Grants:Simple/Applications/WikiJournal User Group/2022/Report

Activity report

1. How proposed activities and strategies were implemented.: Accessibility and streamlining was greatly improved via the 'technical editors' who were able to handle repetitive but complex and time sensitive back-of-house tasks which freed up a lot of cognitive load for volunteers and made multiple processes more reliable. The technical infrastructure has also been made significantly more robust - especially multiple aspects of wikidata integration (both via lua modules and bot-mediated). Though, an available developer was not secured for integration with Open Journal Systems and so the work was pushed back to 2023. As to getting the word out, we have had some modest success in engaging people outside of the USA+Europe as editors, authors, and reviewers (our three main volunteer roles). Much of this will only become evident in the coming year or two (particularly in the 'author' role) because there is significant turnaround time from hearing of the journal -> drafting an article -> submitting for peer review -> going through peer review. Therefore some of these efforts will only be seen in the next year or two. For expanding the number of journals on aspect went ahead to schedule (collaboration with the PLOS publishing group to move their 'topic pages' format to WikiJournal project space). A separate WikiJournal of Psychology, Psychiatry, and the Behavioral Sciences was not yet implemented, as the main organiser has a death in the family and the decision was made to postpone to give the best chance of success.

2. Any strategies or approaches that were were effective in achieving the goals: Leveraging paid staff time in order to make volunteer activities more efficient has significantly reduced burnout, and so making sure we are using these resources at the right points will be particularly useful in future.

3. Innovations: This has been a particularly wikidata-focussed year. We are aiming to (as far as possible) make as much of our activities and structure documented in wikidata, and draw information back from wikidata. For example this draft page of statistics follow our activities using wikidata queries (https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/WikiJournal_User_Group/Statistics). Similarly, journal issues are populated by a bot that draws from wikidata (e.g. https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/WikiJournal_of_Medicine) and lists of editorial board members are annotated with structured data from wikidata (e.g. https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/WikiJournal_of_Medicine/Editors). These approaches may be useful for other affiliates when documenting some activities. We are also developing ways of more thoroughly annotating wikidata items with data about publications. Usually, journals keep their peer reviewers fully anonymous indefinitely. We give our reviewers the option of waiving anonymity (75% take us up on this) but even for anonymous peer reviewers, we list their fields of expertise - adding significant extra transparency & auditability to the peer review process. We also are experimenting with even greater depth of description on the process that surrounds an academic publication - for example the wikidata item: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q101116128. Specifications for this process has been published for others to also use as "Standardised Data on Initiatives (STARDIT)".

4. How different communities participated and/or were informed: There are a number of ways the current community and potential new community members are kept informed: Presentations & symposia: - Wikipedia and Education in the Time of the 'Crisis of Information' Symposium (academics) - Wikimania (wiki community): WikiJournal had multiple representatives at both the New York and London events. - Berlin Exchange Medicine Peer Review Crash Course (medical students) Written material and relevant publications: - Open meeting minutes (general) - Mailing list (general) - https://researchinvolvement.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40900-022-00363-9 (academics)

5b. Meeting links:: https://wikimedia.org.au/wiki/Wikipedia_and_Education_symposium https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiJournal_User_Group/Meetings

6. Efforts helped to bring in participants and/or build out content, particularly for underrepresented groups: Being an open access journal with no cost for publication or reading, WikiJournal allows people to contribute to and learn knowledge regardless of location and socioeconomic status. It provides an opportunity to everyone to participate in the academic work, and to enrich knowledge across Wikimedia projects.

Part 2: Main learning

7. Learning priorities: Having technical editors assist with time sensitive back-of-house tasks has helped a lot for volunteers to focus on content. However, there are a number time-consuming aspects (administrative, outreach, and project management) that would benefit from more consistent high-end support in the form of a CEO role or similar.

8. Technical barriers: There have been significant issues in actually paying the technical editor contractor based in Nigeria from the bank account in the USA which has caused unfair delays in paying them compared to those based in North America and Europe. Securing a developer with the necessary skillset to overcome such a barrier would open up the project more for participation from that region.

9. New priorities, ideas for activities: Difficulties in money transfer have lead us to explore using the service 'workmarket' which, though expensive, is probably necessary to enable reliable international transfers. For development, we need some more organised project management to make surer that roadblocks don't fully stall the process of defining requirements, identifying developers and approaching them for quotes.

