ones onside; if you are affiliated with a research funder, they might want to look into it. The best comment on Plan S I've heard so far comes from Elsevier (which doesn't really like the financial transparency provisions, for starters). An Elsevier spokesman said "If you think that information should be free of charge, go to Wikipedia" ("Als je vindt dat informatie gratis moet zijn: ga naar Wikipedia"). I'm not sure if he knew about the journals here.

Is there a good place to point academics who want to ga-naar-Wikipedia? I'm thinking of a how-to for people unfamiliar with wiki authoring who want to collaboratively edit a paper here (whether they eventually publish it here or elsewhere). Or on starting an open lab notebook here, or posting a post-print to Wikisource. Our metadata could make that last very findable, if properly formatted with Template:Article info (which, oddly, does not seem to exist on WikiSource). If there is no such resource, where would be a good place to put it? HLHJ (discuss • contribs) 22:40, 20 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Thanks HLHJ - that's very interesting. I'd heard about Plan S, but not that they were inviting feedback. I'll start a communal draft below to be posted on 7 Feb 2019. The comment from this article is pretty telling as to their view of both open access and of Wikipedia. I think that for general advice for academics who want to ga naar Wikipedia, good starting points are probably but I'd be intersted in other's thoughts:
 * This 2010 article in PLOS (though its'a little out of date now regarding VisualEditor)
 * The Wikipedia advice page w:WP:Wikipedia editing for research scientists (could be updated, 'see also' section also links to the others mentioned here)
 * Possibly slides from File:Wikipedia editing for academics Workshop.pdf (covers background as well as similarities and diffs to academic writing)
 * The tutorial w:Help:Intro is my favoured one for new editors in general, though there are quite a few out there now
 * I agree with your idea that people could collaboratively edit a paper here for subsequent submission elsewhere. I actually hope that at some point we will see WikiJournal Preprints used for exactly that. Having said that, there are many features of e.g. BioRxiv that are hard/impossible to implement in MediaWiki, (e.g. editorialmanager.com submission assistance). I've actually not thought at all about WikiSource do you know how it handles metadata? T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 10:33, 22 January 2019 (UTC)


 * I wrote a lot of w:WP:Wikipedia editing for research scientists, thanks ; I have updated the bit about the markup, please let me know of anything else that is outdated. Maybe I need to write a new how-to. I have added some Plan S feedback; it has turned out a bit first-person, so I've mentioned that, as not disclosing a personal interest while complaining about COI disclosure seems a bit ironic. I hope others will edit it extensively and make it more general and less rambling. Should probably ping DGG. See Wikidata:WikiProject Source MetaData and WikiCite for Wikidata formats; I don't know what Wikisource does about academic articles. I've posted to Scriptorium. HLHJ (discuss • contribs) 05:52, 27 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Wikimedia is a research funder; has it considered joining Plan S? HLHJ (discuss • contribs) 22:47, 27 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Really interesting question. Ping who might know the best person within the WMF to contact. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 23:37, 27 January 2019 (UTC)
 * That might depend on the exact manner of involvement people have in mind, but as a first stop you could try the contact options listed at https://research.wikimedia.org/contact.html . Note that WMF already has an open access policy concerning research that it directly supports. Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (discuss • contribs) 01:09, 28 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Tbayer (WMF). I was thinking of WMF making an institutional statement of support; I'm not sure if it could also become a coalition member. From the policy you link to, it seems as if Plan S is a good match for existing policy, meaning that WMF might have valuable experience to share. I'm thinking you might well know who would be best to ask for contributions, in the discussion below or through other channels? HLHJ (discuss • contribs) 01:43, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I've realized that the above looks as if I'm missing the point. The contact options provided are off-wiki and non-pseudoanonymous; would you be willing to pass it on a quick note, something like "Could WMF please consider making an institutional statement of support" of Plan S, as it seems to be well-aligned with its existing research and data policies?", as you see fit? HLHJ (discuss • contribs) 03:03, 28 January 2019 (UTC)


 * The deadline is tommorrow at 15:00 UTC. Please make any more comments soon. Tbayer (WMF), I'll be on before then, and we can prepare this for submission. HLHJ (discuss • contribs) 16:17, 7 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Sorry, meant to ping T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo). HLHJ (discuss • contribs) 00:03, 8 February 2019 (UTC)


 * Since the final deadline is in the middle of the (UTC+11) would you be happy to do the final submission to the form? I can help with anything that comes up 8:00-10:00 UTC. For long comments, or where there is a discussion, it might be useful to shorten/summarise for the feedback form to aid readability (link to section). What do you think? T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 00:07, 8 February 2019 (UTC)


 * T.Shafee, I can be around to submit. I think shorten/summarizing/proofreading would be an excellent idea. I'm not very good at doing that for text I've written myself, so I'd appreciate any help, but I'll have a quick go, though I should warn you that I have an upcoming commitment in half an hour. HLHJ (discuss • contribs) 01:57, 8 February 2019 (UTC)


 * T.Shafee, I tried a dry run on the form, and it's not working for me. I could submit to the e-mail address at https://www.coalition-s.org/privacy/. This would probably work. HLHJ (discuss • contribs) 02:12, 8 February 2019 (UTC)


 * T.Shafee, I've done a draft summary. Please feel free to edit radically. I will submit by e-mail if I don't hear back. HLHJ (discuss • contribs) 02:29, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

Perfect! I've done a little copy-editing and added one extra point about Wikidata. I'll upload summary to the form in 1 hr (seems to be working for me). If you'd be happy to email the contents (espec. if there are any last changes after I submit the form) then we'll make sure they definitely receive it one way or the other. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 11:06, 8 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Submission done by form (Response ID: 2192). T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 12:36, 8 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Brilliant, thank you, T.Shafee. In the meanwhile, I got a response from Plan S saying e-mail submission would work. I was intending to add that extended-discussion link; thank you for doing that. And of course I should have mentioned Wikidata, and possibly WikiCite; good catch. I think I should have mentioned Open Journal Systems and WikiJournals, too, under barriers to entry. I failed to proofread the APC line... ah well, it's decent, and they can always check back here for details, and click the "edit" tab and post here if they want more detail. I hope they will. HLHJ (discuss • contribs) 13:37, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

Q1) Is there anything unclear or are there issues that have not been addressed by the guidance document?

 * Metadata on conflicts of interest, errata, retractions, and trial registration should be more directly addressed, see below. HLHJ (discuss • contribs) 05:33, 27 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Lists will have to be kept of Plan-S complaint journals and databases - is there a plan for who will audit and store this information? T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 23:37, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

Machine-readable COI and erratum metadata
Please give us machine-readable COI disclosures as metadata. Deliberate attempts to influence the academic literature for profit are a significant problem for Wikipedia. Traditionally, such papers were meant to influence academics. As open access becomes more common, the general public becomes a larger, softer target for misinformation. We may see more questionable journal papers promoting dubious ideas on behalf of those who profit from them. Left unchecked, this could seriously harm the public's trust in and willingness to fund academia, worsening the problem.

The lack of machine-readable open data on COIs causes significant harm. In the biomedical field, misplaced trust in research papers has killed people; it would be an interesting epidemiological exercise to estimate how many. In other fields, such as climate science, there are also substantial incentives to distort the research literature, and significant negative consequences for misinformation.

The problems I describe below mostly reflect situations I have personally seen as a Wikipedia editor; see also the Wikipedia article on "Conflicts of interest in academic publishing", which I wrote partially as an effort to understand and help resolve these problems.

It is currently sometimes hard to determine if a source is a genuine independent academic article, or a "native advertisement" (for instance, an article-shaped thing in a paid "supplement" to a journal, which has been reviewed by editors chosen by the supplement sponsor). This can be problematic. Thousands of Wikipedia articles currently cite these article-shaped ads, because they look like solid research; it would be easy to commission papers to appear to meet Wikipedia's "reliable sources" guidelines and its more stringent medical sources guidelines. As an example, a Wikipedia article averaging 2-3 thousand views a day cited, for information on dietary health risks, a paper for which the lead author, editor, and director of the funding organization were the same person. The funding organization got its money from industry groups producing products which it was describing as not causing a health harm. Only the author is specified in the standard machine-readable metadata, so such problems can currently only be discovered by trawling through the articles by hand; even then, it's easy to miss, as COIs are usually declared in a non-obvious manner if at all. I've done some of this trawling; it is a slow, tedious, and sisyphean task, and I prefer to put my effort into automating it.

Machine-readable disclosures would make it possible to automatically screen for and statistically analyze systemic biasses in the academic literature, for new and historical data. While some details of COI declarations will probably remain so idiosyncratic that they cannot be expressed in a standard format, most declarations are quite stereotyped, and can even be automatically text-mined. The machine-readability need not be complex in order to be usable; just ORCID-like IDs for all funders (as in "Recommended additional criteria"), and funding amounts and restrictions, would be useful. All funders should also be required to declare their funding, to avoid front organizations.

Papers and supplements to journals need machine-readable COIs, but so do journals themselves. It has become increasingly easy to start a journal, meaning many more unfamiliar journals. Anything like the "Australasian" fake journals should be instantly identifiable by its machine-readable COI declaration. The journals run by the American Society for Nutrition have been criticized for taking money from sugar producers and soft-drink manufacturers; they do issue conflict of interest declarations (including for members of the editorial board), but these are not machine-readable or visible when reading individual papers. COIs are also created by other sources of revenue, such as ads. Some COIs will be eliminated by open access (does anyone buy post-prints of open-access journals? if so, each paper should contain metadata declaring how many post-prints were bought, and by whom). It is not reasonable for journals and journal editors to hold authors to higher standards than they impose upon themselves. They, too, should declare their funding sources and other COIs in a machine-readable format.

There are many clever ways to make promotion look like independent evidence. Attempts to enforce transparency will therefore have loopholes. It must therefore also be possible for third parties to report causes for concern (including undeclared COIs, ambiguities, errors, and causes for retractions). Post-publication peer-review comments are publication metadata, and should be open data which can be reused as freely as the papers themselves (PubPeer currently severely restricts third-party reuse of content contributed to them). The appalling practice of charging readers to report or read about errors, including paywalled retraction notices, should be explicitly prohibited. All errata and retraction notices should be machine-readable open metadata. Retraction Watch may be able to advise.

Privately telling people about problems with their papers does not seem to be sufficient to correct the research record, in practice. This may be for innocent reasons: I recently attempted to contact a corresponding author, requesting clarification of the units used in a recent paper, only to find that she had died. While some publishers currently allow comments, responsibility for publishing criticisms should obviously not lie with a criticized party. The journals might also prefer this, as it will free them from legal liability; PubPeer seems to be able to accept anonymous criticisms, restricted by a verifiability policy, without being sued out of existence.

It should be noted that Wikipedia requires editors to declare conflicts of interest, but also allows third parties to flag other editors as having conflicts of interest, including anonymously, through the   template. There are penalties for unverifiable accusations. The system largely seems to work, although undisclosed paid editors can be hard to identify. HLHJ (discuss • contribs) 05:31, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

Obviously the absence of a COI statement (as well as statements of the absence of COIs) should be explicitly noted in the metadata. "The authors did not make any statement about their potential conflicts of interest" or some such. HLHJ (discuss • contribs) 15:28, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

Open Data
"All scholarly content must be openly accessible" in an excellent principle and should explicitly include open data, and open lab notebooks where possible. Plan S should have suitable guidelines for data archiving and sharing, through secure third parties where ethics require it. Open data should be formatted for easy re-use, and be correctable when errors are found.

Open data allows reuse in other research papers, but also allows reuse by Wikipedia. For example, I made this diagram from open data, also open-licensing a script to derive it from the original files; when better data became available, another editor made an updated version. HLHJ (discuss • contribs) 05:31, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

Links to trial registries
Where a trial was registered in a trial registry, a machine-readable link to the registration should be part of the metadata of the published article. The methodology should be machine-readable, making it possible to compare the trial as-planned to the trial as-published automatically. Even a simple list of outcomes to be reported would be useful here, as outcome-switching is common; see the COMPare study for methodology and an idea of how tedious it is to do this by hand. HLHJ (discuss • contribs) 05:31, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

Start-up journals
Some statement about barriers to entry should be made. For journals starting up (espec in humanities) may struggle with some of the technical requirements. It might be useful to outline or some assistance to ensure diversified journal marketplace competition. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 00:01, 28 January 2019 (UTC)


 * That makes sense. A copyleft software suite, similar to Mediawiki, which one could just click-to-install on one of the open-source personal servers that are springing up, would effectively remove many technical barriers. It would probably only cost several thousand US dollars to make something like this, if existing code (like the stuff we are using here) were reused, and the cost of the hardware would be significantly less than $1000 US.


 * A hosting service (we could run one here) would be even easier. How much effort would it take to allow anyone to set up the software for a journal in a few minutes here? It still won't be easy to start a journal, but the technical obstacles will be gone. HLHJ (discuss • contribs) 01:51, 28 January 2019 (UTC)


 * You mean something like Open Journal Systems (OJS), but is compatible with MediaWiki? OJS is open source so it should be adaptable if WMF provides some programming resource. I can see people adopting MediaWiki as a plug-in since it already takes care of typesetting (which is time-consuming and costly for post-acceptance articles) and something that OJS doesn't do. In OJS, the copyeditor downloads the accepted article, works offline for copyediting and typesetting, and then uploads the copyedited version into OJS.  OhanaUnited  Talk page  02:52, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

Article Processing Charge (APC) cap
The APC cap is likely necessary (Nat. Comms. APC = $5200) since otherwise it could end up excluding researchers supported by funders outside of Plan S to be excluded from Plan S journals. How will APC caps be decided and how often updated? T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 00:01, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

Supplementary data
The existence of supplementary content (data, supplementary text, supplementary media, software, corrections, retractions, anything) should be identified in the bibliographic metadata, so that the reader can easily know if they have all of the publication or are missing bits. It would be useful to have a recommendation to put supplementary data in standard self-describing data formats (with an evolving database of data standards, so that one could easily find an appropriate one). HLHJ (discuss • contribs) 15:23, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

Access, privacy, and paywalls
Obviously, copyleft articles should not have paywalls. However, this expectation has not always been met; one publisher charged for access to open-access articles for over two years. Academics looking into the matter fount that it was questionable whether this breached any laws. Plan S should therefore make it clear that paywalling access or exerting pressure against people hosting or otherwise distributing copies would be in breach of its standards.

Access may also become difficult if political pressure is exerted on academics, especially but not exclusively by national governments, not to access certain content. This is a problem with which Wikipedia is familiar; we are currently being banned by two governments, and we've regularly been denounced by a number of civil society groups. The most common means of censorship is self-censorship, often encouraged by, for instance, automated messages telling readers that they are being watched. This has a strong effect even if it is untrue. The other means being used is to block access to the original database of content, and give access to a redacted form.

Peer-to-peer sharing, automated and manual, is in practice used to circumvent censorship of academic articles; for open-access content, this is entirely legal and should be encouraged. Automated versions do, however, require an index database. For illegal peer-to-peer sharing, it is the index websites that have been targeted. The US military, developing ARPANET, reported wanted a fully-distributed system, but in fact wound up with the DNS system used as an index for the internet. A DNS system for the library of academic articles should be possible, with academic libraries host them.

Wikipedia is widely distributed through intranet serves (see Internet-in-a-Box). This gives access to, for instance African universities with no net access. The existing provisions in Plan S, for availability of the full text in machine-readable format, will allow us to use fully-automated tools to distribute academic articles by the same route.

Academic articles are sometimes high-bandwidth, but their metadata is not. We could also distribute a database of the metadata, similar to Crossref but with distributed prooofreading and fewer COIs about things like linking to author repository fulltexts. We already have it; it's called WikiCite. Feedback on how it should evolve would be welcome.

Some care need to be taken with the database of metadata of open-access works. Database copyright is permitted in some countries; it may be necessary to take measures against copyrighting an index to Plan-S works. Even just building good proprietary tools on top of it (annotation, tagging, and recommendations, for instance, like Mendeley) could result in a group effectively controlling access to the tools needed by academics to work competitively in their field (an "Embrace, extend, and extinguish" strategy). If the group is democratically controlled by the academics, this is not a problem; if it seeks profit, even at the expense of academics in lower-income countries, it might be. The traditional solution to this problem is a copyleft license, such as the Open Database License (ODbL) successfully used by Open Streetmap, but you might be able to think of a solution compatible with CC-0, if stronger motives compel its retention. HLHJ (discuss • contribs) 16:13, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

Wikidata
Depending on how exactly plan S ends up implemented, WikiData could be an ideal location to store information for e.g. lists of journals, or databases that are plan-S compliant, since it's easily integrated with other databases and its history is fully audit-able. All papers will soon be listed in Wikidata, so supp info, COIs, etc could conceivably be included. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 10:59, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

Version submitted to Plan S feedback form
To submit 14:00 UTC 08-02-2019 (1 hr pre-deadline)


 * Q1
 * Metadata on conflicts of interest, errata, retractions, and trial registration should be more directly addressed, see below.
 * Lists will have to be kept of Plan-S compliant journals and databases — is there a plan for who will audit and store this information?
 * What does "All scholarly content" include, and what "other research outputs"? Could the guidelines be made expandable for e.g. open clinical trial registrations and open lab notebooks?


