The Royal Society of Chemistry has announced that it is donating 100 “RSC Gold” accounts – the complete portfolio of their journals and databases – to be used by Wikipedia editors who write about chemistry. The partnership is part of a wider collaboration between the Society’s members and staff, Wikimedia UK and the Wikimedia community. The collaboration is working to improve the coverage of chemistry-related topics on Wikipedia and its sister projects.
The project recently saw the appointment of Andy Mabbett as the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Wikimedian in Residence. Andy said: “Royal Society of Chemistry journals are the first port of call for many scientists and Wikipedia is the first port of call for both students and lay people. It absolutely makes sense for the two to work together to share knowledge, freely, for the benefit of everyone”.
Stephen Hawthorne, Deputy CEO of the Royal Society of Chemistry, explains that this sort of partnership is part of their vision for the future. He said: “By granting access to our journal content, we are looking to forge stronger links with the volunteers who build those projects and to encourage more chemists to edit Wikipedia.
“Around the world, we invest in educating future generations of scientists, partner with industry and academia and promote collaboration and innovation. And we promote the talent, information and ideas that lead to great advances in science”.
The Wikipedia Library will arrange for donated subscription accounts to journals and online archives to be allocated to Wikipedia editors who have demonstrated a commitment to working on the projects, in relevant topic areas.
Can you elaborate on the conditions? Is it limited to wikipedia.org or does it extend to other Wikimedia projects, like Wikidata? Does the agreement allow manual lookup of information only, or does it allow text mining on the literature as well as on the database? How should I put this in perspective with the UK law that allows text mining, and, in particular, can UK Wikipedia editors use text mining anyway, or is that restricted? Is there an overview of the details of what is allowed and not allowed, or a list of restrictions otherwise?
Hi Egon, I’m not familiar with the details myself but have pointed out your question to Andy Mabbett who may be able to answer your question.
Hello there Egon. I just wanted to update you on this. I’ve been in touch with the RSC and they are taking a closer look at your question. The latest is that they hope to provide an update on Thursday.