The Royal Society sees itself as having the
lead in the presentation of science to the
general public, and that’s a big concern.
So it’s very interested in the popularisation of science.
It has lectures, some of which
are very popular. It has book prizes for popular
books about science, and
it sees Wikipedia in that context.
It also does a lot on social media and so forth.
So Wikipedia fits very well into that.
The project involved several public events,
mostly training workshops, where we had a
lot of helpers from the existing community,
that was great. It was harder to involve the
wider scientific editing community, but we
did manage that in some cases.
The Ada Lovelace day in October 2013 was before
I actually started at the Royal Society, but
I came along and helped. It was a very successful
training editathon, concentrating on biographies
of women scientists, which is a real issue
in the scientific sector. We’ve had a number
of events - I did another one for International
Women’s Day while I was working.
We’re very lucky that both the women’s events,
the Ada Lovelace Day and the International
Women’s Day were addressed by female fellows
of the Royal Society who’d come in especially
which was tremendous. Ada Frith FRS actually
trained in the Ada Lovelace Day and produced
two articles, which is great, and they were
really good days, both of them.
It’s actually harder to do on other subjects
but women in science is a topic that’s very
easy to recruit for, and you get excellent
results. Another thing I’m pleased about
is I’ve got access to the nine or so scientific
journals the Royal Society publishes for Wikipedians
for a year on a trial basis, which I hope
will go on afterwards. This will I think improve
referencing on quite a lot of articles which
is great.
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. Some of them have sort
of been one thing, and when it was done, the
institution moved on to something else.
The Royal Society had 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, so I’m confident
that programme will keep going at some level.