 * Q2
 * Wikipedia has problems with hard-to-identify conflicts of interest in academic papers (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine/Archive_109#Sponsored_supplement?). Could machine-readable COI metadata, designed to resolve such problems, be included? This has also been called for by academics.
 * Metadata on what errata, retractions, and supplementary data are available should be machine-readable. A third-party enquiries service, like PubPeer but with open licensing, should be set up.
 * The APC cap is likely necessary (Nat. Comms. APC = $5200) since otherwise it could end up excluding researchers supported by funders outside of Plan S to be excluded from Plan S journals. How will APC caps be decided and how often updated?
 * Barriers to market entry by new journals should be explicitly addressed.
 * The problem of third-party data reusers adding facilities and then limiting access, as in Mendeley's case, should be addressed.
 * As an openly editable and audit-able database, Wikidata may prove a useful location for storing information on e.g. Plan S compliant archives, article errata, supplementary data.

This feedback has been compiled and summarised from contributions of multiple people. For a full record of the discussion, please see https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Talk:WikiJournal_User_Group/Archive_4#Plan_S_RfC

Dear contributor

On behalf of cOAlition S we would like to thank you for having taken the time to react and provide feedback on the implementation guidance of Plan S.

cOAlition S received input from over 600 individuals and organisations during this feedback exercise. Originating from over 40 countries, respondents include researchers, librarians and libraries, publishers and editors, universities, learned societies, research funders and performers, and other interested citizens and organisations. Never before have our diverse scholarly communities seen a debate on Open Access and the future of scholarly communications play out on such a global scale.

Responses are now being analysed and will feed into an updated version of the Plan S implementation guidance. An initial analysis of the feedback will be released in the spring and all feedback responses will be made openly available. We will inform you when the next steps of the process are complete.

Kind regards

Notes on Plan S compliance criteria
Below are the criteria for being Plan-S compliant in the same way that we checked the criteria. There are a few I'm not certain on so have marked them with a question mark. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 10:53, 22 January 2019 (UTC)


 * A word of caution: Plan S's criteria are provisional, and it is not clear how they would apply. Plan S compliance might be vital if we want money (APCs or subsidies), less so if we do not. Sylvain Ribault (discuss • contribs) 20:18, 22 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Good point, and for WikiJournals it's probably less vital considering that most articles are not publishing funded research. I suspect it will become commonplace for journals to indicate whether they are 'Plan-S compliant' if it gets implemented. The ones that we don't yet hit (especially JATS) may be useful long-term goals anyway. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 23:42, 27 January 2019 (UTC)


 * I think Wikisource would probably meet "Deposition of content with a long-term digital preservation or archiving programme"; for most content, we'd just need to copy over some academic-article-specific templates, which should be pretty quick. We could obviously also host public domain and open-licensed articles from other journals there; there are fields where older articles are actually quite hard to get a hold of, as no-one has scanned them. Pandoc will convert Mediawiki markup to just about anything, including XML and LaTeX. It has limitations, but it should do us for much of the stuff needed below. I assumed the Wikijournals were already using it for PDFs etc. HLHJ (discuss • contribs) 17:56, 10 February 2019 (UTC)


 * Apparently there exists a GPL2 Pandoc extension that produces JATS XML. Pandoc will read Mediawiki markup. so In theory this is a ready-made solution; in practice, there are likely to be bugs; the more obscure markups won't translate. Not sure how citations would work, my guess is badly but that's just pessimism, I don't know. HLHJ (discuss • contribs) 00:02, 20 May 2019 (UTC)

Basic mandatory criteria for Plan S compliant Open Access journals and platforms:
 * ✅ The journal/platform must be registered in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) or in the process of being registered.
 * ✅ All scholarly content must be openly accessible (journal website or dedicated platform) and free to read and download immediately upon publication, without any kind of technical or other form of obstacles.
 * ✅ The journal/platform must enable authors to publish under a CC BY 4.0 license (alternatively CC BY-SA 4.0 or CC0).
 * ✅ The journal/platform must offer authors/institutions the option of full copyright retention without any restrictions, i.e. no copyright transfer or license to publish that strips the author of essential rights.
 * ✅ The journal/platform must have a solid system in place for review according to the standards within the relevant discipline, and according to the standards of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Details on this must be openly available through the website.
 * ✅ The journal/platform must provide automatic APC waivers for authors from low-income countries and discounts for authors from middle-income countries.
 * ✅ The journal must not have a mirror/sister subscription journal with substantial overlap in editorial board to avoid business models charging for both access and publication. Such journals will de facto be considered hybrid journals (see ‘Transformative Agreements’ below).

Mandatory quality criteria for Plan S compliant journals, platforms, and other venues:
 * ✅ Transparent costing and pricing: information on the publishing costs and on any other factors impacting the publication fees (for example cross subsidising) must be openly available on the journal website/publishing platform. This must include details on direct costs, indirect costs and potential surplus.
 * ✅ Use of DOIs as permanent identifiers (PIDs with versioning, for example in case of revisions).
 * Deposition of content with a long-term digital preservation or archiving programme (such as CLOCKSS).
 * Availability of the full text (including supplementary text and data when applicable and feasible) in machine readable format (for example XML), allowing for seamless Text and Data Mining (TDM).
 * Working out how to code WikiJournal articles in a JATS-compliant format should be possible, but we'd need assistance from a mediawiki developer.
 * ✅ Linking to underlying data, code, and so on available in external repositories.
 * High quality article level metadata – including cited references – in standard interoperable format, under a CC0 public domain dedication. Metadata must include complete and reliable information on funding provided by cOAlition S funders.
 * Header metadata implemented as XML subpage. CS1 citation system is well structured so hopefully possible to generate cited article metadata? Again, will need mediawiki developer assistance.
 * ✅ Machine readable information on the Open Access status and the license embedded in the article.

Recommended additional criteria for journals and platforms:
 * ✅ Support for PIDs for authors (such as ORCID), funders, funding programmes and grants, institutions, and so on.
 * Direct deposition of publications by the publisher into Plan S compliant author designated or centralised Open Access repositories.
 * Problem will eventually need to be solved in order to be able to export articles to PMC some day.
 * Openly accessible data on citations according to the standards by the Initiative for Open Citations I4OC.
 * as above on citations

Revised Plan S published
For those interested, the revised Plan S is out. Main changes: From my reading of this, WikiJournals should be fully compliant with the new mandatory criteria, and the additional recommended ones can be worked towards. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 07:29, 31 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Slightly relaxed technical requirements for some aspects
 * Hybrid journals allowed if part of a transition to OA
 * CC BY ND allowed
 * Delayed implementation timeline from 2020 to 2021

Research Preprints
I've submitted the information on WikiJPre to ResearchPreprints.org. I also suggested for them to add the well-maintained List of academic journals by preprint policy to the 'guidance for authors' section. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 10:10, 22 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Homepage: wikiversity.org/wiki/WikiJPre
 * Disciplines: all
 * Start:8 October 2017‎
 * Unique ID: URL
 * Licenses: CC licenses (CC-BY default)
 * Format submission: direct text (mediawiki)
 * Format publication: PDF & HTML
 * Owned: WikiJournal User Group
 * Governance: Advisory board
 * Business model: Hosted by WikiMedia Foundation nonprofit
 * Description: WikiJournal Preprints is an open-access online multidisciplinary pre-print server that operates on the MediaWiki platform. This makes it well suited to collaborative writing with detailed versioning and ability for commenting. Articles can be submitted to any journal, but the server is particularly well set up for submission to WikiJournals and subsequent Wikipedia-integration. It can also import wikipedia articles as startiing points for articles (wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiJPre).


 * WikiJournal Preprints server is now listed on ResearchPreprints.com. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 09:53, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

Interested in Joining the Administration
I am a highly motivated writer/lecturer with doctoral level training in Quantum-nuclear physics, theology, and archaeology. I am very good at project formulation, guidance, and execution. My vision is to see scores of peer-reviewed Wiki Journals that cover a vast range of knowledge. I am the editor of numerous massive textbooks, dictionaries, study Bibles, and encyclopedias in the languages of India. At present I am working on an English, 3 volume, Encyclopedia of Indian Numismatics. I also have 85 Kindle publications of which the majority are non fiction.

I therefore apply to be made part of the Administration. Dr. Johnson C. Philip (discuss • contribs) 17:13, 1 February 2019 (UTC)


 * See also Johnson Philip. Boris Tsirelson (discuss • contribs) 18:09, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
 * I see his book "From abacus up to quantum computers" intended for wide audience, but I fail to find any his research in quantum (and/or nuclear) physics, intended for experts. I tried Web of Science, and other professional collections, in vain. Boris Tsirelson (discuss • contribs) 19:50, 1 February 2019 (UTC)


 * The title you mentioned is available on Amazon.com. Let me add that I have a total of 85 titles on Amazon Kindle, and 75 of them are non-fiction. Dr. Johnson C. Philip (discuss • contribs) 15:58, 2 February 2019 (UTC)


 * Note: for those wishing to read and coment on the application, it is listed at this page. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 22:50, 1 February 2019 (UTC)


 * I am 65 years old, and based in India. India did not have computer facilities at the time I was active in the University. So you cannot find anything on the net about my work in Quantum-nuclear Physics. My PhD was awarded in 1991 when Internet was not available in India. Dr. Johnson C. Philip (discuss • contribs) 03:45, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

I am very active in Numismatics and would love to see a review journal coming up in Numismatics, a field in which I have very wide contacts in India. Dr. Johnson C. Philip (discuss • contribs) 03:48, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

Table of contents for preprint talk pages?
I tried to add to the Talk (Discussion) page for an article submitted to WikiJMed, but it did not work. I also tried but that did not work either. I searched for but did not see it either, so I am assuming that including a Table of Contents is not allowed by some other method.

If that is correct, is there a reason we do not have Table of Contents for preprint Talk pages? Thanks! - Mark D Worthen PsyD  (talk)  22:36, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Hmm, the TOC is meant to appear on the right hand side in preprints. I'll check whether there is a rendering issue in different browsers. The TOC is meant to be called by the main template so I'm surprised that  didn't override it. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 04:16, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
 * I, for one, see it on the right hand side (for now). Boris Tsirelson (discuss • contribs) 05:08, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Ah ha! Thank you Boris. It might have been there all along, but I'm so conditioned to look for it in the body of the article I thought it was missing.  - Mark D Worthen PsyD   (talk)  17:07, 22 February 2019 (UTC)

Laboratory notebook
Discussing content produced by teachers and students during ranging syllabuses (in universities) on french wikiversity research name-space topics, I came with the idea of "Laboratory wiki-notebooks".

In case you'd be interested in elaborating (for or with your students) I quickly translate the idea here.

"One thing that I think would be relevant is that these "contributions" of "practical directed work" can be put at use beyond 'learning'. Concerning my thesis in environmental assessment, I regret that the machine park in higher education is not used to provide Life Cycle Inventory data (basic data for environmental assessment). Many of the "practical directed work" during my studies have concerned the production and characterization of materials (Baccalaureate in materials, higher technician diploma in industrial product design and finally engineering syllabus). If these "practical works" were documented and accompanied by the neighboring fields (Laboratory Sciences and Techniques) for measurements and characterization of emissions and effluents, all supported by wikiversity and wikidata, we would have the capacity to document a nice range of processes. It would result in a learning work that is not only useful for teaching (courses, operating modes, lexicographical studies of productions for the educational sciences etc.), but also for environmental assessment (with a high diversity of replications, a very interesting characterization of dispersion and uncertainty data). In the laboratories (at least the one I was in), CNRS's UMR (mixed researched unit, a way for CNRS to look bigger ;-), we have"Laboratory notebook". They are scarcely used for research (to my knowledge), unfortunately more for the lucrative property that could result from it (as proof of prior art), but epistemologically speaking, I find it very rich. Moreover, if these "laboratory notebooks" were open and in CC-BY-SA it would greatly reduce the lucrative depredation on knowledge"

Currently for the rare occasion were I start an english research page, it's a draft of wikijournal article (Either the co-author is wiki-shy or he's not that interested). This space for "searching" is currently debated in the french wikiversity (will it be "NOINDEX" sub-user or sub-project pages..., We'll see). Anyway I believe for the benefit of Higher Education, the border between 'schooly' learning and 'research learning' should in my opinion have some room here.

--RP87 (discuss • contribs) 10:18, 25 February 2019 (UTC)


 * Thank you for the info! It is a pity that the CNRS isn't more widely used. I'd heard of something similar for participants of the iGem synthetic biology competition, but it would be interesting to see something like this used more widely and integrated into other wikis. There's also a few experiments in documenting experimental protocols in a similar way at https://openwetware.org. I think these sorts of initiatives will slowly gain traction as electronic lab notebooks become the norm. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 00:41, 12 March 2019 (UTC)


 * See Open-notebook science. It's a great idea. If Visual Editor handled tables really well, it would be a lot more practical; last I checked, it did not do them at all. HLHJ (discuss • contribs) 00:04, 20 May 2019 (UTC)

ReimagineReview
Reimagine Review is "a registry of platforms and experiments innovating around peer review". We may want to enter the registry in order to share our experience, now or at a later stage. We would have to describe the salient features of peer review at WikiJournals, starting (imho) with the Wikipedia-style openness of the platform, where anyone can contribute to the Talk page and/or edit the article under review. To get a precise idea of which information we would have to provide, see for example Peerage of Science's entry. Sylvain Ribault (discuss • contribs) 22:39, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Very interesting, I'd not come across that. I've signed in to have a look at the submission form and it looks very reasonable. I think that we should apply as soon as practical, since there is not real benefit for delay on this one. The main relevant questions to think about are below. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 00:34, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
 * I agree with the items you've ticked. I've added some stats for the final section. Feel free to use those you think are most interesting (or add others I've not thought of). I'm happy for you to fill in the application form, or I can if you prefer. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 01:35, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
 * They want "project leaders" to fill the form, you fit the description better. Thanks for the stats, two remarks: 1. How many articles were rejected? We should distinguish articles that were rejected from articles that are still under review. 2. Clarify that the 6.9 million views are to the Wikipedia versions, if that is true. Distinguish Wikipedia metrics (pageviews) and WikiJournal article metrics (citations, AltMetric). Sylvain Ribault (discuss • contribs) 20:25, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
 * V. good points, especially making clear which stats apply to the journal version vs the wikipedia version. Of the 13 articles not accepted, 1 was withdrawn and 12 were rejected. I'll tackle the application today. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 01:44, 19 March 2019 (UTC)
 * I've now submitted so it'll be listed after review by their team. It also seems that it is possible to update the details if new features are added, or to update statistics. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 12:13, 19 March 2019 (UTC)
 * The WikiJournal User Group is now listed on ReimagineReview. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 02:25, 20 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Splendid!Let's hope that initiative leads to interesting exchanges. Sylvain Ribault (discuss • contribs) 20:55, 20 March 2019 (UTC)


