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WikiJournal of Science
Open access • Publication charge free • Public peer review • Wikipedia-integrated

WikiJournal of Science is an open-access, free-to-publish, Wikipedia-integrated academic journal for science, mathematics, engineering and technology topics. WJS WikiJSci Wiki.J.Sci. WikiJSci WikiSci WikiScience Wikiscience Wikijournal of Science Wikiversity Journal of Science WikiJournal Science Wikipedia Science Wikipedia science journal STEM Science Mathematics Engineering Technology Free to publish Open access Open-access Non-profit online journal Public peer review

WikiJournal of Science
An open access journal with
no publication costs – About


www.WikiJSci.org
ISSN: 2470-6345
Frequency: Continuous
Since: December 2017
Funding: Wikimedia Foundation
Publisher: WikiJournal User Group

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WikiJournal of Science is an ISSN-registered, peer reviewed, open access journal in science, technology, engineering and mathematics published free of charge. The journal is hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, the same organization that runs Wikipedia. Articles that pass peer-review are published as a citeable, indexed PDF, and suitable text and images are integrated into Wikipedia and related projects (with a link to the indexed PDF). The vast readership of Wikipedia results in a high effective impact of included works. Criteria for inclusion for article submissions to WikiJournals are mainly that they are scientifically sound, appropriately supported by references, fall within the scope of the Journal to which the work was submitted, not already have been submitted for publication elsewhere, be of an appropriate open license and include a declaration of any conflicts of interests.
Publication formats include original research and several forms of reviews.
Articles are preferably submitted via this submission page. Alternatively, submissions can be sent confidentially to (Submissions address not yet created).

Criteria for inclusion

The criteria for inclusion in the WikiJournal of Science are as follows:

The journal is currently particularly encouraging submission of articles containing media (such as images and videos) that can be regarded to be of benefit to Wikipedia articles, or other Wikimedia projects.

Publication formats

Research articles

Original research

Original research on any scientific topic can be submitted. Such papers follow the standard Introduction, Results, Discussion, Methods format, with any relevant ethics approval. Publication of supplementary data sets is encouraged.



Review articles

Focused

Focus reviews describe a narrow topic in detail, drawing together and summarising published information. Sections of these may be integrated into relevant sections of Wikipedia articles.

Example (from WikiJMed)


Encyclopedic

Encyclopedia reviews are broad summaries that cover an entire topic, are written in an encyclopaedic tone, and follow Wikipedia's appropriate sources. Articles can also be expansions, improvements or re-writes of existing Wikipedia articles.[note 2]


Multimedia

Multimedia reviews are short articles centred around one or more key figures. This can be medical photography, imaging, a diagram, schematic, video, or animation. The article gives relevant background, explains the image, and acts as an extended figure legend. Media files may require further editing after peer review. For videos it is recommended you attach an exact transcript of the dialogue, such as by timed text.

Example 1 • Example 2 (from WikiJMed)



Review articles can be written and processed in two ways:

  • Existing Wikipedia articles can be submitted via this page on Wikipedia, with subsequent peer review amendments then integrated back into Wikipedia.
  • New content can be written on the WikiJournal preprint server, and can be used to expand and revise Wikipedia pages after acceptance.

Author guidelines

Research articles

 

Accuracy

All results needed to support the conclusions are clearly presented, including appropriate controls and statistical tests. Diagrams are clear and easy to interpret if presented with the figure and its legend in isolation. Work is put in context by referencing existing literature.

Methods are described in enough detail for findings to be reproducible. Established protocols are summarised and referenced. New protocols are described in full.

Publication of full supplementary data sets is strongly encouraged.

Balance

The introduction gives a brief and balanced summary of the current state of the topic, inasmuch as is necessary to understand the results presented. Where there are multiple hypotheses or viewpoints on an aspect of a topic, they are given due weight based on their relative support in the academic literature.

The discussion clearly indicates where results can have more than one interpretation.

Accessibility

Authors are encouraged to also submit a lay summary that should be understandable to a reader with only secondary school background.

Hyperlinks to Wikipedia articles are used to clarify terms (usually once per article).

The standard section organisation of Introduction, Results, Discussion, Methods is encouraged. Wording is as concise as possible.

Review articles

 

Accuracy

Review articles give accurate and up-to-date coverage of the topic. Diagrams are clear and easy to interpret if presented with the figure and its legend in isolation.

