Research talk:Developing Wikimedia Impact Metrics as a Sociotechnical Solution for Encouraging Funder and Academic Engagement

Research funders and impact measures e.g. REF

Dear team, This is coming from a UK-centric point of view, but have you thought about involving organisations such as Wellcome Trust, UKRI, Leverhulme, and other major research funders in your project? For example, most UKRI funding is reported via a system called ResearchFish. If there was a mechanism for connecting impact metrics for publications to this platform it would be extremely beneficial, as grant holders are expected to report back via ResearchFish any ongoing impacts for up to 5 years after the funds are spent. This normally involves updating each item line-by-line, which is painful! It could also contribute to the People, Culture, and Environment section of the REF, as well as contributing towards impact case studies. I would also imagine that commercial organisations, such as Altmetrics, might have an interest in the outcomes. Just a thought Drkirstyross (talk) 16:06, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

I think the above suggestions are good (as another UK academic) DecFinney (talk) 16:28, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

Hello, these are great comments and we plan to do them. If you know someone in particular we can all talk together for instance.

We are in the very process of creating this minimally viable product, the new P&E dashboard type should be out soon, and then we intend probably next year to start approaching various funders and etc.

Thank you both for your interest! NabuKudurru (talk) 11:02, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

How to support the project?

I am a researcher who is gradually becoming interested in contributing to wikipedia. Is there any simple way I can support your project? No worries if not. --DecFinney (talk) 16:30, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

Hi, I imagine you can respond to the project's survey : https://iup.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0wfRHBdZmtbEuW2 Jeanne Noiraud (talk) 10:51, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Hi Dec,

We are meeting pretty regularly on fridays, even this week we can meet i guess. Depends on what skills you have. We are now developing some dedicated user group that we can get feedback from on the tool as it develops. If you can develop code great, if you know some organization that could use it, great, if you want to give feedback great.

Another way would be just to do a grant together, in general this is about getting professional credit, so bringing people together for grants so that work can be done is it. Best, NabuKudurru (talk) 11:06, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

New metric idea

Hi, I responded to the survey but I just had another idea about a relevant way to highlight contributions. I think it would be more appealing to researchers if it was similar to the way they are used to publish academic papers. For example, I would be interested in having a list of the articles I contributed to with an indicator of my contribution to these articles (e.g. % of words written) and an impact indicator (views). That is more easily put in an academic resume than raw numbers of added words.

I also think it would be great to incentivise researchers to go toward linked open data for funded projects with wikidata : having a QID for the grant numbers + list of contributors with ORCID numbers + linked QIDs for each deliverables + we could link the edited wikipedia pages to the grant item. I was in a Horizon project some years ago and the website is down now, all the deliverables are scattered in various repositories, this is not easy to track... Wikidata would solve this problem, plus funders could query wikidata to make their own metrics if they want to, fetch all relevant DOIs and so on. But I don't think researchers will do that unless it is asked formally by the funder.

Otherwise, could the P&E Dashboard be used to generate automatic edits ? For example, when we edit through a program, it adds a property "edited as part of program" XXX in the page wikidata item. We could also imagine having a box automatically added in the discussion page of the wikipedia articles acknowledging that contributions were made as part of a funded program, funders like having their names somewhere and and it could also help signal potential conflicts of interests. Jeanne Noiraud (talk) 10:50, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Hi Jeanne,

I agree with everything and it is quite what we are working toward. Would you like to meet and discuss some time? Wikidata is a good suggestion, can you help us make it happen? We would happy to work together also on grants to make it happen. We are imagining some DOI like system so that grant related edits can be tracked. It could be on Wikidata, but we anticipate having a slick interface so that funders and etc can access it in a way for them.

We intend to in some time ask funders to trial it, and to make some argument about how it is faster and more impactful than citations etc and this is going to be the argument.

I suggest we meet sometime or be in contact more professionally. I think we will hold explicitly open meetings, and have some list serve going forward about meetings and etc.

We can meet often on Fridays, or any other time if you really have some capabilities etc, we are mostly constrained by time and funding right now. Best, Brett NabuKudurru (talk) 11:16, 24 April 2025 (UTC)