 * 1) Description of the project - In a nutshell, what is the project about and how does it work? (150 words maximum)
 * The three WikiJournals (Medicine, Science and Humanities) are Wikipedia-integrated academic journals. This firstly means that in addition to research articles, they also publish Wikipedia-style encyclopedic review articles. These review articles can be written from scratch or based on Wikipedia articles, and can be integrated back into Wikipedia after peer review. Secondly, the WikiJournals are hosted and supported by the Wikimedia Foundation and so are free to both authors and to readers. And third, the WikiJournals use the same MediaWiki software as Wikipedia. Articles automatically benefit from features like version control and discussion pages, and anyone can edit them, including the peer reviewers, and the journals' academic editors.
 * 1) Goals - What are the main motivations that inspired the project and what will it accomplish? (150 words maximum)
 * The main original goal of WikiJournals is to encourage and recognize contributions to Wikipedia by academics. To do this, the WikiJournals allow Wikipedia articles to have named authors, DOIs, a stable PDF version of record, and to undergo academic peer review. Moreover, WikiJournals strive to achieve a broad thematic scope that covers practically all fields of research, and to provide a zero cost, open access publishing venue for the fields that lack one. And finally, WikiJournals implement recognized best practices, in particular a form of open peer review where not only the reviews are made public, but also anyone can contribute.
 * 1) Areas of innovation tickbox options:
 * 2) *✅Costs: in money and/or time and resources
 * 3) *✅Quality of review: rigor, thoroughness, or tone of the review
 * 4) *Bias in review
 * 5) *Incentives and recognition for reviewing
 * 6) *Reviewer training
 * 7) *Speed
 * 8) *✅Transparency
 * 9) Transparency tickbox options:
 * 10) *✅Double blind: Reviewers are unaware of the authors’ identities, and vice versa
 * 11) *✅Open interaction: Reviewers communicate with one another during the review process
 * 12) *✅Open reports: The content of peer review reports is published
 * 13) *✅Open identities: The identities of peer reviewers are published
 * 14) *✅Open participation: Anyone can participate in the peer review process
 * 15) *✅Single blind: Authors are unaware of reviewers’ identities, but NOT vice versa
 * 16) Process tickbox options:
 * 17) *✅Author initiates review: The author decides to initiate the peer review process. Eg, traditional journal review is initiated by the authors’ submission.
 * 18) *Comment moderation: Comments are screened or moderated before or after posting.
 * 19) *Journal integration: (For review happening outside the traditional journal format) editors at one or more journals integrate the content of the review into their own processes or the final presentation of the paper
 * 20) *Pre-publication review: Review prior to public disclosure (of a preprint or other output) Reviewer or editor initiates review
 * 21) *Comment indexing: Comments are given a DOI or included in disciplinary databases
 * 22) *Comment rating (meta-evaluation): Comments can be up- or down-voted, highlighted, or reviewed themselves.
 * 23) *✅Post-publication review: Review after public disclosure (or a preprint or other output)
 * 24) *✅Professional editors
 * 25) *Preregistration
 * 26) *Reviewer or editor initiates review: The review process is started without the involvement of the author, as in a comment left on a website
 * 27) Notes on review features - Please describe any features or functionality not adequately described by the categories above.
 * Thanks to the MediaWiki platform, peer review at WikiJournals is extremely flexible. While comments themselves are always made public, the authors, reviewers and other participants may be named, pseudonymous or anonymous. Interactions between all the participants are possible before, during and after the review process. Reviewers may choose to perform small corrections themselves, rather than suggesting them to authors. And authors are able to revert modifications thanks to version control.
 * 1) Eligible reviewers/editors - How are reviewers and/or editors selected, and/or who is eligible to comment?
 * Editors are selected for their professional credentials as researchers, their experience with academic publishing, and their experience with open projects and in particular Wikipedia. Reviewers are selected for their status as experts in the reviewed article's subject matter. As in Wikipedia, anyone is eligible to comment: it is not even necessary to create an account.
 * 1) Criteria for inclusion - What does it mean for a scholarly output to be associated with the project and/or associated tags or badges?
 * Articles are accepted for publication (inc, PDF, doi, indexing etc) once they have been been assessed by at least two external peer reviewers (invited by the editorial board) and their responses and edits have been agreed to by both the peer reviewers and editorial board. Suitable material is integrated into Wikipedia, as a 'living version' where it is available for post-publication review and freely editable by anyone.
 * 1) Metrics - Do you track usage and participation of this project? After participation in the experiment, do you request or receive feedback regarding the review experience? Do you have statistics on how the review results are used? Or are there other indicators of that you use?
 * Currently tracked are: The number of times that an article is read in the journal and on Wikipedia (for those integrated into Wikipedia); Number of pre-publication peer reviewers; Post-publication peer review; The Social media impact of each article by AltMetric.com. Later, an impact factor will be sought by ISI Web of Science.
 * 1) Results summary - Briefly summarize the results of the project or trial. For more details, see the “Policies” page. (150 word maximum)
 * 49 submitted articles, 36 accepted for publication.
 * 27 published articles integrated into Wikipedia (of which 8 were adapted by updating/overhauling existing Wikipedia content).
 * Mean number of external peer reviewers = 3.1 per article, additional suggestions from editors = 1.2 per article, spontaneous pre-publication suggestions from readers = 0.1 per article.
 * extensive post-publication commentary performed on 'living' Wikipedia versions of articles.
 * 75% of peer reviewers choose to have their identity open
 * WikiJournal articles integrated in full or part into Wikipedia receive 6.9 million views per annum so far.
 * Combined citations 121 per G-scholar
 * Combined AltMetric score >200.


 * The stats in Point 10 are interesting, it would be nice to display them more prominently somewhere. And to complete them with more general data and conclusions from our experience so far. In particular, I would be very curious to know where the authors who submitted to WikiJournals come from, and how they learned about the journals. It indeed seems that the number of good submissions is the main factor that limits the growth of the journals. Sylvain Ribault (discuss • contribs) 21:07, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

Selling wikijournal.org

 * Moved to here from Talk:WikiJournal_of_Medicine/Cell_disassembly_during_apoptosis. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk

Hello all, I have decided to sell domain name wikijournal.org. If you are intersted in it, please drop me a message to personal email: philcrosoft@mail.ru - 09:51, 11 March 2019‎ Fokebox  (discuss | contribs | block)‎
 * This message was already posted here and I deleted it as spam. @T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk: why do you think it is not spam? Sylvain Ribault (discuss • contribs) 08:32, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Ah, I didn't see it was posted here first. I thought it was only added to the peer review page of that article. It is certainly the case that own that domain (there were discussions a few years back (when only WikiJMed) existed about using it. The idea was dropped because a merger with the existing content was incompatible - ie not peer reviewed. It's possible that the domain name could be useful to redirect to WikiJournal_User_Group. If it turns out to be spam, definitely remove again though. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 09:49, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
 * It is not a spam, I really sell the domain and website compleately under full control (existing content can be delted). If it is impossible to buy than I can give it to use according to the ideas of WikiJournal User group under the donations (hosting, ssl certificates) etc). You can contact me via Whats upp +79858889947 --Fokebox (discuss • contribs) 13:07, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

Distinction between encyclopedia and scholarly journal; copying content from one to another
I'm grateful that a recent article WikiJournal of Science/RIG-I like receptors is published and that it's integrated into RIG-I-like receptor. However, strangely I couldn't find a significant difference between the two pages in their own current forms. If WikiJournal articles and Wikipedia articles become more similar to each other content-wise, what would happen to the distinction between an encyclopedia and a scholarly (academic) journal? How different must a Wikipedia article and a WikiJournal article be from each other? An encyclopedia typically gives a general overview of distinctive topics, while a scholarly journal typically summarizes research conducted by typically academics. What are similarities and differences with an encyclopedia and a scholarly journal? George Ho (discuss • contribs) 02:28, 17 March 2019 (UTC)


 * While both can present topical reviews on notable subjects only a scholarly journal can publish original research. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 19:57, 20 March 2019 (UTC)


 * Also, a free, open encyclopedia can be useful for the general/lay reader; scholarly journals, particularly ones requiring payment to view, are traditionally not. Wikipedia is also a multi-lingual body of work. The benefits of incorporating scholarly material into the fifth most popular website in the world (as of January 2019) include more scientific accuracy for the reader, as well as more recognition for the academics providing the information (if the references are consulted). Some edits for "layman speak" are traditionally made as well, as long as the essential scientific content is not disrupted. | This article shows how Wikipedia is consulted for medical information, particularly for rare diseases, more often than even PubMed or some other outlets. Sherylock (discuss • contribs) 16:04, 9 May 2019 (UTC)

WikiJournal participation in Wikimedia 2030 Strategy
The 2019 WikiMedia Summit in Berlin is coming up on the 29th of March. The scoping documents have just been released to guide the 3-day-long discussion on the Wikimedia Movement strategy for the next 10 years. There will be >200 representatives there from the different national chapters, user groups, affiliates, trustees, WMF staff and specialist invitees. I'll be representing the WikiJournal User Group at the summit and aiming to focus on what WikiJournals can offer, as well as their preferences. I'll also try to convey the interests of the academic community as a whole where possible. If there are any ideas or feedback on the scoping documents, please let me know below and I'll make sure to raise them during the summit. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 12:57, 20 March 2019 (UTC)


 * Scoping documents prepared by respective Working Groups:
 * Roles & Responsibilities
 * Revenue Streams
 * Resource Allocation
 * Diversity
 * Partnerships
 * Capacity Building
 * As I already expressed my view here, about capacity building through academic Universities/Institutes/libraries. It is more for us to connect academic libraries to have more contributions form them. Here are the few thing to make.
 * Initiating a Capacity Building Program(CBP) - Volunteer applications are invited to join WikiJournal Capacity Building Program as a Capacity Building member in their respective University/Institutes/libraries on behalf of WikiJournal  --Gorlapraveen123 (discuss • contribs) 19:19, 20 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Community Health
 * Product & Technology
 * Advocacy

Summary of WM 2030 Strategy Summit (Berlin)
This is my brief summary of the [[metawiki:Wikimedia_Summit_2019|2019 WikiMedia Summit in Berlin]]. I think that the Wikimedia Strategy Summit was very valuable - hopefully for both the WikiJournals and for the movement as a whole. There was a very intense and productive atmosphere amongst the delegates. Below are some of the items relevant to the WikiJournal User Group.


 * Resource allocation
 * Based on our experiences, I raised the point that although money can be requested via rapid grant, other assistance is currently difficult to request / requisition, e.g.:
 * Advocacy by WMF on a specific issue
 * PR / advertising
 * Press release
 * Social media post/repost
 * Legal advice
 * Official contact when making new partnerships
 * Partnerhips
 * We have useful experience in forming partnerships, as well as inviting external auditing and oversight that could be potentially relevant to other user groups
 * I recommended that the successes of the WikiJournals could be used by the WMF as PR
 * example of quality and auditability
 * as example link to wider 'big open' knowledge ecosystem
 * Community health
 * Several other usergroups expressed interest in the code of conduct that we're drafting. There is potential for it be useful as a template CoCs for other user groups (or even projects).

Several attendees suggested using WikiJHum as an avenue for gathering oral histories in a systematic fashion, i.e. covering a gap in wikisource and commons for recording information to generate reliable sources for topics that currently lack them.
 * Other relevant discussions

It was recommended that we update the sister project application and re-submit it
 * Gather updated user stats and contribs
 * Notify all relevant Wikiprojects (and other relevant locations)
 * Possible platform for other journals to join (e.g. PLOS, Gene, RNA biol etc.)
 * Write a new opinion editorial on what we think WikiJournals could be by 2030 (concrete goals, stretch goals, speculative ideas)

This is the first year where Affiliate groups (like us) are able to vote in a candidate to the WMF board of trustees. (see below for more details). The two relevant points: I'm happy to go into more detail on any of the elements above, just ask below. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 12:19, 13 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Wikimedia Foundation board of trustees election
 * 1) If anyone wishes to put themself forward as a candidate, the criteria and process are here.
 * 2) Once candidates are all announced, we can discuss and vote on which we want the WikiJournal User Group to support. Our user group then casts a single vote in the election (183 affiliate groups will be voting).


 * Note, the summary document for the Berlin WM 2030 Strategy Summit is now published here. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 10:27, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

Strategy Liaison
A the moment, I am the default strategy liaison, however if anyone else would like to be the strategy liaison, I'd be happy to be involved in a supporting role. The main elements are:
 * 1) Facilitate discussions about what WikiJournals can contribute to the Wikimedia Strategy 2030 and keep the WMF up to date (summary)
 * 2) Cast the vote on the  based on WikiJournal User Group consensus (summary, list)
 * "Strategy Liaisons appointed by Organized Groups will act as a conduit for ideas, questions, and updates. This will enable Organized Groups to participate effectively in the Movement Strategy Process and ensure that voices and perspectives of organizations and collaboratives are well heard and considered. The Liaison will be engaged in (pro)active communication with the Working Groups and the Core Team to ensure that their organization is up to date with the overall process and its internal conversations are synchronous and well connected to global discussions."

If you'd like to be involved just leave a note below and email, , and. I'll forward on the email that was sent after the Berlin summit. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 01:24, 15 April 2019 (UTC)


 * I'm just posting to express an interest in having the role of Strategy Liaison until December 2019. Jacknunn (discuss • contribs) 02:28, 15 April 2019 (UTC)


 * I'd be happy to support you in that role. I'll forward you the email information and show you how to notify the WMF team that you'll be the main contact for this part of the process. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 04:35, 16 April 2019 (UTC)


 * I have now onboarded Jack Nunn as a Strategy Liaison for the WikiJournal User Group via going through the links in the "Affiliate community conversations: post-Summit launch" email from Kelsi Stine-Rowe. I'll assist him through the process in a support role. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 10:51, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

Double blind peer review (once again)
Although this has already been discussed earlier vide Talk:WikiJournal User Group, this is in context of Talk:WikiJournal of Medicine and Talk:WikiJournal User Group. I know that there was no definite or pertinent objection to Double blind peer review and that the boards had approved optional double blind peer review. However, I would like to quote my own words from the initial discussion "..double blinding indeed should help in eliminating bias. As the articles get published, the entire details of the author and reviewer gets revealed in accordance to the choices mentioned. So, this is an issue of the journal standards. It cannot be optional. It is there or it isn't there. A middle path should not exist here. Diptanshu 💬 13:12, 20 November 2018 (UTC)"

could you please take up the matter once again in the periodic conference calls and discuss whether it would be feasible to convert the optional part to obligatory or none at all options? I feel that optional does not serve any purpose. If one can point the significance of this being optional I am eager to listen to their perspective though. Dipta<b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 11:54, 22 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Curiously, what's wrong with making public peer review (i.e. revealing authors' identities) the default choice? I'm unsure why you like switching the default to double-blind peer review and dislike it as "optional". To me, double-blind peer review would increase the risk of spammers and fraudulence, but I can see why authors and reviewers conceal each others' identities. Why not compromise and accept the peer review method as the "optional" choice and leave the default (open review) method as-is? --George Ho (discuss • contribs) 23:56, 23 March 2019 (UTC)
 * George Ho I understand that you are well-intended but I doubt whether you understand what double blinding is about. Here is what I would suggest:
 * Please go through the details of the discussion at Talk:WikiJournal User Group
 * Please give an example scenario on how you think double-blind peer review would increase the risk of spammers and fraudulence.
 * Please get in touch with Bob Cummings <>, the Managing Editor of Wiki Studies a journal which runs on the double blind peer review model. Also feel free to get in touch with Frances who happens to be on the board of Wiki Studies and well as the EiC of WikiJournal of Humanities. Feel free to get in touch with any of the actual journals running on this model and get a feedback on whether they have faced your apprehension as a reality. I would assume their experience to be of practical value over the apprehensions of anyone who has no idea of how it works. Your research will perhaps hold some value to at least some of WikiJournal board members who have no idea what it is really about but would nevertheless play a decisive role in the matter.
 * After you are done with all the three home-works and can declare that you understand what it is all about, I would be happy to tell you why "optional" does not serve any purpose. Rather, if the boards are really apprehensive about this development they can feel free to declare that they think double blinding to be a risky proposal and then they can dump it altogether. It is curious that the SCOPUS, ReimagineReview or similar platforms do not think the same about double-blinded reviews. But if opinions hold priority on validity and evidence, then why not?
 * I would wait to hear back from you after you have carried out the home tasks I have given you. I do not want to reinvent the wheel. <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 07:39, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
 * I disagree that double-blind review cannot be optional. Firstly, providing it as optional gives opportunity to test author preferences over the next year. Secondly, I don't think that having fully open review in one case would invalidate those submissions that choose to be double-blinded until publication. Full double-blinding is also impossible for some submissions where editors use their real names as usernames. Double blinding has proven useful in some fields (and indeed the gold standard in much of the humanities), but its effects have been inconclusive in other fields, which is why there was not unanimous support in the editorial boards for its implementation as default or compulsory. More info in the meeting notes. Would you consent to this section being moved to be with the earlier discussion to keep the discussion together? T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 10:17, 26 March 2019 (UTC)
 * I forgot to add in my last communication to your that I would not be following up with any of given threads which I had initiated (on-wiki or otherwise). So, address the issues if they need to be addressed and not for the requirement to provide a response. As regards the given issue pertaining to double blinding, you people would be able to decide on what works best for you. Regarding the consideration of optionality, may be you could try making peer-review optional and see if all users would be interested in opting for it (just saying). Regarding the issue of users using their real name as username, double blinding can still be easy. Just ask them not to make the submission on-wiki. The subsequent edits can be made by anybody and do not necessarily indicate authorship. <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 09:21, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Outcome: no change in recommending open identities for both authors and peer reviewers, but either/both may opt to be anonymous (with author names being displayed upon acceptance). Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 16:51, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

Update on the Affiliate-selected Board seats 2019 process
I am copying this update (below) that was posted at our other, generally unused, Talk page, as this information is somewhat important for our upcoming attention. --- FULBERT (discuss • contribs) 17:53, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

Update on the Affiliate-selected Board seats 2019 process
Hi all,

The Election Facilitators met on Friday, April 5. We finalized the resolution, which is now frozen. The Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation will be asked to approve the resolution.

We have made two small changes to be more inclusive. We extended the date for compliance with AffCom reporting and being in good standing to May 7 to allow time for as many Affiliates as possible to be current with these requirements. The Election Facilitators adjusted the language in case a quorum is not met during the election.

On the talk page of the resolution one issue was raised. The issue looks like to be about a possible candidate. Affiliates will have ample time to discuss the merits of candidates during nomination time, screening time, and they can cast their votes on candidates. The Election Facilitators didn't see the necessity for this change, and left the resolution on this point unchanged.

The Election Facilitators will be Abhinav Srivastava, Lane Rasberry, Jeffrey Keefer, Ad Huikeshoven, Neal McBurnett and Alessandro Marchetti. We will welcome more volunteers to assist us in this process, to reach out to the diversity in language and gender in our communities, and do so in an advisory role.

The nomination period opens on April 15. We are going to prepare nomination pages on Meta. You can expect a call for nominations. There is a draft call, including a candidates' profile section with non-binding guidelines about experience and characteristics for nominees. You are welcome to add your insights, or discuss on the talk page.