10. Particularly helpful: It has been extremely helpful to have technical editors that help out with repetitive tasks that help the project in its goal in allowing everyone to participate in research and dissemination of knowledge.

Part 3: Organizational capacities & partnerships

11. Organizational Capacity

Organizational capacity dimension	This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high	This capacity has grown but it should be further developed	This capacity is low, and we should prioritise developing it
A. Financial capacity and management	✓
B. Conflict management or transformation	✓
C. Leadership (i.e growing in potential leaders, leadership that fit organizational needs and values)		✓
D. Partnership building		✓
E. Strategic planning	✓
F. Program design, implementation, and management		✓
G. Scoping and testing new approaches, innovation	✓
H. Recruiting new contributors (volunteer)		✓
I. Support and growth path for different types of contributors (volunteers)	✓
J. Governance		✓
K. Communications, marketing, and social media		✓
L. Staffing - hiring, monitoring, supporting in the areas needed for program implementation and sustainability		✓
M. On-wiki technical skills	✓
N. Accessing and using data	✓
O. Evaluating and learning from our work	✓
P. Communicating and sharing what we learn with our peers and other stakeholders	✓
Q.
R.

12a. Factors that helped build capacities Peer to peer learning with other community members in conferences/events, Peer to peer learning with other community members (but that is not continuous or structured), Using capacity building/training resources online from sources WITHIN the Wikimedia Movement 12b. Factors that hindered your ability to build capacities

Lack of staff time to participate in capacity building/training, Lack of volunteer time to participate in capacity building/training, Lack of financial resources

13. How the organizational capacity has grown, and areas requiring: The hiring of technical editors alleviates the workload of the editorial boards. Still, the project is in need of an appointed CEO position to better distribute tasks among technical editors and volunteers.

14. Partnerships over the funding period

Over the fund period...	Rating
A. We built strategic partnerships with other institutions or groups that will help us grow in the medium term (3 year time frame)	Agree
B. The partnerships we built with other institutions or groups helped to bring in more contributors from underrepresented groups	Strongly agree
C. The partnerships we built with other institutions or groups helped to build out more content on underrepresented topics/groups	Strongly agree

15. The following factors most helped to build partnerships

Board members’ outreach, Staff hired through the fund, Volunteers from our communities

16. Strategies to build partnerships with other institutions and groups and any other learning about working with partners: Interactions with people from different organizations at Wikimania opened up for new potential partnerships. In particular, we met seniors from University of Edinburgh, who may be able to help out in finding peer reviewers for articles.

Part 4: Sense of belonging & collaboration

17. Sense of belonging to the Wikimedia or free knowledge movement: With technical editors performing repetitive tasks, volunteer editorial board members find more time to collaborate in article publication decisions, creating a greater sense of belonging and engagement.

18. Change in sense of belonging: The fund has ensured the continuity of the project's aim of attracting researchers and scholars to contribute to the open access project, often being introduced to wiki editing and Wikimedia Projects in the process, potentially opening up for engagement in its projects in general.

19. Other movements besides the Wikimedia or free knowledge movement that play a central role in the motivation to contribute to Wikimedia projects: Examples of organizations that inspire to contribute to open access research and publishing thereof include the Committee on Publication Ethics and the Directory of Open Access Journals, and WikiJournal is a member of those organizations.

20a. Sharing such projects with Wikimedia Foundation: The project exists in the Wikiversity space, therefore being closely tied to its educational scope, facilitating collaboration between the projects. Likewise, images for articles are uploaded in Wikimedia Commons, making them directly available for use across Wikimedia projects. Also, it is part of the goal for review articles to have eligible content integrated into Wikipedia through collaboration between the sister projects, making Wikipedia reviewers able to learn from published articles.

21. Sharing mutual learning with other grantees: Meetings are shared publicly: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiJournal_User_Group/Meetings Experiences and other knowledge are shared with other participants at Wikimania and other Wikimedia meetups.

Financial report

We are still finalizing the financial report file, which is still awaiting the auditing of some expenses.

We are in compliance with provisions of the United State Internal Revenue Code ("Code")?