Hello, Very well-written and well-supported by statistics. Thanks for sharing. Regards. User:Titodutta
On Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 1:41 AM Jake Orlowitz <jorlow...@gmail.com> wrote: > My Letter to the U.S. Office for Science and Technology Policy regarding a > proposal for federally mandate open access to publicly-funded research... > > --- > > Wikipedia is one of the ten most popular websites in the world. Each month > 200,000 editors improve over 6 million articles. This vital public > information is viewed on 1 billion unique devices as our pages are loaded > by people around the globe 7,000 times per second. > > Wikipedia is the "free encyclopedia", both in its open CC-BY-SA licensing > as well as the unpaid contributions of its volunteer editors. Yet > Wikipedia's hundreds of thousands of editors struggle to access scholarly > research. And, if they are able to read and cite it, then hundreds of > millions of readers cannot verify or explore it for deeper research. > > Citations are the bridge between Wikipedia articles and a broader landscape > of reliable, secondary sources. Citations not only allow readers to verify > the reliability of the facts they find in Wikipedia; through citations > readers can also deep-dive into any given topic by exploring the books, > scholarly publications, and news stories referenced in an article. > > A recently released dataset of all citations with identifiers in Wikipedia > found that less than half of the official versions of scholarly > publications cited with an identifier in Wikipedia are freely available on > the web. This chasm of for editors and for readers is a tragedy of public > education and digital literacy. > > Just look at the most recent global catastrophe with Coronavirus. By April > 2020 the main articles on COVID-19 had received 50 million views. > Wikipedia's medical content--made up of more than 155,000 articles and 1 > billion bytes of text across more than 255 languages--has been ranked as > one of the top-3 most viewed sources for medical information on the entire > internet. > > References are essential to the public's trust in Wikipedia. Indeed, > Wikipedia's medical content is supported by 757,855 references in English > and 1,596,528 in other languages, for a total of 2,354,383 across all > languages. In English 168,985 have a PMID while 261,850 do in other > languages. This means at least 430,835 references are journal articles. > > What happens when those journal articles lie behind a paywall? The public > suffers from a dearth of good information to make decisions about their > lives as independent citizens and members of a global community. > > As founder of The Wikipedia Library, I arranged partnerships with dozens of > leading scholarly journals, to give Wikipedia editors free access to their > reliable content and so they would be able to do effective and rigorous > research. This time-intensive process took 6 years to amass access to only > 1/5th of the most highly regarded academic publications. Frankly, Wikipedia > editors--volunteers who selflessly give of their intelligence and passion > to educate--should not have to beg and borrow to access publicly-funded > research. Readers should not hit paywalls when they are seeking > citizen-supported knowledge. > > I implore you to make the bold but entirely reasonable decision and ensure > that taxpayers have access to the vital scientific and scholarly studies > that they themselves fund. This is not only sensible, it is essential to > civic health, societal progress, and human flourishing. > > > Sincerely, > Jake Orlowitz > Founder of The Wikipedia Library > > > --- > > "Public Access to Peer-Reviewed Scholarly Publications, Data and Code > Resulting From Federally Funded Research" > > > https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/02/19/2020-03189/request-for-information-public-access-to-peer-reviewed-scholarly-publications-data-and-code > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, > <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
