This will be achieved by using APO’s database to verify the most reputable and prolific publishing organisations as sources, upload these to Wikidata so they can be sourced in Wikipedia pages, and then creating new or updating existing content on public policy issues. So the purpose of this project is to improve the presence of valuable policy and research material and coverage of important policy issues in Wikimedia. And while books and journals fill this gap, the time taken to publish leads to a loss of currency and they tend not to be open access. While webpages and news media contain the latest and most up-to-date information they often do not present in-depth research or policy on a particular issue. To create content for Wikipedia, volunteer Wikimedians rely on peer-reviewed journals, or books, textbooks, magazines, and journals published by respected publishing houses or mainstream newspapers for sourcing information. APO is being supported by this fund to undertake the project, The missing link: Incorporating policy reports into the free knowledge ecosystem. The Wikimedia Alliances Fund supports mission-aligned organisations that are part of the Free Knowledge Ecosystem to partner with the Wikimedia Movement to amplify each other’s work. So it’s important that knowledge is free and openly accessible but also accurate and good-quality.Īnd in a world where economic inequality continues to grow – both within countries and across countries – this can only be made worse if there isn’t free and equal access to information and knowledge. Having experienced a one in 100 year pandemic and watched protestors storm the bastion of democracy – you would have to say the most obvious challenge is the amplification of misinformation. There is no doubt that the digital age has brought many benefits, but it’s also created challenges. If you told Francis Bacon that 400 years later, this technology would be invented where a person could source any information they wanted… well, I don’t think he’d be that naive to think that people would only use it for good. We make it accessible in our repository and we create metadata which makes it findable across the internet, including search engines.Īnd there’s plenty more initiatives, organisations and individuals that are advocating and doing what they can to make knowledge free and accessible – that’s the free knowledge ecosystem. APO sources this material from across numerous websites. While they may be freely available, they aren’t generally findable or accessible as they tend to be sitting on an organisation’s website. If you haven’t read my earlier blog, you may question why we are championing open access to publications produced by organisations, for free. And the best way to achieve evidence-informed decision-making is to make research and policy freely available through open access. We believe that the best way to improve societal outcomes is for the best available research to be integrated into decision-making. Specifically, we champion open access and evidence-informed decision-making. There’s also us, APO, a part of the open access movement. Wikimedia’s mission is to make knowledge accessible by everyone.Īnd they aren’t alone, there’s the open access movement advocating for research outputs, particularly those produced by (publicly funded) universities, to be openly accessible and usable. Actually, it’s Wikimedia – Wikipedia is just one component of the ‘Wiki-verse’. The most prominent member of the movement is Wikipedia. This is essentially the foundation on which the free knowledge movement is built. Photo by NASA on Unsplash What’s the free knowledge ecosystem?įrancis Bacon is attributed to the phrase, ‘ knowledge is power’, as he convincingly argued that the sharing and growing of knowledge isn’t just good for an individual, but good for all of society.
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