Established in 1660, the Royal Society is dedicated to preserving and promoting science expertise. From its base in central London, it serves as the United Kingdom’s academy for the sciences, boasting a wide portfolio of fellows from every walk of scientific life.

Though rooted in tradition, they are very keen to spread their prowess into the digital realm. John Byrne, a Wikipedian since late 2006, jumped at the opportunity to join them as a part-time Wikipedian in Residence for six months in 2014.

“The Royal Society sees itself as having the lead in the presentation of science to the general public,” John explains, “and that’s a big concern, so it’s very interested in the popularisation of science. They hold lectures, they have book prizes for popular books about science.

“It sees Wikipedia in that context. Wikipedia fits very well into that,” he adds.

During his time with the Royal Society, John helped to organise a number of events for the public and academia alike.

“The project involved several public events, mostly training workshops, where we had a lot of helpers from the existing community, and that was great. It was harder to involve the wider scientific editing community, but we did manage that in some cases.

“There were various aspects: there were editing workshops, there was work getting images released, and we got public subscriptions to the Royal Society’s journals for a number of Wikipedians.”

Even before John started working with the Royal Society, he was already getting involved with events. He played a key role in Ada Lovelace Day 2012 before he arrived as Wikipedian in Residence, as well as organising events for International Women’s Day during his tenure there. Both were dedicated to improving the site’s coverage of women in science.

“They were both very successful training editathons,” John says, “concentrating on the biographies of women scientists which is a real issue in the scientific sector. Both of those were tremendously successful with a really great crew.

“It’s actually harder to do on other subjects,” he continues, “but women in science is a topic that’s very easy to recruit for, and you get excellent results.”

“We were very lucky that both the women’s events were addressed by female fellows of the Royal Society, who came in especially which was tremendous. Ada Frith actually trained in the Ada Lovelace Day and produced two articles which is great. They were really good days, both of them.”

That the Royal Society has such influence in the field is a fact not lost on John, who is keen to develop a strong working relationship with the organisation. He feels Wikipedia’s information can be enhanced with the Society’s involvement.

“The Royal Society is the most prestigious organisation in the scientific sector, and it gives Wikipedia credibility, and other organisations in the sector have looked at that partnership.”

Since they were already quite interested in getting involved with digital output and the spreading of their knowledge, John found no resistance while working with them. “The Royal Society is really keen to continue collaborating with Wikipedia, which is great, because not all Wikipedian in Residence projects have had that result,” he says.

“They’d already been working with Wikipedia for about two years before I became involved, and they’re very keen to go on. We’ve learned a lot of lessons about what to do and what not to do, and I’m confident that the programme will keep going at some level.”

John feels that continuing a partnership would bring benefits to both sides of the equation. “There’s a lot of benefit both ways for the Royal Society and Wikipedia working together. We get improved content, and they get improved coverage of science generally, which is a large part of what they’re about,” he explains.

“With other scientific institutions, there’s a mutual benefit in improving Wikipedia content, and improving coverage especially addressed to the wider public of their area of science.”

• For more on The GLAM-Wiki Revolution, visit the project page, or find out more about the Royal Society Wikimedian in Residence project.

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This post was written by John Byrne, Wikimedian in Residence at the Royal Society and Cancer Research UK

I’ve had two recent uploads of images released by organizations where I am Wikimedian in Residence. Neither of them are huge in quantity compared to some uploads, but I’m really pleased that an unusually large percentage of them are already used in articles. Many thanks to all the editors who put them in articles, especially Keilana for CRUK and Duncan.Hull for the Royal Society images.

The first release was by Cancer Research UK (CRUK), of 390 cancer-related diagrams, including many covering anatomy and cell biology. Many medical editors had said they were keen to have these available, and they have been quickly added to many articles, with 190 already being used, some twice, and mostly on high-traffic medical articles like breast cancer, lung cancer and cervical cancer. A BaGLAMa2 report shows page views in August, traditionally a low-traffic month, of 1.1 million

Wikipedia cancer articles tend to be mostly illustrated with alarming shots of tumours, or purple-stained pathology slides which convey little to non-professional readers. The new images are from the patient information pages on CRUK’s website and explain in simple terms basic aspects of the main cancers – where they arise, how they grow and spread. Some show surgical procedures that are hard to convey in prose.

Many files have generous labelling inside the image. All the files are in svg format, allowing for easy translation of these labels into other languages, which should be especially useful over time. All use the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International licence. All the images of this type that CRUK have are now uploaded, but additional ones should be uploaded as they are created, and other types of image, including infographics, are in the pipeline.

