This press release is also available online here:
*https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Wikimedia_Foundation_adopts_Open_Access_Policy_to_support_free_knowledge
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Wikimedia_Foundation_adopts_Open_Access_Policy_to_support_free_knowledge*
A version of this as a blog post is available here:
*https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/03/18/wikimedia-open-access-policy/
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/03/18/wikimedia-open-access-policy/*
*Wikimedia Foundation adopts Open Access Policy to support free knowledge*
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Future research supported by the Wikimedia Foundation to be made freely
available
The Wikimedia Foundation is committed to making knowledge of all forms
freely available to the world. Beginning today, our new Open Access Policy
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Open_access_policy will ensure that
all research work produced with support from the Wikimedia Foundation will
be openly available
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Open_Access_Initiative#Definition_of_open_access
to the public and reusable on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites. We are
pleased to announce this new policy at the 18th ACM conference on
Computer-Supported
Cooperative Work and Social Computing http://cscw.acm.org/2015/ (CSCW
2015).
“Wikimedia is committed to nurturing open knowledge for all, unrestrained
by cost barriers,” said Lila Tretikov
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lila_Tretikov, executive director of the
Wikimedia Foundation. “The Wikimedia movement has a longstanding commitment
to open access practices. Today, we are excited to formalize that
commitment with this policy.”
Over the past decade Wikipedia has been the subject of hundreds
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Papers.cfm?abstract_id=2021326 of academic
studies on topics such as flu forecasting
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/532246/how-wikipedia-data-is-revolutionizing-flu-forecasting/,
the influence of major global languages
http://language.media.mit.edu/visualizations/wikipedia, and Wikipedia’s
own geographic imbalances
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Geographic_imbalance. The
Wikimedia Foundation has made this research possible through a commitment
to making Wikipedia’s data open and accessible.
Open access scholarship is central to Wikimedia's mission to empower people
around the world to participate in knowledge creation. Access to these open
sources is critical to ensuring that articles on Wikipedia are reliable,
accurate, and reflect our ever-evolving understanding of the world.
Paywalls and copyright restrictions too often prevent the use of academic
research in this effort.
Our new Open Access Policy will ensure that all research the Wikimedia
Foundation supports through grants, equipment, or research collaboration is
made widely accessible and reusable. Research, data, and code developed
through these collaborations will be made available in Open Access venues
and under a free license http://freedomdefined.org/ in keeping with the
Wikimedia Foundation’s mission to support free knowledge.
The Wikimedia Foundation is proud to join the growing ranks of leading
institutions with open access policies.
Wikimedia Foundation Open Access Policy
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Open_access_policy
1. Expectations
Researchers will need to provide unrestricted access to and reuse of all
their research output if their research receives support from the Wikimedia
Foundation in the form of:
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funds;
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letters of endorsement;
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equipment, hosting, or office space;
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access to non-public data or special API privileges; or
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other support under an agreement between researchers and the Wikimedia
Foundation.
A. Proposal. Researchers will document their project on Meta-Wiki,
including the original research proposal, main research questions, and key
outcomes.
B. Supporting Materials. Researchers will deposit their work in a public
repository by the time of publication of any respective research article or
within three months after the termination of the project, whichever comes
first. The deposited work should be licensed as follows:
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aggregated and properly anonymized data produced as part of the project
under an Open Definition-conformant license
http://opendefinition.org/licenses/, preferably CC0;
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source code under the GNU General Public License version 2.0 or any
other Open Source Initiative-approved license
http://opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical;
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media files under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 or any
other free license http://freedomdefined.org/Licenses.
C. Published Materials. Researchers will publish all output in an Open
Access outlet under a Free License.
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If a work based on the project is accepted for publication in a peer
reviewed outlet that does not make its articles available online, free of
charge, and under free licenses, an electronic copy of the