Erica Litrenta (WMF staff) supports us in this process. She will reach out to all affiliates through mail and other channels to make sure we are up to date with (user)name and contact details of your primary contact.

On behalf of the Election Facilitators, Ad Huikeshoven 10:52, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

-


 * As one of the Election Facilitators in the ASBS process this year, I will recuse myself from discussing nominees or anything specific with our user group's voting in this election.


 * However, as a member of this user group, I do want to ensure that we have these discussions.


 * To this point, I request that those who are our user group representatives to AffComm begin the discussion about how this will happen and how our user group membership will discuss this. Our User Group representatives should have already received emails about this process and notice about an informal Telegram group where User Group representatives are gathering to discuss how this may be done, as this will be a new experience for all of us. Thank you. --- FULBERT (discuss • contribs) 17:55, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

Update about the Affiliate-selected Board seats process 2019
Hello everyone!
 * The Resolution has been approved by the Board of Trustees;
 * Nominations phase is now open, from April 15 00:00 UTC to April 30 23:59 UTC. See the Call for Candidates and Nominations pages;
 * Community members may ask questions of the candidates;
 * Your main representative has just received an email to confirm that they are indeed the primary contact and will perform official actions on behalf of your group (such as endorsing candidates and then voting). Some groups also need to verify their eligibility status in due time, as explained in the email;
 * New content is available to spread awareness around the process - the infographic on this page has clickable links and can be translated, and a primer is available, that we hope will be particularly helpful to those new to such a process;
 * Finally, you are welcome to help with translations! Pick one page from the ASBS category and, in the next couple of weeks, please consider translating profiles of the candidates in particular.

Thanks for your attention! The Facilitators for ASBS 2019, 07:33, 15 April 2019 (UTC)


 * I tweaked the coding on the list delivery for the ASBS process, so we should no longer miss any of these. This was the first one since then, so are getting these as expected. Now the real work begins! --- FULBERT (discuss • contribs) 15:21, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

Who is our AffCom Rep and Who is voting for us in the ASBS elections?
I am a bit confused over who our AffCom Rep is and who is our delegated voter in the ASBS elections, given our User Group has a vote both in nominations and in the election itself. Is this accurate as listed on the Affiliate-selected Board seats/2019/Eligible entities page? Pinging Mikael_Häggström and Evolution_and_evolvability and User:Elitre_(WMF) for clarification. For full disclosure, I am asking as a member of this User Group, and as an Election Facilitator in the ASBS process, I cannot vote in it. However, I want to make sure this is clear and our members are aware of it. --- FULBERT (discuss • contribs) 20:43, 28 April 2019 (UTC)


 * Thank you, FULBERT, for keeping the group updated through these posts! I am registered as the spokesperson in this process, but I don't see any name mentioned from our group yet, so unless anyone want to nominate anyone within the next day, I will make no nomination from our group. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 04:14, 29 April 2019 (UTC)


 * Since the User Group gets to endorse two nominees to go through the the final voting stage (though that doesn't lock us into casting our final vote for them), my preferences would be for: Kayode Yussuf and Douglas Scott. I spoke to Kayode Yussuf at the Berlin 2019 summit, and I think his perspective is well thought-through and his experience with Creative Commons would be useful. I think Douglas Scott's work with The Safety Lab is also nicely in-line with promoting online community health over the coming years. They both would be good representatives of the Global South. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 05:46, 29 April 2019 (UTC)


 * Note: Another board member noted on the mailing list that they also recommend Douglas Scott. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 15:58, 29 April 2019 (UTC)


 * Thanks, I've now added endorsements at:
 * Affiliate-selected Board seats/2019/Nominations/Kayode Yussuf
 * Affiliate-selected Board seats/2019/Nominations/Douglas Scott
 * Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 15:35, 30 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Small update: They have now been moved to the talk pages of those pages. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 20:53, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

Affiliate-selected Board seats 2019 process: your representative
. The name of the only person who will vote on behalf of this group to select the next two Board members is now at m:Affiliate-selected Board seats/2019/Eligible entities. Please contact me directly as soon as possible if you need any kind of corrections there. There's only a few hours left to endorse candidates, and only the official voter can do that. I would also like to take this opportunity to remind you that you can make a difference with the necessary translations.

Appreciate your attention and your support so far! Elitre (WMF) and Facilitators of ASBS 2019, 12:15, 29 April 2019 (UTC)


 * Thank you Elitre (WMF). I made endorsements as mentioned in previous section. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 20:54, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

Board of trustees nominees questions page
The nominees are beginning to answer the questions laid out for them at this page:
 * Affiliate-selected_Board_seats/2019/Questions

They should all have their answers posted by the 8th of May and the final voting deadline will be on the 31st of May. I propose that we discuss them over the month and tally up support for the candidates so that Mikael can cast the consensus vote of this user group on the 31st. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 11:31, 5 May 2019 (UTC)


 * Almost all candidates have now finished making their statements and answers to questions at this page. Since the voting deadline is 31 May 2019, I think we should dicuss who (if any) the WikiJournal User Group would support so that our nominated voter (Mikael Haggstrom) can cast the vote. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 13:03, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

Discussion & votes
Hi there. I have just seen the email and thought I'd launch the discussion on the new members to join the board of trustees. The WikiJournal User Group should support candidates who are committed to advancing the group mission and core pillars. Having read the candidates' statements, I believe the candidates to be considered are: From the Q&A with candidates, I'd recommend reading answers to: How do we deliver the improved accountability and transparency expected by our editing community. I hope you are enjoying a great Sunday. Cheers from São Paulo, Brazil. --Joalpe (discuss • contribs) 13:33, 26 May 2019 (UTC)
 * strong to Shani Evenstein, for her involvement in free knowledge from an academic perspective and her strong stand for transparency and accountability in decision-making. She is the chair of the UG Wikipedia & Education, with which the WikiJournal User Group shares a direct affinity.
 * to Richard Knipel, for his involvement in free knowledge from an academic perspective. It is worth emphasizing he is a member of the Wiki Education Foundation.
 * to Taweetham Limpanuparb, for his involvement in free knowledge from an academic perspective

There are a number of excellent candidates with interesting experience and ideas (including Taweetham Limpanuparb, Kayode Yussuf). However overall, my support goes to: T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 04:44, 29 May 2019 (UTC)
 * to Shani Evenstein - I particularly liked her analysis of the major disrupting factors and risks that will likely affect the WMF, and it's future role.


 * Thank you for the input. I have now submitted our support to Shani Evenstein as per above. I was also able to submit votes of lesser rank to other candidates, so I also entered the others mentioned. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 21:54, 30 May 2019 (UTC)

New Affiliations Committee appointments
AffCom is excited to share with you the news that the Wikimedia Foundation Board has unanimously approved the changes to the Bylaws during the last Board meeting on January 30, 2019.

This change allows the participation of User Groups in the Affiliate-selected Board seats (ASBS) 2019 process.

To read the Board's announcement, please click here

--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:45, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

Help us make Wikipedia talk pages more accessible to more participants
Hello!

Our team at the Wikimedia Foundation is working on a project to improve the ease-of-use and productivity of wiki talk pages. As an affiliate, I can imagine you’ve run into challenges explaining talk pages to first-time participants, or it is an consultation that would interest your members.

We want all contributors to be able to talk to each other on the wikis – to ask questions, to resolve differences, to organize projects and to make decisions. Communication is essential for the depth and quality of our content, and the health of our communities.

We're currently leading a global consultation on how to improve talk pages, and we're looking for groups that can discuss and report on their experiences using (or helping other people to use) wiki talk pages. We'd like to invite you to participate, with the user groups that you belong to. You can learn more about the consultation at Mediawiki.org and if you're interested in hosting a group discussion (on-wiki or off-wiki), you can sign up at the participant sign-up group.

If you’d like to participate or if you have any questions, please contact us and let us know. The more people participate from many horizons, the better the outcome will be.

Thank you! Trizek (WMF) 15:29, 8 March 2019 (UTC)

Call for complementary facilitators and more to get the ASBS 2019 process started!


Hi everyone, hope all is fine with you!

The next weeks will be intense, as affiliates figure out their participation in the process that will soon select 2 people for the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. Since new Bylaws established that the user groups are for the first time going to be involved in such process, a lot more support than before is certainly going to be necessary, among other things, for big and healthy conversations on the topic. Hence, please encourage members of your group to become a complementary facilitator, or sign up yourself! You can add yourself to the list on Meta or reply to me to flag availability. One person from the facilitators group should soon be selected to liaise with the Foundation Board’s Chair, María Sefidari, on behalf of all affiliates, and it may be wise to also find a deputy for them.

Finally, if you can think of any huge obstacles that would prevent your group from participating to the process (for instance, a language barrier, or lack of good decision-making mechanisms, etc.), please reach out to me directly: it is really important that we hear about them as early as possible. Thank you! Elitre (WMF) 15:23, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

Update on the Affiliate-selected Board seats 2019 process
Hi all,

The Election Facilitators met on Friday, April 5. We finalized the resolution, which is now frozen. The Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation will be asked to approve the resolution.

We have made two small changes to be more inclusive. We extended the date for compliance with AffCom reporting and being in good standing to May 7 to allow time for as many Affiliates as possible to be current with these requirements. The Election Facilitators adjusted the language in case a quorum is not met during the election.

On the talk page of the resolution one issue was raised. The issue looks like to be about a possible candidate. Affiliates will have ample time to discuss the merits of candidates during nomination time, screening time, and they can cast their votes on candidates. The Election Facilitators didn't see the necessity for this change, and left the resolution on this point unchanged.

The Election Facilitators will be Abhinav Srivastava, Lane Rasberry, Jeffrey Keefer, Ad Huikeshoven, Neal McBurnett and Alessandro Marchetti. We will welcome more volunteers to assist us in this process, to reach out to the diversity in language and gender in our communities, and do so in an advisory role.

The nomination period opens on April 15. We are going to prepare nomination pages on Meta. You can expect a call for nominations. There is a draft call, including a candidates' profile section with non-binding guidelines about experience and characteristics for nominees. You are welcome to add your insights, or discuss on the talk page.

Erica Litrenta (WMF staff) supports us in this process. She will reach out to all affiliates through mail and other channels to make sure we are up to date with (user)name and contact details of your primary contact.

On behalf of the Election Facilitators, Ad Huikeshoven 10:52, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

Update about the Affiliate-selected Board seats process 2019
Hello everyone!
 * The Resolution has been approved by the Board of Trustees;
 * Nominations phase is now open, from April 15 00:00 UTC to April 30 23:59 UTC. See the Call for Candidates and Nominations pages;
 * Community members may ask questions of the candidates;
 * Your main representative has just received an email to confirm that they are indeed the primary contact and will perform official actions on behalf of your group (such as endorsing candidates and then voting). Some groups also need to verify their eligibility status in due time, as explained in the email;
 * New content is available to spread awareness around the process - the infographic on this page has clickable links and can be translated, and a primer is available, that we hope will be particularly helpful to those new to such a process;
 * Finally, you are welcome to help with translations! Pick one page from the ASBS category and, in the next couple of weeks, please consider translating profiles of the candidates in particular.

Thanks for your attention! The Facilitators for ASBS 2019, 07:33, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

Affiliate-selected Board seats 2019 process: your representative
. The name of the only person who will vote on behalf of this group to select the next two Board members is now at m:Affiliate-selected Board seats/2019/Eligible entities. Please contact me directly as soon as possible if you need any kind of corrections there. There's only a few hours left to endorse candidates, and only the official voter can do that. I would also like to take this opportunity to remind you that you can make a difference with the necessary translations.

Appreciate your attention and your support so far! Elitre (WMF) and Facilitators of ASBS 2019, 12:15, 29 April 2019 (UTC)

Unified location to view all open editorial applications
There has been a problem for a little while that often new editorial board and associate editor applications are missed, leading to low vote tally, and delayed on-boarding. This is partly because applications were separated by journal and by editor type. To help address this: I'm hopeful that together these should help with the issue. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 12:12, 30 April 2019 (UTC)
 * 1) All open applications are now collected together here: Talk:WikiJournal_User_Group/Editors
 * 2) There is a plan to send out a monthly email listing the open applications

SHERPA/RoMEO
I've submitted to the details for the WikiJournal User Group as a publisher to SHERPA/RoMEO via the publisher submission form. I've also submitted the details for the individual journals via the journal submission form. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 12:52, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

Missing Talk / Discussion Page Posts
Our User group appears to be missing a number of recent communications from the WMF, and I recently spotted this as related to the ASBS process. With a few others, we seem to have tracked down the issue. . . the official Talk or Discussion page for our WikiJournal User Group is not here, but actually here. If you click the Show button there, then you may notice a number of communication items, including important issues related to the upcoming ASBS Board Election, that some of us may have otherwise missed.

Should we alert AffCom and any other powers that be that this page here should be where our automatic WMF posts should be delivered? --- FULBERT (discuss • contribs) 17:45, 6 April 2019 (UTC)


 * Thanks for noticing this, FULBERT. I have received important updates directly by email from the Affiliations Committee (which I however haven't really been dealing with in a timely manner recently), but nevertheless I have now sent an email to them, asking to switch to this page for announcements etc. I'll also enlarge the note there stating that this is the main talk page. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 20:04, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

A new Code of Conduct for WikiJournals: Feedback invited
Although I suppose that this post should have come here from some WikiJournal board member, I assume that it has somehow been missed out. For WikiJournal User Group members who do not subscribe to or follow the email list, let me mention that vide this thread on the mailing list the following announcement has been made:
 * Hello to all those interested in WikiJournals,


 * In collaboration with the Wikimedia Foundation’s trust and safety team, a code of conduct has been drafted over the last few months. We have drawn inspiration from CoCs used in different Wikimedia areas and open projects (listed below the draft).


 * Draft code of conduct available here
 * WikiJournal User Group/Code of conduct/Draft


 * Everyone is welcome to provide suggestions on how to improve it: please join the discussion here
 * Talk:WikiJournal User Group/Code of conduct/Draft!


 * We aim to put the draft to a vote to implement on the 14th of May.
 * (Eligible voters = authors + reviewers + editorial boards + associate editors + members with >30 contribs to any WikiJournal space).


 * Sincerely,
 * Thomas Shafee

<b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 12:01, 4 May 2019 (UTC)


 * Thank you for re-posting the above note! I thought I'd posted on this page as the first location, but I must have failed to save. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 12:05, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Since a couple of people have emailed saying that they still intend to comment, I think it is sensible to delay voting until the the start of June to give time for feedback and implementation of changes. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 04:11, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

Invest in Open Infrastructure project
Is everyone aware of this: https://investinopen.org/docs/statement0.2 --Leighblackall (discuss • contribs) 01:02, 20 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Very interesting. I'd not come across this particular group. I did go to a talk on the topic from an Austrlaian perspective (summarised here), so it's good to see how widespread the ideas are. If people agree, there are two small ways we can get involved:
 * Sign a support petition as as the journal user group
 * Fill in a census of current infrastructure for what the user group provides (questions)
 * I can also email them to make sure they're more broadly informed of what we're doing here. My position is I think it would be worth doing all of the above, since its aims align with ours and it also ensures that they are aware of our work here. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 02:32, 20 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Good to see. Please do. I think it needs to be linked up. For what it's worth, they are using a web based annotation extension called Hypothesis. I added an annotation linking them to the Wikiversity Journals Group page. Leighblackall (discuss • contribs) 05:38, 20 May 2019 (UTC)


 * I see no disadvantages to supporting this and many advantages; it looks like a very measured project which realised that OA costs money and someone must invest. Roger Rwatson1955 (discuss • contribs) 05:49, 20 May 2019 (UTC)


 * I also notice that Wikipedia Library is a supporter (via ). T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 11:56, 23 May 2019 (UTC)


 * I've now signed the User Group up as a supporter of the project. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 03:54, 29 May 2019 (UTC)

Bylaws review by AffCom part 2
Following on from discussion here, the Affiliations Committee has suggested two further changes to the bylaws necessary for becoming a thematic organisation: Please take a look at the proposed changes to the two sets of bylaws: T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 12:49, 26 May 2019 (UTC)
 * 1) Bylaw changes should be by a majority of votes by all members (not just editorial board members). This ensures that votes involve widest relevant membership wherever possible, and avoids e.g. a board changing bylaws to remove elections.
 * 2) Introduce a quorum. I've suggested 10 members or 20% of the editorial boards (whichever is lower).
 * WikiJournal User Group Bylaws
 * Individual WikiJournal bylaws
 * Discussion & voting
 * as proposer. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 23:57, 30 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Sensible. AugusteBlanqui (discuss • contribs) 21:27, 31 May 2019 (UTC)
 * with respect to the 14 day voting period, the Johnson C. Philip application had only apparently five eligible votes after four months (technically only five voting days that had one eligible voter on each day). Is it being suggested that if a candidate does not garner sufficient votes by 14 contiguous days their candidacy should be considered closed due to insufficient support? If so, should we state so? --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 15:58, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes, maybe some flexibility like "if quorum is not reached, the deadline can be extended or the vote closed by editor discretion" so that editors can use their judgement as to wheter more time would make a difference? T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 00:34, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
 * if flexibility per above suggestion is included! We might want to add that the EiC can change or amend the editor's decision should they want to. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 13:43, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
 * . First of all, I'm sorry for not having forwarded the follow-up concerns from AffCom in a timely manner. On the other hand, now that I get to look into the matter, I am happy with the proposed updates by Thomas. As per the comment above regarding what to do if quorum is not reached, I have now added that the decision may be extended in such cases. I hope a lack of quorum will not be a recurring problem, but if it does, then perhaps removing inactive members would need to be considered.
 * I have also made some rewording, which however should not affect the meaning significantly ( and ). As such, I support the update, but I think we will need at least 5 more days for everyone to have a chance to see the updated version. I'm also pinging you who have previously given your support, just to make sure you also agree with the changes: T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo), AugusteBlanqui and Marshallsumter. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 19:45, 10 June 2019 (UTC)


 * Jackiekoerner (discuss • contribs) 04:21, 11 June 2019 (UTC)
 * This seems reasonable given overall Wiki intentions. --- FULBERT (discuss • contribs) 12:14, 11 June 2019 (UTC)
 * --Saguaromelee (discuss • contribs) 15:14, 11 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Jacknunn (discuss • contribs) 02:23, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
 * About this sentence : "Associate editors must have talents, experience, and competencies that will best fulfill the requirements for organising peer reviews for within their field of expertise.". Is that possible to point the fact than talents, experience and competencies can be justified by any kind of informations and not only diploma or statuary post ? It could be for instance, volunteer activities on association or wikimedia project for instance. Lionel Scheepmans ✉ Contact (French native speaker) 17:20, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

Outcome: Bylaws updated. And to answer the last comment, talents, experience and competencies can indeed be counted as activities beyond those that give diplomas, certificates etc. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 04:22, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

Support for this usergroup to seek funding from the Wikimedia Foundation
If there is community will to develop the WikiJournal into a sister project then I would like to see a Wikimedia Foundation funding allocation to advance the idea. I am imagining that some money on the scale of US$100,000 - 1,000,000 should be allocated to develop this over 1-3 years. Since this is a professional-facing project it needs some professional infrastructure which we cannot reasonably crowdsource. This infrastructure includes establishing some partnerships with libraries and catalogs for journal indexing, building out some legal infrastructure, sorting out some translation for multilingual support, getting some consulting where we need expert comment which wiki conversion could not produce, staffing a community manager to administer a to-do list to amplify volunteer effectiveness, and creating a pool of travel funding for various participants to attend relevant publishing conferences in person to shop the idea around and report back with comments.