We are also working to change the standard model release forms CRUK uses, so that photos and videos featuring people that are made in future will be easier to release. CRUK also has some very attractive short animations, which in some ways are more culturally neutral and so preferable for use around the world.  These avoid model release issues and some should be coming soon.

The other release is by the Royal Society, the UK’s National Academy for the Sciences. I’ve  now completed my term as Wikipedian in Residence there,  but had got their agreement to release the official portrait photos of the new Fellows elected in 2014, with the intention to continue this in future years. Some photos of their building were also released.

By early September, only a month after uploading completed, of the 72 files uploaded 38 (53%) are now used in Wikipedia articles. The portrait of Professor Martin Hairer, who won the Fields Medal this August is used in 18 different language versions of Wikipedia, having fortuitously been uploaded just before it was announced that he had won the Fields Medal, which is often called the mathematician’s equivalent of a Nobel.  Most of the biographies were started after this announcement.  Other images of Fellows are used in the French, Chinese and Persian Wikipedias, as well as English. There were 96,000 page views in August for these articles.

The availability of high-quality portraits is very likely to encourage the writing of articles on those Fellows who still lack Wikipedia biographies. There are 15 of these, which is already a better (lower) figures than for recent years such as 2012, where 29 still lack biographies.

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This post was written by John Byrne, Wikimedian in Residence at both Cancer Research UK and the Royal Society

I’m fortunate to have been appointed as Wikipedian in Residence at Cancer Research UK (CRUK), the world’s largest cancer research charity, funding over 4,000 research staff working on cancer. The role will run until mid-December 2014, and is funded by Wellcome Trust, a large UK medical research charitable foundation. I’ll be based at CRUK’s London headquarters, the Angel Building in Islington, working there four days a week. Alongside this, until early July I will also be continuing my six month term, on a one day a week basis, in the same role at the Royal Society, the UK’s National Academy of Science.

Part of the role at CRUK will be to work with the existing medical editors on the English Wikipedia to improve our articles on cancer topics, in particular those on the four common cancers which are widely recognised as having the greatest “unmet need” because there has been little improvement in survival rates in recent decades. These are cancers of the lung, pancreas, brain and oesophagus. CRUK has just announced a new research strategy with an increased focus on these, and my role will complement that. But I will also be addressing other cancer-related content, for example in relation to the Medical Translation Project of WikiProject Medicine.

CRUK has access, through its own staff and its access to other researchers and clinicians, to tremendous amounts of expertise, both in terms of science and the communication of science, where they have teams trained and experienced in communicating with a wide range of distinct audiences, from those who write their patient information pages in very plain English to the different teams who produce material for scientists and for a general audience. My boss, Henry Scowcroft, writes for CRUK’s award-winning science blog, and is a Wikipedian. I’ll be exploring a number of approaches to bringing all this expertise to bear on Wikipedia’s content.

Wikimania 2014 in London, about a mile from CRUK’s HQ, gives a great opportunity to bring CRUK and many medical Wikipedians together face to face. A novel aspect of the role is that we are planning to conduct research into the experiences of a range of different types of consumers of Wikipedia’s cancer content. There has been very little formal qualitative research into the experiences of Wikipedia’s readers – we hope this project will begin to address this gap, as well as encouraging others to carry out similar projects.

I will also be making presentations and conducting training for key groups of CRUK staff and researchers at their five main research centres in London, Manchester, Glasgow, Oxford and Cambridge. Some of this will be traditional workshop how-to-edit training, but I will also be doing some aimed at people expecting to be able to contribute reviews and comments, but not to do much editing themselves.
On another tack, I will be working on releasing suitable CRUK images on open licences and uploading them to Wikimedia Commons. I think the medical diagrams CRUK has created will be especially useful in Wikipedia articles, and we’re already making substantial progress towards a substantial release of content.

Meanwhile, in another part of town…

At the Royal Society the programme of public events continues with an editathon on Neuroscience on June 7th, bringing scientists and experienced Wikipedians together to improve articles, with the emphasis on key topics in the field. I will also be conducting further training within the Royal Society community, for the Research Fellows, who are early or mid-career research scientists whose work is funded by the Royal Society.

Over the last month I’ve been able to announce that the Royal Society has agreed that the photos it takes of each new Fellow on their election will be released on open licences and uploaded to Commons. The photos of this year’s 50 Fellows will be taken at the formal induction day in July. Other image releases are being discussed, and I’m hopeful will be agreed before my period at the Royal Society ends.

The Royal Society has also offered Wikipedians one year subscriptions to its range of scientific journals, via the Wikipedia Library. Applications are open until May 25th. It is hoped this offer will continue in the future, as with other publishers.

I’m also working on other ideas for things that can continue after my term ends in July. The Royal Society is keen to continue working with the Wikimedia movement, so I expect to be able to leave a solid legacy when my formal term ends.

