Grants:Simple/Applications/WikiJournal User Group/2026/annual plan
WikiJournal User Group
Open access • Publication charge free • Public peer review • Wikipedia-integrated
Furthering the efforts in the previous WikiJournal User Group annual plans, the project will continue its mission to publish scholarly works with no cost for the authors, apply quality checks on submissions by expert academic peer review, and make accepted works available online free of charge in perpetuity.
Content contribution and community growth
[edit]Objectives
High-quality, peer-reviewed and open access scholarly works with no cost for the authors in perpetuity.
Both articles intended for Wikipedia-integration and those intended to be stand-alone remain high priorities, as each provide unique value to both the Wikimedia and academic ecosystems.
Current situation
The journals continue to have a healthy number of submissions, both written from scratch and submitted via the preprints server, and direct from Wikipedia. However, the submission rate remains higher than the peer review rate, leading to delays in processing and affects author experience. This is a common problem for all academic publications, however the WikiJournals have some unique features that may affect this. Affiliation with Wikipedia reported by several peer reviewers as the reason they agreed to provide reviews; diamond OA format may also encourage peer reviews. Disadvantages: Limited name recognition and rare repeat reviewing (very few submissions are sufficiently similar that the same peer reviewer would be suitable twice). A concerted effort has been made to specifically target older articles in review, but long backlogs remain for potential upcoming articles, and continued effort is needed. WikiJournal of Medicine has seen a high number than usual of desk rejections for low quality. This is not a problem in itself, but does flag the need for greater outreach to potential authors to ensure there remain also an appropriate number of high quality submissions.
Next steps
The journals will focus on continued acceptance of new participants to the journals across various roles, including editorial board members and associate editors. Both newcomers and more longstanding members need to be engaged and introduced to driving article submissions through the peer review pipeline. This will be a higher priority for all journals than outreach to potential authors so as to make sure the submissions-to-editors ratio doesn't get too high.
Community support and administrative growth
[edit]Improving accessibility and streamlining procedures
[edit]Objectives
Accessible editing tools, streamlined procedures, and efficient use of contributor time and improves the quality of the outputs.
- Requirements to understand wikimarkup will be reduced (and ideally eliminating) for contributors, making using the interface more accessible to more people
- Editorial tracking and processing of articles through peer review and publication will be more consistent and simple
- Formatting of articles will be more clear and consistent
Current situation
There has been a bottleneck in processing articles, including coordinating the peer review process. Many of of these processes are quite repetitive, and also require some onboarding, and have therefore been difficult to drive on volunteer basis. In the past, it has been very helpful to contract technical editors to perform the repetitive tasks. However, the project has not felt comfortable contracting any assistance without proper insurance coverage, and such coverage has not been affordable while the project has been administratively located in the United States. Therefore, the WikiJournal community has formed a consensus to administratively move to Sweden, where it has been previously centered in the past. This will allow the project to contract technical editors again to assist with article processing. The registration process has been quite slow, but is ongoing, with last update in Feb 2026 that an the task has been assigned to an administrator at the Swedish registration ministry.
Next steps
After registration in Sweden, the plan is to contract approximately 6 people, with workload dynamically distributed between them.
If time allows, further integration with a back end editorial management system will be highly valuable to cover functions that cannot be done on-wiki (likely with Open Journal Systems, see discussions 1, 2 and proposal). This will require contacting a new pool of potential developers, as sufficient familiarity with the necessary systems has held up previous attempts. Further increasing the automation of writing data to Wikidata will also greatly help the depth of the project's metadata.
Outreach, awareness and partnerships
[edit]Getting the word out
[edit]Objectives
The project are in need of more volunteer editors who can help getting articles through the peer review process. The project should also be inclusive and ensure that potential contributors are supported.
Current situation
The project has regularly had members attending Wikimania conferences. Many members are university-affiliated, providing many opportunities for further reachout. These activities have helped increase the number of subject matter experts volunteering to serve in WikiJournal editorial boards.
Furthermore, these events are expected to introduce new editors to wiki collaboration through a targeted approach aimed at educators, and thereby participation in other Wikimedia Foundation projects as well. Good relations exist with the WikiEdu foundation (with relevance to students and particularly course organizers), though these have not yet translated into increased contributions through those channels.
Next steps
If time allows, the project will organize project related activities at upcoming conferences, both within and beyond Wikimedia Foundation's conferences. Where possible, presentations that reach non-Wikimedia audiences will be prioritized, since bringing in subject matter experts who otherwise would not have contributed to a Wikimedia project remains a key focus (however key Wikimedia conferences will still need to be attended). It will continue its activities on social media (Facebook and X/Twitter accounts linked from Wikiversity:WikiJournal User Group/Contact). Within Wikimedia, stronger ties should be built with WikiEdu and thematic affiliates (especially Wiki Project Med, Wikipedia & Education User Group and Wikimedians in Residence Exchange Network User Group) as well as geographical user groups and chapters. Registration in Sweden will also open up new opportunities to collaborate with the Wikimedia Sweden chapter.
There should also be increased support for authors to make non-technical summaries for publications, to maximize accessibility to a wide readership where possible for at least the basic elements of even complex articles. This may involve experimentation with generative large language models to formulate plain language synopsis to present to authors to be used either as a starting point or a jumping off point for them to draft something from scratch.
Research funding
[edit]Objectives To facilitate research that may be published in WikiJournal.
Current situation WikiJournal has mainly served as a place to publish research, and direct funding and other support for research has so far been limited.
Next steps If time allows, WikiJournal will work on facilitating original research that can be published in the journals. Such facilitation can include helping potential researchers apply for research funding. An example of such funding includes the Wikimedia Research Fund that may be used for research to better understand of the Wikimedia projects and the Wikimedia community.