The sooner that this group makes any grant request to the Wikimedia Foundation through the grants process, the sooner that the group can evaluate its fitness to manage and apply for larger grants. I recommend applying for a $2000 rapid grant immediately to fund the creation of infrastructure and rehearse the accounting process the group has. After that, apply for 10k, then 50k, because the funding is around and it will save a lot of resources to use money rather than spend community labor and expertise on the things which are better resolved with small amounts of cash.

I especially favor using money to make this project more accessible globally. A journal in wiki is going to have several unusual advantages over any other, with one of those being able to readily tap into a multilingual global community base. From the foundation I think it would be wise to use money to facilitate multicultural participation.  Blue Rasberry  (talk)  14:20, 2 June 2019 (UTC)


 * I completely agree with the upscaling. We've so far been cautious to gauge community opinion (via the proposal on meta) on becoming a full sister project before approaching the WMF board. However now that the grant application for 2019 is accepted we can start thinking about what the next funding steps should be after the community feedback is in. There will be plenty to work out for such large grant applications, but there's definitely a huge wish-list for WikiJournals of both technical/infrastructure items that will be useful as well as advocacy, promotion and other support. We have several people involved with experience in large grant management, but we'll definitely also need experienced wikimedians to give advice and assistance. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 05:54, 9 June 2019 (UTC)


 * I agree too with this upscaling. I have emailed the Affiliations Committee if they can consider a sister project application and whether we need to address additional issues at this time. I've just gotten the grant for this year approved, and I have still lots of emails to go through before being able to formulate such a new grant applications within the very near future, but I'll gladly have a look if someone else can write it. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 11:58, 21 June 2019 (UTC)


 * For reference, a draft wishlist of technical features is here. Items cover a wide range of difficulty and we'll have to decide on whether their implementation is better done by requesting developer time by the WMF or by writing a grant to hire a small dev team. Indeed, we may need advice from people experienced in putting together larger grants. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 11:58, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Sister project application
As part of ensuring that the current Wikimedia community is aware of the proposal for a WikiJournal platform as a new sister project, I've notified a few locations: I've aimed to catch as broad a wikimedian audience as I can, but if I've missed anywhere please post. I only just realised I'd not posted here! T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 06:39, 9 June 2019 (UTC)
 * The general Wikimedia mailing list "Wikimedia-l" (thread)
 * The Wikipedia Weekly facebook group (thread)
 * Twitter (post)
 * The most relevant WikiProjects on English Wikipedia (example)
 * Wikipedia discussion pages like featured articles, good articles, the village pump, the library
 * The main discussion location of each current sister project (example)
 * The main Wikipedian newspapers:
 * The Signpost (article)
 * Der Kurier (article)
 * Regards sur l'actualité de la Wikimedia (article)
 * For The Signpost at English Wikipedia propose at en:Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Submissions when you have your draft. I will support.  Blue Rasberry    (talk)   09:49, 9 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Article in The Signpost now published along with shorter notes in Der Kurier and Regards sur l'actualité de la Wikimedia. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 01:51, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
 * As an additional route for informing the English Wikipedia community, I've suggested a 1-week Watchlist-message (wording discussion). T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 02:00, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Notice now posted on both w:MediaWiki_talk:Watchlist-messages and wikidata:MediaWiki:Watchlist-summary. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 23:49, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

Surface tension is no longer a Good Article
The Wikipedia article on Surface tension, which had been submitted to the WikiJournal of Science, severely criticized by the reviewers, and not improved by the authors, has lost its GA status as a result.

I think this shows that Wikipedians can take WikiJournals seriously. Of course it would be even better if they would use the reviews for improving the article. Sylvain Ribault (discuss • contribs) 21:27, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
 * I agree with this as a process. If the peer reviewers identify such significant errors in the article it is important for the wp community to know. I think that the initial note in September 2018 was easy to miss, so nominating for 'good article reassessment' seems reasonable. The wp community can then check whether they agree and add tags to the page if appropriate. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 04:22, 20 June 2019 (UTC)


 * Clarification: as far as I understand nobody from WJS removed the GA status or initiated the GA reassessment. It was done by an independent Wikipedian, who saw our notice and acted on it. I am not advocating doing this ourselves. Sylvain Ribault (discuss • contribs) 07:30, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

Introducing Wikimedia Space: A platform for movement news and organizations
Hi , I’m writing to let you know that the Community Engagement department at the Wikimedia Foundation is launching a new platform, Wikimedia Space. Here, you will find stories for and by contributors to the Wikimedia movement, and a space for discussions of different topics. We know that finding information about Wikimedia activities and processes is very complicated, which makes the learning curve to enter our movement and be successful afterwards, really steep. By centralizing community stories and conversations in one shared space, we believe we are facilitating access and discoverability of topics across the movement, improving, in turn, connections among Wikimedians. As an affiliated organization to the Wikimedia Foundation, we hope that you can share this platform with your local community, and we count on you to encourage them to add their voices. If you’d like to contribute stories, and overall, participate in the discussion section, please read our blogging guidelines and our code of conduct and join the conversation. Find more information about the project on its page on Meta. Looking forward to seeing you at Wikimedia Space, María Cruz, Communications and Outreach Manager, Wikimedia Foundation. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:53, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

to. Alternatively, it's also possible for a wikiversity admin to Special:Import a page from Wikipedia so we could set up a location where ppl could just adding their username and wikipedia article to a list that is watched by a few of the WikiJournal editors with 'custodian' rights. Step-by step submission instructions for Wikipedia articles should def be added to the w:Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine/WikiJournal page too. I'll help with some further updates over the next week. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 12:01, 22 October 2018 (UTC)
 * References


 * I've written what I hope is a clear and concise set of instructions for Wikipedians wishing to submit existing Wikipedia articles.
 * Updated the embassy page on Wikipedia to make submission by Wikipedians easier (will need pagewatchers)
 * how to import an existing Wikipedia article in the Editorial Guidelines
 * mentioned embassy page on the w:Template:WJS_invitation_2018 page that Sylvain made
 * Any ideas/inputs welcome (especially by experienced Wikipedians). T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 03:09, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks Thomas for your efforts. This was needed. I will see what I can do to contribute. <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 10:16, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
 * "Articles that pass peer review are also have a stable, citable..." — should "are" be here?
 * " you assert that you: The article is of a high standard" — you the article?  :-)   Boris Tsirelson (discuss • contribs) 04:43, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks! I've fixed both errors now. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 22:55, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

Nominating Wikipedia articles for WikiJournal
I misunderstood the requirements and have already nominated a few prospective submissions at Wikipedia:WikiJournal article nominations. There is a difference between nomination and submission. I think that anybody should be able to propose articles for the purpose. In that case they would have to take the responsibility of communicating with the authors who have contributed significantly to the article. If the respective author(s) agree, the highest contributor can act as the corresponding and first author. If that is not the case, the eager author can choose to be the corresponding author.

If the above is agreed upon, w:Template:WikiJournal header needs to be suitably updated. The current page assumed nomination and submission to be equivalent. Thomas, please do the needful. <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 13:24, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
 * I think it is best to suggest an article by adding a journal-specific version of WJS_invitation_2018 template to its talkpage. However I think we should avoid organising peer review for articles where the authors have not committed to addressing the reviewer comments. I'd certainly support if either or  wished to submit one of their articles! Perhaps starting with one or two to begin with. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 23:17, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
 * has consented to take up Dyslexia, West African Ebola virus epidemic and Hepatitis E for submission to Wiki.J.Med. Let me work with them and see how we can take it ahead. <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 04:23, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
 * The current process of nomination practically equates to submission. The process have not generated a single submission so far (except for the submissions subsequently authored by some board member) till I tweaked the process and three submissions followed. In fact another author has privately contacted me about the submission of another article that I had proposed. However, by that time, the entire list has been removed vide this edit without even adding them to newly added archival page. I do not see why it was necessary or where the intermediate listing of prospective articles should be done. I would propose on altering the process. <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 12:57, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
 * My step of searching out prospective Wikipedia articles and considering them for submission to WikiJournals (Wiki.J.Med as of now) has yielded three submissions and I am enthusiastic that more would come out of it. However, the editorial board members are reluctant to even keep the list in place. There needs to be a place to process such a list. I have created w:User:Diptanshu Das/WikiJournal article nominations wherein I will proceed with the same. I would invite all others to feel freeto contribute to the page. <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 18:20, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
 * I think it's a good idea to keep the w:Wikipedia:WikiJournal article nominations page to have just the ones to be imported and to have peer review organisation begun othersise it would quickly get unmanageable. If you make a medicine equivalent of w:Template:WJS_invitation_2018 to place on talkpages, those articles can be easily tracked (see this example list). The editorial boards also maintain a hitlist of high quality Wikipedia articles to invite for submission, and absent/stub/start articles to invite non-wikipedian experts to write articles on. I've also started updating w:WP:W2J and w:WP:J2W to better reflect what is currently going on (the previous pages were about out of date). T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 11:19, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
 * I have created w:Category:WikiJournal to consolidate the relevant pages on Wikipedia. Since the editorial boards also have their own list of prospective articles for consideration of review through the WikiJournals, I invite them to add them to List of prospective Wikipedia articles for review through WikiJournals for intermediary processing. Subsequently I intend table the list with check-marks to be inserted for every stage of processing (say, leaving message on talk page of authors, corresponding author identified, and so on). <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 07:06, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Location of reviews for Wikipedia articles being reviewed through WikiJournal
I would propose that instead of importing a particular version of the given article to WikiJournal Preprints, the entire process be carried out on Wikipedia, and only the final version be imported to WikiJournal Preprints and subjected to editorial judgment. In other words, I propose that the review suggestions be placed on the talk page of the given article and the updates be placed accordingly. The details of the review process can therafter be suitably copied to the talk page of the WikiJournal article on Wikiversity. <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 13:04, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
 * If that is agreed upon, the requisite templates would need to be adapted for the Wikipedia articles or talk pages. <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 13:06, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
 * I support the preference of having authors edit Wikipedia, and even having the peer review of such Wikipedia content, before copying to a WikiJournal page. In such cases, we don't need to redo the Wikipedia edits after article acceptance. I've added this as at least an alternative at the bottom of WikiJournal_User_Group/Publishing. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 20:24, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Authorship of Wikipedia articles for WikiJournal
It needs to be decided about the format of authorship of Wikipedia articles that are reviewed through WikiJournals. I am referring to the authorship metadata in international journal format (for eg. as listed on pubmed). As I understand, it consists of two fields viz. last name and first name. In such a case how do we intend to fit a link for the et al list of authors? Perhaps we need to give it a thought. <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 17:19, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Have you given it a thought as to how the contributors in et al are to be credited for their contributions to Wikipedia articles that are reviewed through WikiJournals? One option could be to put the link in the 'last' field but I do not think that to be appropriate. <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 19:00, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

WikiJournal twitter accounts
Below are summarised recent suggestions by Diptanshu Das sent to the wikijournal-en mailing list: Copied from mailing list by T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 11:43, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
 * WikiJMed twitter should promote the recent WikiJournal interview
 * WikiJournal twitter accounts should consider applying for verified status via @verification to improve credibility


 * Since only a small number of members from each journal control each social media account (twitter and facebook). I have made a test form that could be used for people (including article authors) to suggest possible social media posts. It would have to be monitored by those in charge of each journal's social media profile.
 * https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd7UOiidYOAzkBfAVBe8eWwE5mbmvRF6wR3NDfTgnj0dDdBFQ/viewform
 * I don`t know enough about twitter verification to know whether it is worth the effort at this stage. Others with more twitter knowledge will have to make the call on this one. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 11:51, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Currently the verification process is closed till they develop their systems further. I would urge you to be on the lookout in case a future scope arises. <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 19:22, 21 October 2018 (UTC)

Facebook verification
The facebook pages for the respective WikiJournals can still get the verified badge. I would request you to apply for the same. <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 18:37, 21 October 2018 (UTC)


 * Did anybody have a look? It should be rather easy to obtain and would hardly take up any resources. <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 10:18, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

Twitter handles to follow
I propose that the following twitter accounts be followed by each of the WikiJournal twitter accounts: Free Journal Network @freejournalnet, DOAJ @DOAJplus, Open Science @openscience, Open Access Tracking Project @oatp, Unpaywall @unpaywall ‏TheWikipediaLibrary @WikiLibrary, WikiResearch @WikiResearch, SHARE @SHARE_research, ScienceOpen @Science_Open, ScholarlyHub @ScholarlyHub, Scholarly Commons @in4open, Scholarly Commons @ScholrlyCommons, PLOS Blogs @PLOSBlogs, OpenTrials @opentrials, Open Culture @openculture, OpenCon @open_con, Open Access Network @OA_Network, OA Directory @OADirectory, Liberate Science @libscie. You can check the pages each of these pages follow and act further.

Other followable ones could be Wiki Project Med @WikiProjectMed, PLOS Medicine @PLOSMedicine, Search Engine BASE @BASEsearch, Sci Hub @Sci_Hub, Right to Research @R2RC, PubMed Commons @PubMedCommons, Publons @Publons, Altmetric @altmetric.

Sometimes relevant tweets from these accounts can be re-tweeted. Sometimes you can direct one or more of these in tweets that we make. This will enable the followers of those respective twitter handles be able to view the concerned tweet that we made. A list of hashtags like #openaccess can be added wherever relevant. Such an action will make our tweet show up whenever users search for that particular hashtag. <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 19:14, 21 October 2018 (UTC)

Rationale of removal from facebook admin
Till a few days back I was an admin of the facebook profile of Wiki.J.Med. I was removed from the adminship on November 1, 2018, 7:14pm (IST) without any communication from EiCs or from the boards of the WikiJournals. Since I am no longer on the board of Wiki.J.Med, I am ok with it. However, I do have certain issues with the way it has been effected.
 * I feel that it is a common courtesy to at least inform the user of such a development, if not to discuss with them. I see that common courtesy lacking. I think that the EiCs need to ensure that such an act of common courtesy with respect to any participant does not get ignored. I hope that they would admit that exhibiting respect is very important.
 * Since I am no longer on the board of Wiki.J.Med it should be ok not to keep me on the adminship any longer but since that did not happen alongside my removal from the board (the scope of that vote did not extend to adminship of facebook profile), I assume that the recent removal should either have been on the basis of a recent consensus from the boards or due to some definite disruptive action from my side. I am keen to know what exactly happened.
 * As far as I understand, my last action of posting this on the facebook profile of Wiki.J.Med was more constructive than destructive. In fact, it was making a significant impact that the combined actions of the three boards could not make. As of 19 October 2018 it had reached 1928 people, had 44 engagements and 108 clicks. This was in sharp contrast to that post reaching 16 people, had 0 engagements and 2 clicks, on the same day. Yet, my act was met with criticism. I assume that my private inputs to the EiCs (truncated below) or the ones publicly placed (as above) were far from disruptive. I may be wrong, but in a collaborative project like this, it perhaps makes more sense to make use of interested and competent contributors rather than to remove them. I am keen to learn the rationale of the EiCs or the editorial boards. <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 19:05, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Dr. Diptanshu Das Fri 19 Oct, 23:01 to Mikael, Thomas, FRANCES

Dear Mikael and others

I have not formally apologised for posting on the social profile of WikiJMed without prior discussion with the board. Furthermore, I later observed that my post was actually a duplicate of a former one (by Thomas) which somehow I had missed while making the post. Nevertheless, if you look at the outreach statistics for each of the two posts (see the screenshots below), there is a striking contrast between mine and that of Thomas. The purpose of this email is to convey that posting on the social profile is not enough. A strategic effort needs to go into it. As a first step I had shared it with the Wikipedian, Wikimedian and Open Access groups that I am a part of. The next step would have been to research into the overlapping scope of other groups that I am not a member of, and to share there after joining. The subsequent step would have been to research into the academic groups where such a thing would have been contexual, to join them and to share there. I would have done that but by then JK and others started having issues (something I have considered as discrimination, driven by ego, and not originating from sincere thoughts for the well-being of the wikijournals) and I stopped going ahead with it. In fact I had requested for the post to be boosted (check my email) but no such thing was done.

