Wikicite/e-scholarship/Evolution and Evolvability (WikidataR for Wikicite)

Project name

WikidataR: Expanding read-write capabilities for R to write enhanced publication metadata to Wikidata

Contact information

application type

WikiCite/e-scholarship

your name and/or Wikimedia username

Evolution and Evolvability (Thomas Shafee) - Melbourne

e-mail

Thomas.Shafee@gmail.com

Your nearest city and country

Melbourne, Australia

Details of team members (optional)

If this application is for a team project, each additional team member (up to 5 total) should have their name/username, project role, location, and contact details here:

• Canley (Alex Lum) – Melbourne: co-developer, experienced in R programming, SPARQL and QuickStatements. Email: alex.lum@wikimedia.org.au

The activity/project

Tell us about your proposed project. What will you get achieved with this time?

Current situation

The scripting language R is the most used data science language, well suited to. There has been a R packages around for a while to read from wikidata (reading single items with WikidataR and submitting SPARQL queries with WikidataQueryServiceR). However no package exists that can write to wikidata from R.

Proposed action

I am therefore creating an expanded and updated WikidataR to have this ability to write to Wikidata via the quickstatements API (by expanding the functionality of the old read-only WikidataR package, since its original creator is no longer a developer).

Applications

The ability to write to Wikidata from R will greatly enhance the community's ability to enrich publication items in Wikidata. These include properties such as funding scheme (P6195), editor (P98), reviewed by (P4032), or describes a project that uses (P4510) for methods and equipment; significant events such as ethical approval (Q98550700) or rectification (Q56478729); and author/editor/reviewer properties such as declared conflict of interest (Q99429881). Similarly, journals can be indicated as predatory publisher (Q65770389) or hijacked journal (Q17300027). As a language, R is particularly well suited to the sort of data handling necessary to cross-reference existing databases and write to appropriate wikidata items, and this R package will act as an equivalent for the to the python PyPl package.

Your qualifications

Describe how you (and, if applicable, your team)are able to achieve this project. What skills, expertise, and motivation do you have which will enable you to succeed?

• I have experience in publication metadata open metadata from my work with the WikiJournal User Group
• I have experience in research output metadata (including non-traditional research outputs)
• I have experience in R package development and basic web interfaces
• I have already implemented some basic proof of concept functions and tested them:
  • read functions to retrieve QIDs from DOIs and ORCiDs.
  • write functions to edit existing wikidata items (though not yet create)

Proposed activity dates

Four days total:

• 10-11 Oct 2020
• 17-18 Oct 2020

Budget (Standard WMF per-day living allowance - 75% of the "M & IE rate" for relevant city)

• US$145 x 4 days x 2 people = US$1160 x 0.75 = USD $870 ( ~$1220 AUD)

Endorsements

Optional: Community members are encouraged to endorse your proposal and leave a rationale here.

•  Support R is big, so a two way street would be good value. Proposer is also a valued and valuable member of the community with a strong history of good contributions. --99of9 (talk) 12:15, 24 September 2020 (UTC)
•  Support A useful development with potential to increase contributions and contributor base Pru.mitchell (talk) 23:38, 24 September 2020 (UTC)
•  Support The R community includes many scholars that could add useful contributions to wikidata. An R package that can write to the wikidata endpoints enables us to create automatic tools in a language many people are proficient at. I also think this has the potential to increase contributions and contributor base. RMHogervorst 2020-09-25
•  Support This could provide great exposure for wikicite to the large R community - and would produce a useful utility. Jodi.a.schneider (talk) 20:11, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
•  Support R is very important data science language, and R package that can write to the Wikidata it'll add a great value for the project. And as said above, that Thomas is a valued and valuable member of the community. Best --Alaa :)..! 12:36, 27 September 2020 (UTC)
•  Support R package can provide useful tools and applications. Yes for sure.--Michel Bakni (talk) 12:42, 27 September 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Nawaraj Ghimire (talk) 02:57, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
•  Support. Interesting package worth developing. --Csisc (talk) 22:01, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

...

Status

complete