So exciting to see plans around this really important issue! I was particularly interested in the plan to: "Conduct research to understand how readers access sources and to help contributors improve citation quality" (on the slideshow) but I can't see where (particularly the first part) is reflected in this annual planning doc? Would love to hear more!
Topic on Talk:Wikimedia Technology/Annual Plans/FY2019/CDP3: Knowledge Integrity
Hi Heather! For the past 2 years we've increasingly been working together with a team based out of Stanford. Here is the Research page: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Citation_Click_Data . You can see the first output here: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0190046. There's a lot more to do with understanding which sources readers access and what the OA-ness of those sources is. We have proceeded slowly to ensure proper privacy and data protections are in place, but it's starting to ramp up now.
Hey Heather, on top of the pointer Jake mentioned, there are some overarching questions related to the usage of citations to understand how and when readers rely on them, that we've never been able to answer at scale. These go beyond the questions described in Lauren's proposal (which is very much focused on reference consumption in health-related articles). We're scoping out a more comprehensive project based on this data that we'll pilot in this quarter and expect to extend in the coming fiscal year (from July on) if the Knowledge Integrity project is approved. There's a qualitative component to this work that we're also looking to spec out in the next couple of months (led by @Jmorgan (WMF)) and could use some of your input and expertise (as soon as it's up on Meta).
Super cool stuff from Stanford @Ocaasi (WMF) re. the biomedical data but yes, very important to go beyond medical data. Having studied citation practice in the context of global media events (disasters, elections or terrorist attacks) and read most of the research coming out about citation impact in medical research and the natural sciences I'm really struck by how different the practices and impact might be, but also, importantly, how Wikipedia's citation practices in the context of media events demonstrates the *value* of Wikipedia's approach to current problems of misinformation, fake news etc. I think it's in these areas that we need to really demonstrate how readers and editors understand the (social/technical) *meaning* of citations. It is great to see the beginnings of qualitative work planned in this area, @Dario (WMF)! Personally I think that the approach should involve mixed methods - ethnographers working with data scientists - but you @Jmorgan (WMF) is super experienced with this so excited to see what you come up with. I have the germs of some new work in this area in mind so very interested to see whether we might collaborate... :)
@Hfordsa glad to hear that you're interested! Lets set up some time to talk. I'm just starting to wrap my head around how we should approach this problem space. So your timing is excellent :)
Cool bananas @Jtmorgan :) Sounds good!