I would request the EiCs to take the pains of executing the steps that otherwise I myself would have taken, and also to boost the post. Also take a note that disruptive and authoritarian steps by certain members of the boards is acting in a direction contrary to the best interests of the journals and letting them go uninhibited is perhaps reinforcing their actions.

Regards Diptanshu

Dr. Diptanshu Das <das.diptanshu@gmail.com> Sat 20 Oct, 00:08 to Mikael, Thomas, Frances, Gwinyai, wijoumed

Dear EiCs

Perhaps you could consider using the social media profiles (Fb and Twitter) to post materials like https://phys.org/news/2018-10-bose-einstein-condensate-space.html (seemingly unrelated but interesting news nevertheless) and then adding something like 'if have an interesting academic finding that you would like to publish, consider publishing in WikiJournals as they are free for you to publish in, and free for the reader as well'... something of that sort. I am thinking out loud. Fine tuning of the idea is needed.

Please note that just posting from the social handle would not be enough. They need to be clubbed with appropriate hashtags which match the interests of our target audience, be directed to suitable twitter handles, or need to be shared to groups who might be prospective authors, readers or contributors of some sort. This needs to be done efficiently, contextually and meaningfully such that it does not resemble spamming.

Specific strategic thinking would be needed prior to that. Target groups need to be identified. A taskforce of interested contributors need to be formed who would join the social groups of certain types and periodically post or share there. One person is not enough. Contributors need not be board members but till now the utilization of non-board members by WikiJournals has been rather poor. Plans to boost specific posts needs to follow but sharing strategically has much greater implication.

This email may be shared with the boards if the EiCs feel. Nevertheless, not sure how productive board members would be in the matter.

Regards Diptanshu

Hi All, I think Diptanshu has brought up a great point. It seems as though we don’t have any sort of protocol or process to follow when someone is removed from the Board. Perhaps we should discuss that just in case another removal comes to pass. I will open another discussion below. Best, Jackiekoerner (discuss • contribs) 18:11, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
 * there is something known as 'serendipity' where something fruitful comes out of something otherwise unintended. As per my understanding we treasure serendipitous developments. Not removing my social media admin access was something inadvertent but when some previously unachieved development emerged from it, it perhaps makes more sense to preserve and develop on such a serendipitous development rather than shunning it just because it was not a part of the original plan. I feel protocols are good but insightfulness is something far more valuable. Don't you agree with me? <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 09:10, 2 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I thought that you would reply. Do you find my points valid? <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 05:24, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

Strategy session for the boards
In the context of my proposal above, I would insist on:
 * periodic strategy sessions for the boards.
 * The strategy sessions are to be held transparently through online discussion fora and do not require the board members to meet.
 * If held through online video collaboration like google hangouts (only after the initial work-up), a record for the same needs to be maintained using items like youtube rendition of the same and/or etherpad listing of the same.
 * Define a particular periodicity for strategy sessions between board members of the respective groups, and thereafter in unision. I propose an annual periodicity.
 * Define specific timelines for the strategy sessions. I propose January or December. As per previous indication August is possibly the best time for this. A vote for the month of choice can be done with each person putting one mark for each month they feel they can get involved in (max 12 marks per member). The month with highest number of votes would be selected for upcoming sessions.
 * Typically this strategy session should precede a budget allocation/application for grant since the latter needs to be based on the former.
 * If the timeline of a strategy session is defined in advance, the members can gather their thoughts and make a submission (in transparent manner) prior to the actual session of brainstorming.
 * The purpose of the strategy sessions is to clearly delineate strategy/ies to be executed in order to realise the mission of WikiJournals.
 * Let me add that the mission of WikiJournal is to publish scholarly works with no cost for the authors, apply quality checks on submissions by expert peer review, and make accepted works available on the Internet free of charge, in perpetuity.

Kindly note: Mission is a general statement of how you will achieve the vision. Strategies are a series of ways of using the mission to achieve the vision. Goals are statements of what needs to be accomplished to implement the strategy. Objectives are specific actions and timelines for achieving the goal.

A demo goal statement for WikiJMed could be:
 * Get indexed in Pubmed

The corresponding objective would be:
 * Get 40 submissions at least

The strategy for the same needs to be defined. That is the purpose of the strategy sessions. I have already communicated a very basic version of social media strategy for the same in a separate email to the EiCs. The rest is supposed to occur at the strategy sessions I propose. <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 11:04, 20 October 2018 (UTC)


 * This is to add that my proposal is similar to the manner by which Wikimedia board of trustees convene. This is in conjunction with the existing method by which the boards of various WikiJournals interact. <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 15:00, 25 November 2018 (UTC)


 * I congratulate T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo) and other members for the first meeting held in the direction I had pointed. I believe that with time their productivity would increase even further. <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 15:58, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

Conflict of Interest Policy
, Could you have a look at the following links and see if our Conflict of Interest Policy can be updated. <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 16:49, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
 * https://www.jwatch.org/about/conflict-of-interest-policy
 * https://www.nature.com/authors/policies/competing.html
 * https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/authors/authors_faqs/conflicts_of_interest

Code of Conduct

 * This discussion refers to this draft guideline: Code of conduct draft

I have proposed Code of conduct document to serve as an add-on to the existing Bylaws and the ethics statement of WikiJournals. This because the existing documents do not adequately address the issues concerning a well defined Code of Conduct of Editorial board members although that of other participants like authors and peer-reviewers has been adequately addressed. The proposed document has been developed by me in accordance to the requirements as stated by COPE and is also mandated by the ICMJE and WikiJournals abide by both. The document has been partially derived from this and this document of the Wikimedia Foundation. The document may be freely discussed here, modified and accepted by the existing board members. Unless opposed significantly, this document should automatically implemented in 10 days from the date of proposal. The periodicity of revision of the existing documents and processes needs to be decided upon. After implementation the Editorial board members would need act in accordance to the stated Code of Conduct. The scope of the document can be extended to the Associate editors as well but as of now the WikiJournals have not been able to make best use of them. If needed, that can be done as an amendment, but after a separate and independent discussion. <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 10:36, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

OhanaUnited too has stressed upon the significance of such a reform with regards to community safety. Subsequently a vote for consensus was opened for 10 days between 15 November 2018 and 25 November 2018.

By the end of stipulated period (the archived results including the form of discussion on that date) there were two votes, both in favour of implementation of the Code of Conduct. During this period T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo) and Mark independently reviewed the document and pointed out salient points in the document during this period. No objection or opposition was received during this period. However, T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo) subsequently felt (on 26 November 2018) that it reasonable to extend the discussion time to give people more time to comment given the significance of such a document if it gets ratified. Fresh voting may be re-opened by the EiCs (in case they feel required) after the document has been reviewed and the editing is completed. Portions of the discussion (that might not be very relevant at the moment) have been collapsed since the discussion was becoming excessively lengthy to browse through. The EiCs may feel free to subsequently collapse other segments once they think that the purpose of the respective segment has been dealt with. Responses by some users have been split into segments (when they contained multiple points bundled together) to ease discussion based on each of the components in concern. Users are requested to put in their responses parametrically (rather than grouping number of items together) so that each of these parameters can be discussed such that meaningful modifications can be made to the existing document for betterment. The other option of course is for somebody else to prepare an independent document from the scratch, if one is eager to volunteer for it. I doubt if the latter is a practical option though. <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 11:48, 16 December 2018 (UTC) updated <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 04:47, 17 December 2018 (UTC) de-collapsed/de-truncated <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 13:34, 23 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Summary of vote

As of now, considerations regarding the document can be grouped into two broad categories:
 * Whether any Code of Conduct needs to be defined and implemented
 * Salient updates that need to be made to the existing draft

- <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 05:18, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Why a Code of Conduct needs to be formulated - A personal perspective
 * WikiJournal is not only a community based effort, it involves formation of new communities. Wiki.J.Med established a culture and I have been a part of it in the past. Subsequently Wiki.J.Sci and Wiki.J.Hum have come up. Subsequently others like Wiki.J.Economics or may be Wiki.J.Politics would be coming up. The backgrounds are entirely different. So what are the commonalities we would like to retain or infuse into the newly formed communities, or do we let them take their own course irrespective of any guidelines? Would they even need to maintain the standards of an academic journals or would they be free to do whatever they wish? A Code of Conduct will help in laying down the guidelines about what is expected of a WikiJournal.
 * There is no authoritarian regime that will maintain standards. The varied backgrounds and thought processes of the members of independent communities are likely to vary significantly. Therefore a common ground needs to be defined so that people can work in unison and harmony. A code of conduct will help in forming a common set of guidelines for the same.
 * Over the last six months or so I have observed several irregularities on the part of multiple board members that I consider not to be up to the culture that can be expected to be prevalent in a WikiJournal community. Interestingly a number of them are not even aware that their behavior might need some fine tuning. So who will define what is acceptable and what is not? A 'Code of Conduct' can ensure that without implicating individuals in a fault-finding manner.

- <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 05:20, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Why you should get involved in fool-proofing the Code of Conduct?
 * If you consider yourself to be a part of the WikiJournal initiative (in whatever form), the onus of betterment of the culture lies upon you. If you do not help it improve there is no one on whom automatically the responsibility can be automatically implicated. Surely you can involve others, but in a community based initiative like this things are not supposed to happen on its own.
 * There has been no opposition to the requirement of a Code of conduct, either during the voting period or till date. So, it can be assumed that sooner or later a Code of conduct will be ratified, and that too is likely to happen in a finite time period. If you find something in the existing draft of Code of conduct, now is the time to discuss and sort it out, else what you find objectionable would become applicable to you unless you help in getting the appropriate changes made.
 * Ever edited Wikipedia? Have you seen somebody complain 'This article is too short', 'This article is too long', 'This article is unfocussed' etc.? If you think that the present state of the article concerns you, fix it, or involve others constructively to help the article get fixed. The same applies to the proposed Code of Conduct draft. If you find a gap, identify it, discuss it, work on it, fix it. Fault-finding would not help. Opposing will not help, raise the concern, discuss the problem by defining it in solvable terms, solve the problem meaningfully.
 * Like Wikipedia, anybody can edit the Code of conduct draft. So, if you find a scope to contribute, why would you not?

I request users to raise their concerns and to raise them in the the appropriate section so that further improvements to the existing draft can be made. <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 11:48, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Eligible voters

 * Eligible voters were (and would be if the voting reopens):
 * 1) Current Editorial Board Members and Associate Members.
 * 2) Authors who have submitted at least one article to any of the WikiJournals.
 * 3) Peer reviewers who have completed at least one peer review.
 * 4) Wikiverstity Editors with at least 30 edits to WikiJournal pages.

The EiCs may extend or modify the scope in case they feel any particular important segment to have been inadvertently included or excluded. During the period of next 10 days, the document will also open to discussion on each of the individual clauses and modification can be suggested. In case changes are suggested, the users would have the option to re-opine in order to finalize the consensus. <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 19:53, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
 * The window of participating in the voting process is on the verge of closure. Requesting the board members to feel free to oppose or support. More importantly, their involvement is needed in the context of the questions raised by Mark. <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 14:48, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

A note on electorate: Thejournal bylaws are amended by votes by the journal boards. I think it is reasonable that the same is the case for a code of conduct, which is an extension of the bylaws and ethics guidelines.T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 23:35, 25 November 2018 (UTC)


 * I think that voting is premature when the document is in such an early state and still being edited. Other documents have taken many months of work, and I would be keen to give time for more people to be involved before a final vote is held. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 10:43, 2 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Given the significance of such a document if it is ratified, I think it's reasonable to extend the discussion time to give people more time to comment (it took several months to write the ethics statement). T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 00:00, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

Inputs from Mikael
Diptanshu, I see you have put significant work into the draft, but it would need to be supported by at least a consensus among journal participants in order to become official. I'll need to evaluate the document a bit further before being able to form an opinion. To give me more time for this, would you be able to coordinate the peer reviewing of any of the new article submissions of WikiJMed? WikiJournal_of_Medicine/Potential_upcoming_articles. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 17:03, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
 * , please take your time to evaluate the document and make amends before you place it before the boards for consensus. But please set a dealine and act accordingly. In the meantime I would possibly add or modify a point or two. Do follow the history page.
 * I would possibly be available to take up coordination of peer reviews in or after December but not at the moment. Furthermore, in my present capacity I am not sure whether I hold the right credentials for the task. Since this is outside the scope of the ongoing discussion, perhaps we can discuss it elsewhere. <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 17:24, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Just an update. I have coordinated with a few prospective reviewers and one of them has already consented to review of one of the articles. Details have been emailed to you. I expect a few more positive responses soon. Will keep you updated. <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 16:53, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
 * , I understand that you are possibly busy, but please set a deadline for yourself and others. 8 days have already elapsed. In the meantime, the scope of the document now extends further. <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 10:22, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the help in finding peer reviewers. I will look over the current potential upcoming articles, and I can't say yet when I'll be able to make a proper review of this draft. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 15:18, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
 * , in case you are busy at the moment there is no reason to assume that are equally taken up. They can take up the task of reviewing the document. Such an important thing should not wait indefinitely. In case the other EiCs are taken up as well, the rest of the boards should be able to judge the document. In such a case, do you not think that we need to hear back from the other EiCs first and in case they are not in a position to dedicate time, the consensus should perhaps begin outright. They can crucially evaluate the document and discuss. They would also be free to oppose the enforcement of any 'Code of Conduct' and may express their willingness to remain free from all obligations., should the process be kept indefinitely waiting just because you are taken up at the moment? <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 13:08, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

Objection to re-structuring
For the record, I strongly object to w:User:Diptanshu Das shifting the different bits and pieces of the discussion around according to his own judgement. I fully believe that Diptanshu thought he was acting for the best, and trying to be constructive, but changing the context does amount to a change, and requires judgement calls that are not, in general, be the same as the judgement of the original author. As an example: While browsing the newly structured discussion, I found at least one comment that was originally a reply to another user, and has now been changed, by Diptanshu, to read like it was a reply by me to Diptanshu. It's an unreasonable imposition on editors to be required to check for context just because someone else has decided to, on their own, restructure the whole discussion, picking comments apart into small sections and arranging them to their own liking, and I call on Diptanshu to refrain from such presumptuous behavior in the future. You're not a talk-page-editor-in-chief, Diptanshu – please respect the contributions of others by leaving them as they were written, in the context they were written. On Wikipedia, this would be grounds for a ban under WP:TALKNO. Markus Pössel (discuss • contribs) 13:18, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Also, I note that a very general comment I wrote about the Code of Conduct being much too broad is now sequestered under the sub-point "stakeholders". This completely changes the context of what I was saying. I really have no time or inclination to go through all the different chopped-up bits of my original comment to see which ones are still in context, and which aren't, and am fairly annoyed that Diptanshu, through his actions, is now forcing me to put in that time. Let us please go back to the non-restructured version. In my view, proper procedure would be to leave the original discussion as is, start a new section for the newly structured discussion, and then, if deemed appropriate, set links to different bits of the original discussion. But not this context-insensitive chopping-up, please. Markus Pössel (discuss • contribs) 13:24, 16 December 2018 (UTC)


 * Dear Markus, you do not really need to summarily oppose the restructuring. I am sorry if I have inadvertently misrepresented your comments. I did take care to inform the original authors so that they can check if things are fine. If they are not, suitable corrective actions can be taken. You do accept that my edit was in good faith. I have never heard an editor get banned due to good faith edits. Furthermore, if misrepresentation was unintentional, I doubt if would have counted as a ground for ban. If you are doing this, perhaps you are adversely affecting contributions on Wikipedia. I would humbly urge you to modify your pieces so that they convey what you meant. I am sorry that you might need to put some extra effort in the process. But please do not call for reversion of the reorganisation because else the entire discussion will lose its purpose and the discussion in the former state would not help in improving the document in question. So, one does need to rely on best judgement about what to do. Still there can be better ways that one has not perhaps thought of. One would always act in ones best judgement and one does not really need to be the editor-in-chief to think in the best interest of the project one is involved in. Rather than summarily rejecting anything done for good, a better way would perhaps be to retain the good and to eliminate the negatives. That is how progress is made. Please do not be averse to progress. <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 13:40, 16 December 2018 (UTC)