Women Fellows of the Royal Society

The 2014 elections of fellows took place on April 30, and 50 new Fellows, plus 10 foreign members, were elected. User:Duncan.Hull was as usual wonderfully quick in creating List of Fellows of the Royal Society elected in 2014, which as usual showed that most did not have Wikipedia biographies! Currently only 15 of the 50 have articles on the English Wikipedia, with one (Professor Demetri Terzopoulos FRS) having one on the French WP. Of the Foreign Members, 9/10 have articles, with Professor Jean-Marie Tarascon (who doesn’t even have one on French WP) the only exception. As far as gender goes, there are 7/50 and 1/10 women, who initially had 2/7 (now 4/7) and 1/10 articles. So the overall percentage with biographies is 15/50= 30% , with the women at 2/7= 28.5%. For the 10 Foreign Members we have 90% and 100%.

I see this as reinforcing my suspicions about the often-heard idea that Wikipedia coverage of women scientists is currently poor compared to that of male scientists. This is no coincidence, as there has been considerable effort over recent years put into improving coverage, with several events at the Royal Society and many more across the world, and it has paid off. I continue to see Wikipedia as part of the solution here, rather than part of the problem (to use a favourite figure of speech of that famous woman scientist and FRS, Margaret Thatcher).

Until this new batch of Fellows, 100% of all the female FRSs (past and present) had articles, many very short of course, and I can forecast with some confidence that the three that are still without articles will have them at the latest after the next Ada Lovelace Day in October or International Women’s Day in March, as these dates see a particular concentration of Wikipedia events on Women in Science.

That won’t be the case for the men – taking for example List of Fellows of the Royal Society elected in 2012, there were 44 fellows elected, but only 17 have articles yet. This includes Julian Lewis (biologist), just created very recently after the early death of this cancer researcher and author. As it happens he was the former director of one of CRUK’s research institutes, the London Research Institute, as well as being a FRS.

Two of the women in the 2014 intake already have had new articles started, with Dorothy Bishop (psychologist) now a good length, though Karalyn Patterson remains a one-liner. So then there were three …. to be precise Amanda Fisher, Jenny Nelson, and Sheena Radford (and of course, plenty of men). Let’s hope the arrival of photos on Commons after the July ceremony helps to turn the remaining red links blue.

You can contact John directly about both of these projects on his Wikipedia user page. For the Cancer Research UK project go here, and for the Royal Society project go here.

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This post was written by John Byrne, Wikimedian in Residence at the Royal Society

I’m now a month and a half into my six months as Wikmedian-in-residence at the Royal Society, the United Kingdom’s National Academy of Science, though as the role is supposed to be one day a week only, that in theory amounts to less than two working weeks.  In practice I’ve been much busier than that.

So far everything I’ve done has been internal to the Royal Society staff and parts of their wider scientific community, but on Tuesday March 4th we are having the first public event with an editathon celebrating (slightly in advance) International Women’s Day.   We’re trying what I think is a somewhat novel structure, with the room booked between 2 and 9 pm, and places booked for the afternoon or evening, but with fewer available for the evening so that if some afternoon people want to stay on they can.  If lots of people want to stay it could get interesting!   Apart from the training presentations, we are fortunate that Dame Athene Donald, FRS, Professor of Experimental Physics at Cambridge will be with us for a while in the afternoon and will introduce the afternoon session with a short talk on diversity in science, and the work the Royal Society is doing in this area. She also serves on the University of Cambridge Council and is their Gender Equality Champion. Both sessions will have a short tutorial presentation on editing followed by getting stuck in.  See the piece in last weekend’s Observer.

All 36 places have now gone, but people can join the waiting list (currently empty) as we may have cancellations. Of course online participants will be very welcome – see the event page on Wikipedia here.   The next public event will be on Tuesday March 25th, an editathon on the broad theme of diversity in science in gender, culture and geography.  That is planned to have the same structure, as adjusted by the lessons of March 4th.  There are also other events the week of International Women’s Day offering basic editing training, including the Women Archaeologists editing event at the Petrie Museum and the Women’s Arts Practices editing event at Women’s Art Library, Goldsmiths, on the day itself, Saturday March 8th —   see the Wikimedia UK events page.

The March 4th event is held in collaboration with the Royal Academy of Engineering, two doors down in Carlton House Terrace, who have been making a big push in the media recently about the need for more women to enter engineering.  The Royal Society held very successful editathons for Ada Lovelace Day in 2012 and again in 2013, which was my first own real introduction to the Royal Society, as one of the trainer team.

