WikiCite/e-scholarship/Sic19

Project name

What is a short name for the activity/project you are proposing?
WikiCite virtual conference: Author items session

Contact information

your name and/or Wikimedia username

Simon Cobb (User:Sic19)

your contact e-mail

Allow other users to email me is enabled

your nearest city and country

Exeter, United Kingdom

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:

• Jason Evans, co-host, Aberystwyth, UK.

The activity/project

Tell us about your proposed project. What will you get achieved with this time?
Describe why you think this project is important, and how the project is different from your normal volunteer contributions.
Organising a session during the Wikicite virtual conference to focus on author items will be a valuable opportunity to share knowledge and, as a community, increase our understanding of the challenges one can encounter when editing these items. Curating a series of presentations by active contributors to WikiCite and specialists from outside the community to provide broader context and offer different perspectives on the work required to identify authors and their relationship to works, institutions, events etc. will help us to frame the problem. There will also be sufficient time for attendees to network between presentations. The exchange of information will be captured by recording the presentations and noting questions, discussions and ideas in the Etherpad. Taken together, we will be in a stronger position to work collaboratively to find solutions and I intend to investigate the feasibility of a follow-up online workshop in the first quarter of 2021.

In addition to scheduling and coordinating the session programme, I will prepare a paper containing analysis of Wikidata items representing the authors of research papers, illustrative examples of data quality issues that frustrate efforts to augmentation these items. Whilst this session is related to some of my Wikidata contributions, I will need to divert my efforts away from editing to bring together the people and information required to improve data about authors. A project page will be set up as a subpage of the Wikicite virtual conference wiki (when available) with details about the session and other relevant information.

NB. Arranging a follow-up workshop is beyond the scope of this proposal and has been included for information only.

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?<be>

• Simon Cobb has experience of batch importing author affiliation data into Wikidata and working with libraries on Wikidata projects.
• Jason Evans is the National Wikimedian of Wales and has extensive experience of managing Wikidata data import and outreach projects.

Proposed activity dates

When will you undertake this project? (This may be two, three or four days. Not necessarily consecutive). The latest allowable date is 1 May 2021.
Four days in total.

• Three days in October 2020 to prepare contributions and organise the session.
• Hosting the session on 26 October.

Endorsements

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

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Status

complete