 * Dear Markus, I think that the point you raised is taken care of by now. In fact, I had only made one big edit for the restructuring and was in the process of reviewing each segment so that I could ensure that the representations were proper. You placed your objection before I could have reviewed the whole stuff and set things in order. I think that I have taken care of your concerns. In case there are more points that I have inadvertently omitted, please do not hesitate to make me aware and also to take corrective measures. But I would humbly request you not to undo the positive developments that this restructuring offers. <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 14:35, 16 December 2018 (UTC)


 * Dear Diptanshu, I am dismayed by the fact that your responses do not convey any acknowledgement on your part that what you did has some significant problematic aspects. Instead, you spend time on telling me, without any specific evidence, I might have a negative effect on Wikipedia, and on warning me not to stand in the way of progress. And you do not in any way seem to have understood that it is an imposition to force others to spend time on a particular, and in their view unnecessary task. Humility is not achieved by adding the adjective "humbly" to every other sentence or so, but by trying to understand, and by acknowledging, the concerns of others, something that, judging by your replies, you have failed to do. Markus Pössel (discuss • contribs) 15:06, 16 December 2018 (UTC)


 * And no, the reply you initially falsely moved so it seemed like a reply to yourself is now equally misleadingly moved so it looks like I was replying to myself. Please consider that you are somewhat out of your depth with this reordering, and should not have taken this onto yourself, but started a new section, keeping the old discussion intact and quoting it. This is really annoying. Markus Pössel (discuss • contribs) 15:08, 16 December 2018 (UTC)


 * Humility is in the tone and not in the word 'humbly' that has been included. I do not think that with any amount of sincere efforts I would be able to satisfy you. Please feel free to segment my response and move it (or duplicate if, if needed, with or without a strikethrough) to the appropriate section that you feel relevant.
 * I thought that creating a new section would not solve the purpose because each of the long responses (with multiple bundled points) would still need to be split (or rather duplicated) in order to discuss each of the points parametrically. Without that the discussion would just have some to standstill.
 * I might be wrong but on multiple occasions I have observed behaviours (by one or more board members) that I considered inappropriate. These could be averted if there was a Code of Conduct in place. So, even if it may seem to be an unnecessary task possibly it is not. <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 04:30, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Discussion: Whether any Code of Conduct needs to be defined and implemented

 * - As the proposing member I express my support. <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 19:53, 15 November 2018 (UTC)


 * (Will wait until we are done editing.  - Mark D Worthen PsyD   (talk)  05:38, 6 December 2018 (UTC)) -  I will offer some minor copy edit suggestions later. I support the code of conduct. I very much like the way it is written.   - Mark D Worthen PsyD   (talk)  23:38, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
 * I support implementing this now as is. I have the opinion that no one in the world has ever produced a reasonable code of conduct for online communities. Inspired by the discussion here and other Wikimedia efforts, I am trying to collect all existing codes of conduct in Wikidata as documented at d:Wikidata:WikiProject Policies. It will not be quick, but I hope that by documenting codes of conduct it will be more apparent how little anyone knows about doing this. At meta:Wikimedia community code of conduct there is no Wikimedia community code of conduct, so for a starting example, what this user group is doing is the best in the Wikimedia community. The mw:Code of Conduct was complicated to develop and is okay, but the proposal here covers more necessary situations and addresses more problems. I say to publish wiki-style and accept this good-enough draft, then debate the details over the coming years. Note where there is problems, but be proud of what the team has compiled to this point and go with it. If someone violates the policy because the policy has confusing elements, or if someone complies with the policy but still does something problematic, then use human judgement and conversation to sort the issue out. We are not robots, we do not have to exist by a code of laws, no one has codified online community conduct in this way successfully before, and this is as good as it gets. It is useful to have this even in its incomplete state.  Blue Rasberry    (talk)   21:10, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

Issues raised by Mark

 * (a) I forgot about this more recent development: The COPE Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines and Code of Conduct for Journal Publishers have been rolled in to the newer Core Practices. See also Background to why the Code of Conduct for Journal Editors has been replaced with the Core Practices.


 * (b) Perhaps we do not need our own Code of Conduct? That is, if we all agree to follow the COPE Core Practices, the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, and Wikimedia policies, would that be enough? Are there any conflicts or important topics that are not covered by any of those documents?  - Mark D Worthen PsyD   (talk)  21:04, 16 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Thank you Markworthen for your valuable inputs.
 * First of all, COPE or ICMJE needs us to stick to best practices and 'Core Practices' is an example of such a thing. This can be done by creating a custom list, or by adhering to a list like the one provided by COPE.
 * WikiJournals did have their own Code of conduct but its scope was rather limited. I do not have objections if the WikiJournal members choose to abide by a salient list of that nature. But more importantly, we need to understand that the dynamics of WikiJournals is significantly different from a regular academic publication. In addition to the characteristics of an academic journal it also encompasses the principles of collaborative contribution, free knowledge movement (including this and this). So, I felt that a unique set of 'Code of Conduct' needs to be formulated with the latter items in mind.
 * Wikipedia principles should have sufficed but they are specifically oriented towards collaboratively preparing encyclopedic content and in adhering to standards for the same. Most of the important Wikipedia principles remain valid for the WikiJournal platform but it needs to be clearly identified which ones applicable. Hence the need for a custom list.
 * Wikimedia board principles are more relevant and the list I have suggested is primarily based on the same. Nevertheless, the functioning of WikiJournal is slightly different. The principles of academic publishing also come in. Hence the requirement of a custom list.
 * I also felt that the board at Wiki.J.Med till shortly back was made of people who were familiar with the culture and altercations never arose even though there was no defined set of best practices. However, the subsequently formed boards were formed primarily of academicians who might not have been familiar with the additional components that distinguishes WikiJournals. Hence the need of a custom 'best practice guideline' (if that is what we would like to call it). The set of best practices that I have outlined are supposed to act as community guidelines for a harmonious community.
 * If such a list of best practices were adhered to by the folks who make up the boards, a recent chain of unfortunate events would never have occurred.
 * It was never marked which principles to follow. Hence nobody followed them.
 * If the set of guidelines had been precisely identified User:OhanaUnited would never have felt the requirement to set community safety guidelines.


 * Hence the custom list that I proposed. I could discuss in more detail but that will make the discussion unnecessarily long. Multiple contributors have strongly urged me to try to be concise. <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 18:55, 17 November 2018 (UTC) ↓

I made some copy edits to the Code of Conduct draft (diff), and I asked some non-urgent questions on the Talk page. - Mark D Worthen PsyD  (talk)  03:15, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

Valuable inputs by Mark and T.Shafee

 * Mark, I have given some responses to your questions. Requesting Thomas for his involvement in the issue. Thomas, the time-sensitive issues remain critical and call for further development of guidelines about how board members are to act in such cases and how to prioritize some matters above others. <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 14:44, 25 November 2018 (UTC)


 * It could also be useful to list here some (in the same way that the bylaws were influenced by the WikiProject Med foundation bylaws, and the ethics guidelines influenced by the COPE and ICMJE guidelines. Relevant examples of reference for this might include:
 * WMF general CoC, WMF Trustees CoC and WMF friendly space policy comes from the most similar background of wiki thinking
 * Nature's code of conduct is very concise
 * IIT's proposed journal code of conduct is written in the most similar manner to the initial draft
 * Wikipedia civility guidelines contains a few relevant ideas, but way too long and Wikipedia-specific
 * OpenCon CoC and their their thoughts for its improvement manages to mix general guidelines (e.g. Be mindful of how much time and space you’re taking up) with specific boundaries (e.g. anti-harassment policy and response).
 * Most other journal codes of conduct that I've found more closely resemble our publication ethics rather than civility guides. It will certainly need to include some comment on harassment or disruption. One thing to consider whether some elements are better placed in either bylaws or publication ethics. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 01:00, 26 November 2018 (UTC) list updated 11:00, 2 December 2018 (UTC)
 * A good suggestion from one of the other editorial board members via email: we should get feedback from the WMF's Trust and Safety team to get feedback based on their experience. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 22:44, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
 * I've temporarily underlined the sections of the document adapted from the WMF codes of conduct so that it's easier to see which sections are newly added for specific reference to WikiJournals. I think we should also aim to keep it concise where possible, since it's easy for policies to expand, but harder to shrink. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 11:29, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks Thomas for the great work. I have made a few other changes (diff). Feel free to review them. <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 08:56, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

I've been reading up a lot about codes of conduct in order to try to ensure that the one being drafted is as useful as possible. Things I like in the WMF trustees' CoC (the main influence on the current draft): There are a few things I'm keen to avoid (where possible): T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 11:09, 2 December 2018 (UTC)
 * It is positively framed as much as possible
 * WMF has a lot of experience with interactions between volunteer community members in both informal and professional environments
 * It is relatively short
 * A situation in which a Code of Conduct is used to attack others, as can sometimes be observed in Wikipedia ("Wikilawyering")
 * Blurring the lines between actionable offences (e.g. harassment) versus guidelines (e.g. be flexible)
 * Duplication, (e.g. the journal group's ethics statement has points on harassment and discrimination).
 * Policy creep, where the guidelines expand to cover additional circumstances.
 * Inconsistent levels of detail between areas.

Discussion: Salient updates that need to be made to the existing draft

 * Portions of the current discussion have been moved from Talk:WikiJournal User Group/Code of conduct draft which now redirects here

Overtly long and seemingly unfocussed
My impression of the current version of the Code of Conduct is that it is overly long, and serves no clear purpose. Why is something shorter like the Wikimedia code of conduct not sufficient for us? Which concrete examples from the past mean that we need a specific code of conduct? All this with the background: Is this really where we want our participants to invest their limited time and energy at this time? Markus Pössel (discuss • contribs) 22:15, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

I've been wondering about this – do we need another very general conduct like that from WMF, or should we perhaps go the exact opposite route – try to identify what's special about the WikiJournals, and then just try to encode that into a specific Code of Conduct? (We could point to the more general Wikimedia one for those interested.) I'm a great fan of the principle of subsidiarity, in general, and this would be a case in point. Markus Pössel (discuss • contribs) 10:14, 11 December 2018 (UTC)


 * in the present form. This is a curious mix of statements that are so commonplace that we probably do not need an additional code of conduct to be aware of them, and of statements that I think go counter some of the spirit of what we are doing. Markus Pössel (discuss • contribs) 22:15, 9 December 2018 (UTC)


 * Dear Markus, you do not need to accept it in its current form. You can definitely develop upon it. You have already pointed out some pertinent issues. Please help in pointing out ways of modification so that the 'Code of conduct' can be reshaped for good. Indeed it would make sense to identify what is special about WikiJournals. I have done my part. Please get others involved so that they can put in their valuable inputs in this regard. <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 14:41, 16 December 2018 (UTC)


 * I'm with Markus here, I find the current draft too long and too unfocussed, and.. Split to the next point to respond specifically to that issue... Chiswick Chap (discuss • contribs) 13:41, 10 December 2018 (UTC)


 * Does the Code of Conduct need to be short?
 * I do not think so. It should not be long either. Its length should be optimal. The optimal length is a balanced trade off between size and functionality. It should essentially contain the functional components that form key guidelines without making it overtly long. <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 12:53, 10 February 2019 (UTC)


 * Can it be as short as Wikimedia code of conduct?
 * I do not think so. Essentially WikiJournal has additional attributes as compared to Wikimedia in general. Factoring them in would automatically make the list longer than the Wikimedia code of conduct. <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 12:53, 10 February 2019 (UTC)


 * Is it unfocussed?
 * I do not think so. The focus of the existing draft is on two things
 * The behaviour of an academic community that ensures quality and neutrality in producing peer reviewed literature.
 * The behaviour of an online community that acts collaboratively.


 * If one finds any (unfocussed) clause to be out of place, one is free to discuss it here in the discussion thread pointing out why they think it to be out of place. <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 12:53, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

Associate editor and board member applications
As the journals mature, there is some conversation about updating the requirements for applicants, which have so far been kept broad as the journals start out. WikiJMed has begun requesting that board applicants without previous editorial experience first join as associate editors and assist with organising a peer review (alongside and existing board member) before being moved to the board. It would be good to have clearer and standardised criteria.


 * Benefits: Vetting process for applicants before gaining access to important board passwords etc. Spread workload in peer review coordination and reduce processing delays.
 * Drawbacks: Some board applicants might be valuable for contributions other than their ability to assist in peer review organisation. There is no guarantee when an article within their sphere of expertise will be submitted.

Possible options:


 * 1) All applications assessed on a case-by case basis but with some further guidelines as to the difference expectations for applicants
 * 2) Board applicants without previous experience as an editor at another journal must first assist organisation of a peer review as an associate editor
 * 3) All board applicants must first assist organisation of a peer review as an associate editor

This could be synchronised for all journals or vary if the different journals have different consensuses. Opinions and ideas welcomed. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 01:14, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Discussion

 * Updating the criteria would indeed be good, board applicants without previous experience could in general start as associate editors, but I think we still should not have hard criteria, and retain the ability to decide in each case. For example, if we could persuade a well-known researcher to apply, we may not have her start as associate editor just because she does not fulfill this or that requirement. Sylvain Ribault (discuss • contribs) 08:30, 13 November 2018 (UTC)


 * I agree with Sylvain Ribault. A great current example is Alaa Najjar - "I am currently a Steward, a Bureaucrat, Sysop, Checkuser and Interface-admin on Arabic Wikipedia, Sysop on Wikidata, Sysop on Arabic Wikibooks and Sysop on Arabic Wikinews. I serve also as an OTRS member. Made more than 340k [three hundred and forty thousand!] edits on Wikimedia wikis." His breadth and depth of Wikimedia knowledge and experience alone will be a huge asset, plus he's finishing medical school, plus he's multi-lingual and very active in the Arabic Wiki-community, ... and more. Finally, I believe that most of us will ask for help when we need it so I seriously doubt, at least at this stage, that we need to worry about, for example, folks with a strong Wikipedia/Wikimedia background running amok.  - Mark D Worthen PsyD   (talk)  11:39, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree with Sylvain Ribault that we should not have hard criteria, but retain our ability to choose someone directly as board member. Practically, I thus think sentence at the WikiJournal User Group/Editorial_board is appropriate (rather than in bylaws), such as "Board applicants without previous experience as an editor or editorial board member at another journal are often chosen to begin as associate editors, assisting for example in finding peer reviewers for submitted articles. If you are not willing to start out in any other way than as board member, please state so in the application. Mikael Häggström (discuss • contribs) 16:08, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
 * This seems like a good compromise, although "if you are not willing..." sounds a little combative. Perhaps "If you do not wish to start as an associate editor, please explain your reasons". Rachel Helps (BYU) (discuss • contribs) 18:07, 20 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Good idea to have some criteria. I guess the ultimate criterion is that you bring an extra asset to the board. What that is, can vary. Could be either be outstanding academic merit, outstanding wikimedia merit, or a combination of both? I think we should also encourage diversity; we should try recruiting more women for example, or editors from parts of the world that are underrepresented. Perhaps also good to have either associate or full editor applicants indicate whether they would accept to serve also in the other role. --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 13:12, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
 * I also second that it'd be good to push for a diversity increase. In addition to reaching out to personal contacts, we could identify some communities interested in open access / outreach / public communication to get in touch with. We could also possibly contact editors from journals like SAGE Open Med and BMC journals to let them know about us. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 10:23, 14 November 2018 (UTC)


 * As a Board member with limited previous experience, I approve of this adjustment. This has been a great learning experience and I hope that I'm contributing enough. I do worry with some of the larger decisions that a more senior core group that I'm simply not yet qualified to offer insight or feedback. smvital (discuss • contribs) 10:19, 15 November 2018 (UTC)