In January I gave a series of customized presentations for the Royal Society staff.  We had decided to offer training to the three most immediately relevant departments: the Library, Policy and Publications departments.  The training took the form of a two-part presentation, with two sessions of 90 minutes each, a week or two apart. The first session was without laptops for the participants, and had a quick overview of Wikimedia and Wikipedia, followed by an “under the bonnet” section showing the different namespaces, page histories, and discussing how Wikipedia works in practice, with a look at links in from the Royal Society websites, and other issues of special relevance.

The second session was hands-on editing practice, concentrating on basic techniques using a list of articles with issues.  Many thanks to User:Serendipodous (twice) and Jonathan Cardy who came in to help with the editing sessions.  January was largely taken up with these sessions, and at the moment we are not planning further ones, though I would like to offer a version to other Royal Society stakeholders/audiences in the future.

Apart from that I had a series of meetings with several departments, planning what else we might accomplish in the 6 month period. I had already come in for a planning meeting in November, so we had the bones of an events plan already, including slots at various sorts of RS events already in the calendar. I can’t announce many of the things we are hoping to do just yet, but I’m very positive about the project. One of the fascinating things about the RS is the very wide range of audiences or stakeholders they have, everybody from school students to Fellows of the RS and government. I’m especially keen to engage with their early and mid-career researcher audiences, and February and March events include three with the Royal Society Research Fellows, early-career researchers who receive grants from the Royal Society.

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Wikimedia UK is pleased to announce that John Byrne (User:Johnbod) has been appointed Wikimedian in Residence at The Royal Society, the UK’s national academy of science.

The residency will begin in January 2014 and run for six months, on the basis of working one day per week. Wikimedia UK is providing the core funding for the project.

It is a pilot exercise, aiming to learn the best way for Wikimedia and the Royal Society to collaborate in future. The main intended outcomes are: improving access to information about scientists from underrepresented groups, opening up the Society’s historical collections, and improving the quality of scientific articles on the Wikimedia projects.

John is an experienced Wikipedian who was named as Wikimedia UK’s first UK Wikimedian of the Year in 2012, and previously served as a trustee of the charity. He has extensive content experience, including many Featured Articles. John said:

“I’ve already been planning an exciting programme with Royal Society staff, including plenty of events. Some of these will be aimed at Royal Society staff while others are intended to meet the needs of scientists and the general public.

“Following our very successful training and editathon on women scientists in, held at the Royal Society in October in conjunction with the Medical Research Council, we plan a similar event in early March, around International Women’s Day.

“The Royal Society Library and archives have wonderful resources, with a good deal already online, and I’ll also be looking at what we can achieve with these.”

John is also hoping to make the beginnings of a deeper involvement between the scientific community generally and the Wikimedia projects, providing feedback from the scientific community on our content.

John says: “I will be using the alternative account User:Wiki at Royal Society John for edits in this role.  I am keen to hear other ideas from anyone on what might be done in this role.  Please leave your thoughts on my talk page”.

More information from the Royal Society

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Wikimedia UK is delighted to announce that The Royal Society is recruiting a Wikimedian in Residence.

This prestigious residency at the UK’s national academy of science will last for six months and is supported by the Society with funding from Wikimedia UK.

The Wikimedian in Residence will work with the Society to improve access to information about scientists from under-represented groups. They will also help to open up the Society’s historical collections and support the improvement of scientific articles on Wikipedia. The residency will also involve organising and running presentations, workshops, training sessions and edit-a-thons with staff, Fellows, scientists and members of the public on using Wikimedia platforms.

The resident will work for one day per week for a six-month period based in London and the applications process has begun. You can see details of the role here, download the person and job specification here and apply online here (log in required).

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Wikimedia UK is working together with the Royal Society and the Medical Research Council’s National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR) to celebrate the birthday of Rosalind Franklin, the scientist whose work laid the foundations for the discovery of the structure of DNA.

This special event on Thursday 25 July in Mill Hill, London, features an opportunity to learn how to edit Wikipedia with a focus on articles about women in science. There is also a panel discussion led by eminent female scientists including Professor Dame Athene Donald of Cambridge University and a presentation on the life and work of Rosalind Franklin.

This event is part of a series that is planned to celebrate the centenary of the Medical Research Council and all are welcome. Attendees will have access to a variety of excellent sources from, amongst others, the MRC, The Royal Society and the Wellcome Trust. We will have trainers available to take you through editing Wikipedia, and librarians able to explain more about the collection.

It’s free to take part but pre-booking is required. You can reserve your space here. For more information please contact Daria Cybulska, Wikimedia UK’s Programme Manager – daria.cybulska@wikimedia.org.uk

You can read more about the initiative here and during the event join us on Twitter using #WISWIKI

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