Accuracy of review articles is ensured by thorough referencing to attribute claims. Sources that have a lower level of scrutiny or not been peer-reviewed (e.g. news articles and research preprints), may be used if there is no better source, such as for emerging or rapidly evolving topics. Use of such sources is indicated (by e.g. "Media reports state...", or by marking the ref with an asterisk).

Balance

Review articles aim to describe the academic consensus position on the topic. Where there are multiple hypotheses or viewpoints on an aspect of a topic, they are given due weight based on their relative support in the academic literature, and are attributed in the text to their respective authors. For contentious points, we recommend also citing a review article to demonstrate that the point is well-accepted.

If a history section is included, consider citing particularly impactful/seminal works. The citation is sufficient to indicate who did the work, so phrases such as "Smith et al. have previously demonstrated that" are discouraged.

Accessibility

Strive to make the each section as understandable as possible to the widest audience likely to be interested in it. Authors are encouraged to also submit a lay summary that should be understandable to a reader with only secondary-school background.

Hyperlinks to Wikipedia articles are used to clarify terms. Acronyms and abbreviations are expanded on first use.

Sections are organised to make the article as easy to read as possible. Wording is as concise as possible.

Articles intended for English Wikipedia integration

Articles intended for Wikipedia integration (in whole or in part) must also comply with its guidelines.

  • Articles are written such that a knowledgeable generalist can understand them. The abstract, which in Wikipedia is an untitled lead section, must be understandable to a general audience. (WP:TECHNICAL)
  • Wikipedia cannot include any original research (including synthesis of ideas). Original research—such as tentative conclusions, personal perspectives, outlooks, and opinions—can be included in a separate section for the published journal version of the article; it will be omitted from Wikipedia. (WP:OR)
  • Wikipedia's policies on references for medical claims are stricter than for other areas (WP:MEDRS).

In addition, the Wikipedia policies on neutrality (WP:NPOV), permissible sources (WP:RS), and style (WP:MOS) should be checked. When in doubt just ask the editors.

General guidelines

Main text

Clarity

  • Manuscripts submitted to the WikiJournal of Science should exhibit clear, correct, concise, comprehensible, and consistent writing.
  • We recommend asking one or two colleagues known for writing well to review your manuscript before submission. WikiJournal of Science editors will carefully review manuscripts for quality prose, we cannot provide a full, in-depth copy editing service. Therefore please submit a manuscript only after you know that your article exhibits pithy prose.
  • Writing resources
    • "The main objective of scholarly writing is clear communication, which can be achieved by presenting ideas in an orderly and concise manner. ... Precise, clear word choice and sentence structure also contribute to the creation of a substantive, impactful work" - APA Publication Manual[1]
    • "We cannot succeed in making even a single sentence mean one and only one thing; we can only increase the odds that a large majority of readers will tend to interpret our discourse according to our intentions" - The Science of Scientific Writing[2]

Content

  • Submissions are preferably created at the Submission page (alternatively, submissions can be sent confidentially to ContactAt signWikiJSci.org)
  • For the article title, use sentence case capitalization (capitalized first letter of the first word and proper nouns, otherwise generally lower-case letters (more information).
  • Author(s) should be given by real name(s), with a method of contact (email address or Special:EmailUser link) for at least one corresponding author. It is recommended to have author names displayed online already during the peer review, yet authors may opt to be anonymous until article acceptance.
  • ORCID IDs should be included when possible to disambiguate author identity (registration)
  • Submitted works may include up to 6 keywords
  • For original research, an abstract should ideally be structured into Method/Background, Results and Conclusion parts, while for reviews they can be more freely composed summaries (200-500 words)
  • It is recommended to also include a short (50-100 word) plain language summary for a reader with no specialised knowledge in the article's topic, omitting technical detail and jargon (writing advice: "Plain-Language Summaries" and "Writing for lay audiences")
  • Usage of hyperlinks are encouraged, especially links to Wikipedia articles, by clicking the button and pasting a Wikipedia URL
  • 3-6 peer reviewers with appropriate expertise to assess the work (see criteria) should be recommended
  • Avoid breaching copyright (including text/images from articles that you previously wrote, but where copyright is owned by the journal)

Figures

  • Vector graphics should be in svg format. Other images should be in high resolution, png, tif or jpg
  • If possible, figures should be understandable even after printing the article in black-and-white
  • Each image will be automatically numbered and it is often useful to refer to each in the text
  • Figures adapted from creative commons sources should have their attribution included in the caption

References

  • References should be inserted using the button (which formats the reference when given a DOI, URL or plaintext citation).

