Grants talk:PEG/bluerasberry/open access release funding for paper on Wikipedia in classroom

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A decision has been made on this grant. Comments are still welcome on this page.

GAC members decisions[edit]

GAC members who support this request[edit]

  1. --DerekvG (talk) 10:50, 26 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Deep case study of the impact of the Wikipedia Education Program is something we need.-MikyM (talk) 04:39, 3 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

GAC members who support this request with adjustments[edit]

GAC members who oppose this request[edit]

GAC members who abstain from voting/comment[edit]

GAC comments[edit]

  1. I have actually mixed feelings about it. I agree that publishing scientific paper in OA model is for sure worth supporting, but I don't think if we are able to evalute the quality of the paper in terms of its impact on development of Wikimedia projects here. So, I would opt to ask for comments people from our Research:Committee. The other issue is that if we support this request there might be probably more of them. So we should reject this one and do not support any future ones of this kind or create a clear criteria for selecting papers really worth supporting. Polimerek (talk) 08:31, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Polimerek You should have mixed feelings. I also am uncertain about what kind of rule should be set. I want funding for my paper, because it is a good paper, but I am unsure about what kind of general rule there should be. I agree with these points of yours -
  • The GAC is not equipped to make a decision on open access policy
  • There ought to be criteria which guide decisions about when the WMF gives funding to make a publication OA
It might be the case that the WMF already has an open access policy. EpochFail is a WMF researcher and r-com guy - EpochFail, does WMF have an open access policy? Is now time to develop one? At Research:Wikimedia Foundation grants it says that any research funded by the WMF through grants must be open access. I suppose that means that when the WMF gives grants for research, it also requires that the grant budget for open access publication. In the case of this research I was not grant funded.
I am one of the organizers for en:WikiProject Open Access, and if in the future there were a nicely drafted proposal for when the WMF funds papers to be published OA, then I could help in gathering comment for the participants listed on the front page of that project. I am not sure now is the time to make a proposal, but it might be time to make a draft.
If I were to draft a proposal, I would suggest these criteria -
WMF only funds OA for papers which...
  1. feature Wikimedia projects as the subject
  2. have already been accepted for publication in a journal
  3. are being published in a journal which meets en:WP:NJOURNAL
  4. are supported by at least 3 Wikimedia contributors
  5. There could be other criteria, but these are a fair baseline.
I am not sure how much more strict things should be. EpochFail, any comments? Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:13, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Bluerasberry: Here is the open access policy, though there is a Grey area on whether community-lead research should be prioritized in grant funding support for the publication. It seems like there should be some rules on what does and/or doesn't qualify for that kind of support. Sadads (talk) 21:49, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Bluerasberry. Thanks for linking, Sadads. Regretfully, we don't have a means/process to fund OA fees for papers. Instead, our policy is intended to be used by people seeking grants to plan for that additional cost in advance. I think it is a good idea to consider putting together such a means/process, and I agree that the criteria you have laid out would be a good starting point. Regretfully, I don't think that we could make this work in time for this specific paper. --EpochFail (talk) 02:07, 6 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
EpochFail Thanks, it is very useful to know that this is the first time this kind of request has been made. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:27, 6 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Community comments[edit]

Process for open access[edit]

There ought to be a process to request funding for open access. Blue Rasberry (talk) 11:35, 26 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment/discussion moved from endorsement section[edit]

Kopiersperre I cannot publish on Commons until after the paper has been published in a journal, and then only after paying the open access fee. My priority is to get the benefit of peer review and academic credibility. If I publish on Commons first, then that means I cannot publish in an academic journal. Journals only publish new articles, and if the piece were previously published on Commons, then I could not publish the article as new elsewhere. Is that a sufficient explanation? Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:38, 7 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
If you allow, I will give you two advices:
  • choose a cheaper journal
  • only take the academic merits and make your paper available to the public via LibGen
The German chapter (WMDE) has paid once a publisher (de Gruyter) to make this book available under CC-BY-SA license. But this was decided not by the community but by the German paid staff ("Team Community"). And I know, that the US has no central chapter.--Kopiersperre (talk) 19:57, 7 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Kopiersperre Could you say more about why you feel this way?
Do you say "choose a cheaper journal" because you protest en:peer review generally, or is it because you think the price is too high, or is there some other reason?
I know LibGen as famous for illegally distributing copyrighted academic books and articles. I confirm that lots of people use LibGen, but beyond LibGen the audience that I want to reach is doctors and university faculty in the developed world. These are wealthy professional people who can afford to obey the law and pay for legal access to articles. These people have lots of money and little time, and they typically only read articles in traditional journals that have respected, established networks doing peer review. The journal that has accepted this paper, Academic Medicine, is about 100 years old and associated with an old organization, the Association of American Medical Colleges. I want successful professional people to read this article and trust it, and if it is in a journal that these people read already, then I think more of them would read it than if I put it only through Wikimedia Commons or if I used a service like LibGen that is mostly for people who are not professionally established enough to pay for legal access to the traditional publishers.
Walter de Gruyter probably reaches wealthier professional people also. I agree that you have an example that is a similar situation. I am not sure how often Wikimedia funding should be used to pay for open access, but I think that at least sometimes it should be used because it is a strategy to connect professional successful people to Wikipedia's usual amateur contributors who edit all kinds of articles.
If somehow I do not get this grant, then I will be publishing in this journal anyway. The paper is mostly for doctors and university staff, and Wikipedians are less important to me. Still, it does seem best that I see what the Wikimedia community thinks of this. If the community wants the paper to be free, then I could pay the fee and copy it to Wikimedia Commons, then it could also legally be put on LibGen, and copied anywhere else too.
It is a tough situation. I expect that most Wikipedians would agree with you, and say only publish in free journals or if there is a non-free journal, then Wikipedians can either ignore it or access the content without paying. It is hard to prove or evaluate that this information is worth a certain amount of money. I think this is the first time anyone has asked for this. Who knows - I might ask again with other papers also. There is not currently a way to decide what to do. Blue Rasberry (talk) 22:02, 8 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I have my problems with PEG, I think endorsements by other people are not effective for deciding this. But as I pointed out, a similar thing was paid before. Why should you not get the same?--Kopiersperre (talk) 10:36, 9 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

WMF Comments[edit]

The discussion between EpochFail, Polimerek, Sadads and Bluerasberry around how to evaluate requests to pay OA fees was valuable both in terms of making a decision on this request, and to inform guidelines for funding OA fees in the future. Until official guidelines are developed, we will review OA fee grant requests on a case by case basis depending on community involvement and on how broad of an impact OA publication might have. While it is difficult to assess the potential impact of making a research paper freely available, this particular paper was written by active contributors to Wikimedia projects, has been accepted to a well respected journal and covers Wikipedia Education Programs, which we support with staff and other resources. It seems reasonable to expect that many program leaders will benefit from access to this research. Thank you to everyone who contributed to this discussion. We look forward to sharing this research with other grantees and education program leaders once it is published. Cheers, --KHarold (WMF) (talk) 18:16, 3 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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