The Analysis of the scientific content of the Spanish Wikipedia project presented by the IN3’s Open Science and Innovation (OSI) research group has been selected to receive funding from the Fundación Española para la Ciencia y la Tecnología (FECYT -Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology-) call for grant applications to promote the culture of science, technology and innovation.
The aim of the project is to carry out exhaustive analysis of the scientific content of the Wikipedia – in other words, the subsection of articles dealing with science and technology (approximately 10% of the 1.15 million articles in the Spanish version). The study is based on the realization that the Wikipedia has become the leading platform for public communication of science on the web.
The analysis is based on 4 factors.
1) The quality of the articles, depending, principally, on the number of edits and the quality of the bibliographic references.
2) The correspondence between the areas best represented and Spanish scientific output.
3) Studying the editors and the editing process.
4) Science and technology’s image through analysis of controversial subjects.
The researchers forming part of the project team are Eduard Aibar (lead researcher), Josep Lladós, Antoni Meseguer, Julià Minguillon, Maura Lerga and Peter Dunajcsik/Maxigas. The project’s research is to run from September 2014 to December 2015.