 * The roles of an editor aka editorial board member need to be parametrically defined. The scope would include acting as a peer-review coordinator. Among the tasks of the board members this is where the bottleneck lies. The choice of an editorial board member should be independent of this bottleneck of ours and solely based on whether they can otherwise be considered worthy of the position. It should be acknowledged that since WikiJournals (or at least Wiki.J.Med) cannot find a better way to recruit peer-review coordinators, it would like to obligatorily entrust this residual task upon any fresh applicant who otherwise does not have any other option in case they are eager to join the board. This way can be funny but effective but will essentially deprive the board of the scope of other forms of contributions that the given applicant could otherwise have made during the same period of time. Whether they would have actually contributed depends upon how well and parametrically the tasks or roles of an editorial board member are defined. Since the task of at least one peer-review coordination is to be considered obligatory, an ethical consideration comes into play and it therefore should not be implied that the rest of the roles (as defined) are essentially voluntary. The purpose of defining the roles would be to parametrically define that is obligatory and what is optional. <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 19:45, 16 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Instead of doing it this way, my proposal would be to make it obligatory for ALL new board applicants to coordinate at least one peer review after they are accepted into the board. <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 19:45, 16 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Additional note: It cannot be essentially done before their acceptance into the board as the process would simply introduce a bias in favor of the applicant as they have already undertaken a peer-review coordination by that time. Similarly, the proposed process of upgradation of an associate member to the position of a board member establishes the applicant's capacity to undertake this role while seriously undermining the siginificance of other roles of that applicant or a board member. <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 19:54, 16 November 2018 (UTC)
 * on a side-note, could you please guide me as to exactly which portion of the above long statement of mine could be truncated in favor of a concise statement? I would really glad if you could offer me your valuable insights. I am eager to learn the art I have apparently been unable to master. In case you do so, please make sure to do it as a new topic (while shifting this statement of mine into the respective topic) as the scope is different from that of the ongoing discussion. <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 20:01, 16 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Could I seek to know the EiCs' current stand on the matter and why making it obligatory for a new board member to undertake peer-review coordination of at least one upcoming article would not serve the purpose? <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 07:30, 30 December 2018 (UTC)
 * My current stand on this is that obligatory requirement of a new board member to coordinate a peer review (within some specific time period?) as part of the onboarding process has several holes: 1) There is no guarantee that an article sufficiently within their expertise is submitted, Different editors have different time constraints, 3) different editors have different specialties to add to the board discussions (e.g. outreach knowlesdge, contact networks, social media experience, not for profit organisation strategy, deep Wikipedia knowledge). Further definition of the range of possible board roles may assist people in volunteering for them. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 10:27, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

Using Publons to resolve the bottleneck of finding reviewers
The primary bottleneck WikiJournal faces as of now is in the process of finding and coordinating with peer-reviewers for the submitted articles. Please go through this video about how to gain access to Publons partner dashboard free of any charges or by paying a fee. I would also request you to write to expressing the interest of WikiJournal to partner with Publons. WikiJournal can register as a publisher while the individual WikiJournals can get listed as journals. The entities Wikiversity Journal of Medicine need to be merged with that of WikiJournal of Medicine while entries of the rest of the WikiJournals are created. Of course you would need to register as editor, publisher or reviewer prior to that and mention that you are a board member while you complete the process. The process can significantly ease finding peer reviewers as more than 500,000 reviewers are registered on Publons. You can easily find prospective reviewers in the respective fields from general to specific like cardiology or more specific as in atherosclerosis. I would hope that the grant request can be updated by including the fees after requesting a quote from them. <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 12:22, 25 November 2018 (UTC)
 * I had contacted Publons and following my request they have merged the entries of Wiki.J.Med to https://publons.com/journal/59718/wikijournal-of-medicine <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 02:28, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Just seeking to know if the item above has received any consideration over the last one month. If the board members have been busy coordinating peer-reviews this should have proved handy. If they have not been involved in coordinating peer-reviews but consider the issue to be concerning, they could still participate. In short, I find no reason why this item would not receive any participation. <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 06:59, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

1
First, I opened WikiJournal_Preprints, entered preprint title, pressed "Create pre-print" button. Second, I edited article info, found "Create" button, saw popup "Edit this page", pressed it, and got warning "Do you want to leave this site? Changes you made may not be saved."

Oops, I am sorry, to my shame I fail to remember what I did exactly. I only know that I got such three screens (below). And anyway, I felt I do not know how to proceed. Finally I found a way through; but I was astonished to see unexpected and unknown screens with a lot of buttons that I do not know how to use. At some moment I saved the preprint, and "created" it again (that is, did the creation procedure from the beginning but gave the same preprint title, not knowing what will happen then). I am afraid that another author may feel alike; this is why I post it here. Boris Tsirelson (discuss • contribs) 10:46, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

2
Another problem: in the Contents of "WikiJournal Preprints/Can each number be specified by a finite_text?" I see "1 Article information", "2 Abstract" and then "3 Introduction". I did not expect the first two items to be sections, and now my text contains "see Section 5" instead of "see Section 7", etc. Should I accept this strange numeration of sections? Or maybe it happens only on preprint, not article? Boris Tsirelson (discuss • contribs) 10:58, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

3
I try to submit, filling the "authorship declaration form", but I cannot; the link to "http://form.wikijmed.org/" does not work. A temporary problem on that site? Why not a local copy here? Boris Tsirelson (discuss • contribs) 11:37, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

Well, I suddenly found at Talk:WikiJournal_User_Group/Archive_3 a link to "authorship declaration form", namely here, and filled it. Is it OK or not? Boris Tsirelson (discuss • contribs) 21:06, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

Changes

 * Thank you so much for this case study in the current submission system! It has pointed out several issues. Some I've been able to fix immediately and others will take a little thinking.
 * This is the most worrying. I'll try going through it a few times to see what can be improved. It should load the visualeditor as default since I think that's easier to use than markup for new users, but it can deinitely be made clearer. I've been meaning to make some short screencapture video walkthrough, so I'll try to get around to that over the new year break.
 * Because of the way mediawiki currently works, we use to make 'invisible headings' so that those sections can be collapsed when viewing on mobile. I've now hidden them from the desktop view in . In mobile mode, sections aren't numbered anyway so the numbering shouldn't be a direct issue. For the moment. I've asked over at MediaWiki support if it's possible to omit a heading from the TOC, or have it un-numbered. For the moment, I can implement a workaround by to override the default numbering (see example here), but it requires manually numbering the sections.
 * Fixed - You're right that the "http://form.wikijmed.org/" link is supposed to just redirect to this form, but is broken. It must have happened within the last two weeks but I don't know when. I've made a template that can be used to quickly change the link in whatever pages it appears in and currently links straight to the form so that should work now.
 * I'll post back once I've some more done. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 01:01, 19 December 2018 (UTC)


 * Ah, it was the visualeditor! I never tried it, this was the problem. Yes, any kind of walkthrough would be very helpful. About section numbers, I just browsed my articles in various math journals and did not see even one case of unnumbered sections. Is it the same outside math? Boris Tsirelson (discuss • contribs) 05:22, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I think, the walkthrough should mention (at least) two cases: either the author builds gradually the preprint inplace, or he/she did so outside (in sandbox, or offline) and wants to copy it hereto. Boris Tsirelson (discuss • contribs) 05:32, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Good idea to have different walkthroughs for the two different circumstances. I'll make the first one over the next month and post it here for feedback before doing the second. In biology/chemistry/medicine, section numbering varies: Example with numbers, example without. A spot-check of the 20 journals with highest h5 metric gave 16 that lacked section numbering. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 05:48, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Lacked section numbering... Does it mean that authors never refer another section (nothing like "as shown in Section 4")? Or do refer, but via section title? Boris Tsirelson (discuss • contribs) 06:07, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I guess referring to other sections is less common outside of mathematics? It's certainly common to refer to the figures and tables in other sections, but rarely the sections themselves. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 00:57, 20 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Then, one more trouble. For me it is usual to number everything (equations, lemmas etc.) within sections (as "3.5" where 3 is the section number). This time I number only exercises. Without section numbers, they should be renumbered globally. Boris Tsirelson (discuss • contribs) 06:11, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

Questions regarding editorials
The year is almost over. Last year we published an editorial and it was not a peer reviewed one. With the year coming to an end, I assume that similar editorials will be published in one or more of the WikiJournals. I would like to post a couple of open questions to consider. The first is: whether an editorial need to be peer-reviewed. Since the logistics of WikiJournals is slightly different, perhaps we can give it a thought. The next question to consider is whether editorials need to be signed by respective authors.

Feel free go through the articles:

Whatever policy is decided upon, I would urge the EiCs to clearly document it on the WikiJournal User Group talk page (here) as well as on the Publishing guidelines page (as on WikiJournal of Medicine/Publishing or its equivalent page for the rest of the journals). <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 18:05, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

Obligation of the EiCs
Since the WikiJournals are based on volunteer participation, I seek to know whether the editors-in-chief (EiCs) should have any obligation to respond to emails addressed specifically to them and whether the same also would apply to issues on-wiki raised for their kind consideration. I think that it is customary (but not obligatory) to respond to emails even if it consists of a single line indicating that consideration of the matter may take some time. Alternatively they can indicate that the matter is not concerning enough to demand EiC attention, or that the EiCs are unable to attend to the issue in the given circumstance. I think that being an EiC has its obligations and the freelancer or volunteer model does not really apply, it is just that the time-commitment (but not the overall commitment) of an EiC can vary since they are volunteers after all, and that they have other engagements in their personal or professional life. Let me know if I am wrong. <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 07:42, 30 December 2018 (UTC)


 * Rather off-topic... but I recall my experience on Citizendium in 2011-2012; there it was a time of decline, and disproportionate attention was paid to procedural matters, not to content creation. Boris Tsirelson (discuss • contribs) 10:19, 30 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Dear Tsirel, your concern is justifiable but there are a few points that I would like to add. In contrast to Citizendum or Wikipedia, the editors (or rather editorial board members) including the EiCs do not 'create' content. The content here is created by authors. The editorial board simply ensures quality by ensuring compliance to policies and by ensuring proper peer-review. The policies are especially relevant in the context of WikiJournal to ensure proper community dynamics.
 * I am familiar with the EiCs of the first two WikiJournals. I have no doubts to their ingenuity and well-intendedness. My only concern is that possibly they are finding certain pertinent issues increasingly intriguing and therefore they are possibly avoiding those issues. There are possibly issues that they cannot justify rationally but still choose to hold onto. I am apprehensive that this is only making things worse. <b style="color:#f00">D</b><b style="color:#f60">ip</b><b style="color:#090">ta</b><b style="color:#00f">ns</b><b style="color:#60c">hu</b> &#128172; 09:05, 30 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes. But I meant that editorial board members contribute to content creation when they organize refereeing, make editorial remarks to articles, etc. And in addition, they discuss procedural matters. Boris Tsirelson (discuss • contribs) 11:42, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

The proposals
I have written an essay on the lessons of the ongoing WikiJournal experiment. The essay concludes with the four proposals reproduced below. I would be interested to know other people's appraisal of the WikiJournals so far, and their ideas on future evolutions. The proposals: Sylvain Ribault (discuss • contribs) 20:43, 25 May 2019 (UTC)
 * 1) Do not duplicate articles: do all the work on the original Wikipedia article, do not have a WikiVersity version. Aims: reducing complexity, saving work, and not confusing authors and reviewers.
 * 2) Make authors optional: Wikipedia articles could be submitted by editors, reviewers, or others. There could be a process of nomination and votes to decide which articles to prioritize, possibly coordinated with disciplinary WikiProjects. Authors could also be optional for revising the article, as anybody can do it.
 * 3) Focus on reviewers and their work: the main outcomes could be the reviews themselves rather than the Wikipedia articles. The collection of the reviews and comments could be published as an article, with its DOI and PDF, and a title of the type "Review of the Wikipedia article on X". Anonymity would no longer be an option for reviewers. If this leads to a version of the Wikipedia article that satisfies the reviewers, that version can be published too. Otherwise, just link the review from Wikipedia for future reference.
 * 4) Be relaxed about official recognition: being recognized as a full-fledged traditional academic journal is not vital. It is more important to remain experimental long enough for finding what really works.

Considerations from the May 2019 WikiJournal meeting

 * 1) Do not duplicate articles:
 * 2) Some view Wikiversity as a sandbox for Wikipedia so duplication is superfluous (particularly for articles submitted from Wikipedia) whereas others want permanently different versions at WikiVersity that can be more technical without being nixed by WP editors (particularly at WJM, WJH).
 * 3) Could possibly inter-wiki transclude if sister project.
 * 4) May not harm peer reviewer response rate (Wikipedia more recognisable ‘brand’ than WikiJournals).
 * 5) Make authors optional:
 * 6) We could have experiments about that: select a few existing Wikipedia articles and try having reviewers and editors work on them directly (‘contributors’ but no traditional ‘authors’).
 * 7) Aim to avoid the problems with the BMJ-organised peer review of Parkinson’s disease (comments from 2016 not fully addressed)
 * 8) Focus on reviewers and their work:
 * 9) Giving DOIs to reviews is an emerging practice in scientific publishing and we could do it as well.
 * 10) Moreover we could give more prominence to reviews on WP talk pages, especially when the suggested changes are not implemented.
 * 11) Be relaxed about official recognition:
 * 12) Official recognition seems indifferent to reviewers, but some authors will not contribute before the journals are on PubMed, Scopus, etc.

Experiment
I have created a page for an experiment along the lines of the proposal. It would be good to have some feedback from the community, and more suggestions of candidate Wikipedia articles. Then I will ask for an official go-ahead, i.e. acceptance of the terms of the experiment, and commitment to publish the reviews as advertised. Sylvain Ribault (discuss • contribs) 20:35, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm looking forward to the results of this pilot. Afterwards I'll be interested to see a side-by-side comparison in how reviewers react to different types of invites. The concept of putting the peer review and reviewers more in the spotlight may also be more broadly applicable to other articles. e.g.: should reviewers be listed in the wikidata items and/or XML metadata for articles? Should the number and/or names of reviewers be listed on the article itself? It is also relates to discussions about how to handle anonymous/pseudonymous wikipedian authors as corresponding, named authors. (For ease of reference, here's a link to the meeting notes). T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 13:00, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

Declaration on Research Assessment
Further to an earlier thread on the IOI project, It might be worth signing support for the Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA). From what I can see, the principles it's laying out are well aligned with the general thinking here (full declaration), including: ";For publishers 6. Greatly reduce emphasis on the journal impact factor as a promotional tool, ideally by ceasing to promote the impact factor or by presenting the metric in the context of a variety of journal-based metrics (e.g., 5-year impact factor, EigenFactor [8], SCImago [9], h-index, editorial and publication times, etc.) that provide a richer view of journal performance.

7. Make available a range of article-level metrics to encourage a shift toward assessment based on the scientific content of an article rather than publication metrics of the journal in which it was published.

8. Encourage responsible authorship practices and the provision of information about the specific contributions of each author.

9. Whether a journal is open-access or subscription-based, remove all reuse limitations on reference lists in research articles and make them available under the Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication [10].

10. Remove or reduce the constraints on the number of references in research articles, and, where appropriate, mandate the citation of primary literature in favor of reviews in order to give credit to the group(s) who first reported a finding."

- DORA declaration

What are people's thoughts? T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 02:53, 1 July 2019 (UTC)


 * The declaration is reasonable overall, except points 10 and 16 which tell us to favor citing primary literature over reviews. This goes against common sense and Wikipedia's rules. Due to this fatal flaw, I Oppose signing the declaration. Sylvain Ribault (discuss • contribs) 01:41, 7 July 2019 (UTC)
 * The declaration prefixes the prioritisation of primary literature "...where appropriate". Does that not sufficiently address your concern? Prashanthns (discuss • contribs) 04:41, 7 July 2019 (UTC)
 * No, the text is clear enough, and the repeated insistence on primary literature vs review articles means what it says, unless you think that the words "where appropriate" make points 10 and 16 meaningless. For a more detailed discussion of this aspect of the DORA declaration, see my 2013 blog post. Sylvain Ribault (discuss • contribs) 08:15, 7 July 2019 (UTC)


 * As an editor of - within my field - a high impact factor journal I have always had some reservations about the DORA. I had not considered the point above about the citation of primary sources over reviews but, on consideration, I do not agree with it and I can see why it is in the DORA - to lever editors and authors away from, respectively, publishing and citing reviews which are well known to be the articles which contribute most to JIF. The DORA just seems anti-JIF with few positive suggestions (except point 6) and, as with all JIF criticisms, no suggested alternative. I also think it fails to acknowledge the value of JIFs which are, at least, an indication of quality in that journals that are included in the Clarivate JIF list have met some fairly important quality criteria. I tend towards Oppose due to above and because it tells us little we don't already know and will have zero influence in the Far East, South East Asia and selected parts of Europe - such as Italy. Rwatson1955 (discuss • contribs) 13:35, 7 July 2019 (UTC)


 * While I like the general thrust of the declaration, I concur with Sylvain regarding points 10 and 16. These appear problematic both in a journal setting - review articles are vital tools for the research process, and discouraging people from creating them by taking away their cites seems counter-productive; and in a Wikipedia setting - there's a direct mandate here to use secondary rather than primary sources, and a review will always be preferred as a source over a primary research paper. Therefore, I don't believe adopting this declaration as it stands would be a suitable move for us. --Florian (Elmidae) (talk · contribs) 16:07, 7 July 2019 (UTC)


 * The only part that seems controversial in the section for publishers is the second clause, "and, where appropriate, mandate the citation of primary literature in favor of reviews in order to give credit to the group(s) who first reported a finding." Given the preference for reviews in Wikipedia over primary research I would interpret the second clause as not applying in our case (i.e. it is not appropriate to do this when it goes against the rules/ethos of our project). With this interpretation, I support signing as I do not see how the second clause affects us as a project. The only reasons I see for not signing are political, i.e. being seen to support something that does not apply to us. Edwbaker (discuss • contribs) 14:22, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Fair enough, if "where applicable" can be interpreted thus. We would have to make it clear, however, that we intend exemption from these specific clauses - presumably in whatever place we would record acceptance of the rest. --Florian (Elmidae) (talk · contribs) 23:01, 8 July 2019 (UTC)