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WikiCred/2022 CFP/The Human Body project

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The Human Body project
A WikiCred 2022 Grant Proposal
Project TypeResearch + Output
AuthorNetha Hussain
(User: Netha Hussain)
Contactnethahussain(_AT_)gmail.com
Requested amount3000-3500 USD
Award amountUnknown
What is your idea?

This project is aimed at increasing the quality and credibility of the content related to anatomy and physiology on English Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons by integrating the content from the ‘Anatomy and PhysiologyOpenstax textbook. The contents of the textbook will be integrated to Wikimedia projects according to the guidelines for adding open-licenced text to Wikipedia.

The glossary of the textbook will be first cleaned using OpenRefine tool and exported in list format to create an index of anatomy and physiology terminology [similar example here]. From this index, the knowledge gaps in anatomy and physiology will be mapped using the redlinks, and these gaps will be bridged by creating new articles for the relevant redlinks using the content from the textbook. Furthermore, content from the chapters from the book will be used to create wiki-fied text for new sections in existing Wikipedia articles. The textbook also has lists of key terms and tables of anatomical structures and physiological processes. This content will be integrated to the existing lists related to medicine on English Wikipedia. New list articles will be created wherever a relevant list does not exist. Existing content in articles will not be altered or removed. All content that will be added from the book to Wikipedia will comply with English Wikipedia’s manual of style. Appropriate credits to the authors of the book will be given wherever possible.

The 1500+ images from the textbook have already been extracted using Adobe Acrobat. Duplicate images will be removed, irrelevant images will be discarded and the descriptions for the images will be fetched manually. All images that are licensed under CC-BY-SA or lower will be mass uploaded via OpenRefine to Wikimedia Commons after adding structured data. Relevant images from this image bank will then be used to illustrate Wikipedia articles.

An example image from the Anatomy and Physiology textbook showing the fate of germ layers of the human embryo


Why is it important?

Wikipedia is one of the most popular sources of health information on the internet (Smith et al). The articles related to human body are frequently visited pages on Wikipedia. For example, articles belonging to Category:Anatomy have approximately 1,500,000 daily pageviews and articles belonging to Category:Physiology have approximately 1,900,000 daily pageviews. The article ‘Heart’, that predominantly contains anatomy and physiology information has a daily average of 3000+ pageviews. However, out of the 6000+ featured articles on English Wikipedia, only one article related to anatomy/physiology (menstrual cycle) has attained featured status so far. There are 46 good articles in anatomy, while no physiology articles are named in the good articles list. Given their wide popularity and need for improvement, the articles related to anatomy and physiology on English Wikipedia are likely to benefit from more content and images.

Anatomy and Physiology is an open textbook hosted by Openstax, a platform for free and flexible textbooks. The textbook is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Licence v4.0, and was last updated in January 2022. The contributing authors of the textbook are eminent teachers from various Universities in the United States of America. According to their website, this book has been used in over 2000 classrooms around the world for education. The book has 1420 pages and contains over 1500 high quality images. Therefore, the contents of this book are suitable for integration to Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons.


Link(s) to your resume or anything else (CV, GitHub, etc.) that may be relevant

Netha Hussain at Google Scholar


Is your project already in progress?

No. However, the extraction of images from the textbook has already been done using Adobe Acrobat.


How is this project relevant to credibility and Wikipedia?

The text, images, glossary and tables from the Anatomy and Physiology textbook will increase the quality and credibility of content in articles related to anatomy and physiology on English Wikipedia. Furthermore, the images from the book could be used to illustrate anatomy and physiology related articles in multiple languages.


What is the ultimate impact of this project?

The ultimate impact of the project is to improve the quality and credibility of anatomy and physiology related content on Wikimedia projects.


Can your project scale?

Yes, the workflow used for this project could be re-used to integrate content from other similar textbooks and open educational resources to Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons.


Why are you the people to do it?

I am a medical doctor and researcher who has been volunteering with the Wikimedia movement for the past 12 years. I have authored several articles related to medicine and healthcare on Wikipedia in English and Malayalam languages. I have good understanding of the manual of style of English Wikipedia as well as Creative Commons licences. I have mass uploaded over 20,000 images to Wikimedia Commons, including images related to medicine. My expertise in medicine and my past experience in working with projects related to knowledge gaps will be helpful in completing this project successfully.


What is the impact of your idea on diversity and inclusiveness of the Wikimedia movement?

Healthcare related content is one of the most sought after resources on the internet. However, credible healthcare content are likely to be paywalled, and therefore are not freely accessible. The quality of healthcare content on English Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons will be increased as a part of this project, thereby increasing the credibility of Wikimedia as a healthcare resource.


What are the challenges associated with this project and how you will overcome them?

No particular challenges are likely to be encountered.


How will you spend your funds?
  • Research, data modelling, content transfer and image upload - 3000 USD (Netha Hussain)
  • Manual addition of descriptions to images, data cleaning - 500 USD (project assistant, to be recruited)


How long will your project take?

This project involves two months of part-time work during March-May 2023.


Have you worked on projects for previous grants before?

I have worked on a previous WikiCred grant to map and bridge the knowledge gaps related to Vaccine Safety in 2020.