Wikipedia participation survey

An increasing number of university students worldwide use Wikipedia for “pre-research”, as part of their course assignments or research projects [1]. Yet many among academics and scientists refrain from contributing expert knowledge to Wikipedia, despite a growing number of calls from the scientific community to join the project. On the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the project, the Association for Psychological Science launched an initiative to get the scientific psychology community involved in improving the quality of articles in their field [2], while biomedical experts called upon their peers to help make public health information in Wikipedia rigorous and complete [3] and in the United States 31 doctoral programmes of 22 major Universities currently have students contribute to Wikipedia's Public Policy articles as a mandatory part of their postgraduate training [4].

The Wikimedia Research Committee [5] has just launched a survey to understand why scientists, academics and other experts do (or do not) contribute to Wikipedia and other collaborative projects, and whether individual motivation aligns with shared perceptions of Wikipedia within expert communities. We hope this may help us identify ways around barriers to participation. We hope that results will also help us understand issues regarding power surrounding collaborative cultures, popular communication of science and public engagement.

The survey is anonymous and takes about 20 min to complete. Please help us circulate the link among your colleagues and collaborators:
http://bit.ly/ExpertBarriers

Sincerely,
Liam Wyatt

[1] http://chronicle.com/article/article-content/125899/
[2] http://bit.ly/e9HWOI
[3] http://www.jmir.org/2011/1/e14/
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_United_States_Public_Policy
[5] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research_Committee

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