As one of Leeds' Research Data Managers said recently, "like dogs and Christmas #openaccess is for ever not just for global crisis!"

In the long term, Wikimedia should have a role in emphasising the value of sharing information so the temporary availability may become permanent.

For now, I've set up a kind of watchlist showing changes to all the articles categorised as relating to the pandemic except for the top level ones which have a lot of eyes on them already.

If people on this list have a few minutes, I'd appreciate your thoughts on how practical the watchlist is either here or on the task force's talk page.

On Mon, 13 Apr 2020 at 17:06, Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com> wrote:

On 09 April 2020 at 18:00 Richard Nevell <richard.nevell@wikimedia.org.uk> wrote:
If anybody needs familiarity with the sourcing standards for medical articles, take a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_sources_(medicine) - although most of the content will only need to meet the usual standards for sourcing that you're used to.
Richard Nevell, on behalf of Wikimedia UK
Doug Taylor, on behalf of Wikimedia Medicine
Yes, that's an important point in practice.
The extraordinary times Covid-19 has brought with it have seen the major medical journal publishers react. This Twitter thread is very helpful with the open access aspects of the huge volume of publications:
https://twitter.com/MsPhelps/status/1249662402255298560
Temporarily, much more of the literature is going to be available to read, on the PubMed Central repository, than would usually be the case. The actual details of all that could be the basis of a crash course on open access. And why it matters.
The bibliographical situation that is emerging is scary, really. Let's note that Wikidata can help cope: by holding details on papers, and data giving an idea of the reliability of journals. By capturing Creative Commons license information. By allowing us to add topical information. And with queries that are quite intuitive, supporting use and maintenance of the data.
Charles
_______________________________________________
Wikimedia UK mailing list
wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk

Dr Richard Nevell

Project Coordinator, Wikimedia UK

020 3372 0765

Wikimedia UK is the national chapter for the global Wikimedia open knowledge movement, and a registered charity. We rely on donations from individuals to support our work to make knowledge open for all. Have you considered supporting Wikimedia? https://donate.wikimedia.org.uk

Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales, Registered No. 6741827
Registered Charity No.1144513
Registered Office Ground Floor, Europoint, 5–11 Lavington Street, London SE1 0NZ

The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects). Wikimedia UK is an independent non-profit charity with no legal control over Wikipedia nor responsibility for its contents.