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Friday, January 14, 2022

Wikidata, Open Infrastructures, Recognition&Rewards

Example acks section.
I won't dwell about open citations and CiTO, but do want to repeat how humongous potential Wikidata (Wikibase) has. Yesterday, during the SWAT4HCLS hackathon we ran into a predicate allowing Wikidata to store and generally FAIR-ify "Acknowledgment" sections. You can actually record whom you are thanking in your article, with the caveat, the people need to be in Wikidata (notable). Property P7173 is used for this. 

This query lists people who have been acknowledged in Wikidata this way, for whatever the literature thanks them for. It's a bit of recognition and rewarding, some real impact on the scientific process that no one care about (as much as citations). You get thanked a lot in articles? Currently, you should have gotten yourself cited instead. Perverse incentives, indeed.

But Wikidata once again shows that it all just comes down to willingness. Technically these things are trivial. It is all about scholars wanting to care. I wish more people would care.

The number of Wikidata can record that other infrastructures do not continues the grow. We now have this. Wikidata can:

  • detailed keyword annotation (see e.g. this tutorial)
  • track citations (OpenCitations, I4OC)
  • track typed citations (CiTO)
  • links to preprints
  • links to retraction databases
  • links to post-publication peer review
  • track acknowledged people

Scholia can make this information visible. But what we need for adoption in Recognition&Rewards is people using the data in other ways. Let 2022 be the year to make open infrastructure reality.

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