Additional information section

  • Roles of contributors may be described, such as by using “CRediT” author taxonomy or STARDIT contributor taxonomy
  • Acknowledgement sections should include (and be limited to) funding bodies, departments, groups and individuals that assisted, and are willing to be publicly mentioned.

Data and supplementary information

We encourage the publication of full datasets.

  • Small datasets can be included as a collapsible, made sortable is appropriate (example)
  • Medium datasets or additional information can be included as supplementary data pages (example)
  • Large datasets can be hosted on open data repositories such as the Open Science Framework, and a link included in the article

Competing interests

Conflicts of interest includes any payment or services from a commercial, private or governmental third party (e.g. grants, data monitoring boards, study design, manuscript preparation, or statistical analysis). For grants received for work outside the submitted work, disclosure is only required for entities that could be perceived to be affected financially by the published work, such as drug companies, or foundations supported by entities that with possible financial stake in the outcome. Any involvement in WikiJournal should also be disclosed. Disclosure is not required for public funding sources, such as government agencies, charitable foundations or academic institutions.

Attribution of creative commons material

Articles adapted from Wikipedia should include an "et. al." link in the author list which lists all contributors to the Wikipedia article (using the "et_al" option in the article header). Text drawn from creative commons sources must either be clearly attributed to be compliant with that license, or be paraphrased. Images not created by the authors should be attributed with name and license in the legend, such as: Jane Smith, CC-BY-SA 3.0. Always double check the original source's license.

Publication

Based on the recommendations of the peer reviewers, the editorial board will make the decision whether to publish the article. Published articles will be added to an issue of the journal, assigned a DOI, have a PDF generated, be promoted on social media, and suitable content integrated into Wikipedia.

Post-publication revision

  • Minor edits, such as spelling errors, minor grammatical errors and inconsistencies in reference formatting, can be corrected after publication by the authors or editors.
  • Major changes or additions to content after publication are acceptable, but require a new round of peer review before acceptance.
  • All articles are open to post-publication peer review, and edit suggestions can be added at the "Discuss" tab at the top of each page.

Further reading

The WikiJournal of Science follows the ICMJE Recommendations on Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication (Guidelines), and its guidelines are recommended for manuscript layout. General reporting guidelines for various types of scientific works are also provided by the EQUATOR Network (Guidelines).

The journal also welcomes translations of submitted works.

Full publication process documented at this link.

Licensing

Articles are published by default as CC BY 4.0. Articles that incorporate significant content from Wikipedia are published CC BY-SA 4.0. Authors may request compatible open access licenses (e.g. CC0 or GNU 1.2). Images and other media are under the same license as the article by default unless otherwise stated in the in the figure legend. Article-level licensing information is embedded in the XML metadata. Author(s) therefore hold article copyright and publishing rights without restrictions.

Per the Bethesda Statement on Open Access:

  • The author(s) and copyright holder(s) grant(s) to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship, as well as the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal use.
  • A complete version of the work and all supplemental materials, including a copy of the permission as stated above, in a suitable standard electronic format is deposited immediately upon initial publication in at least one online repository that is supported by an academic institution, scholarly society, government agency, or other well-established organization that seeks to enable open access, unrestricted distribution, interoperability, and long-term archiving (for the biomedical sciences, PubMed Central is such a repository).

Publicising and disseminating works

Since all articles are open access, authors are free to share, disseminate and copy their work as they like. After publication, authors are encouraged to self-archive their works at in institutional repository or independent repositories (e.g. SSRN, OSF, Zenodo). They are additionally welcome to deposit copies onto academic social networking sites (e.g. researchgate, academia.edu). Articles will be publicised through the journal's Facebook and Twitter pages.


Duties of authors

When authors submit their works they agree to that their content may be kept permanently on a Wikimedia project, and that author requests for removal of their content may not be approved.

Author attribution

Named authors must have contributed to all of the following aspects of a submitted article, unless otherwise stated in a section of the work that details the contributions of each named author:

  1. Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
  2. Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
  3. Final approval of the version to be published; AND
  4. Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Contributors who don't meet all of these requirements can still be included in the acknowledgements section.

The corresponding author is expected to correspond for the rest of the named authors, including submitting the authorship declaration forms, listing conflicts of interest, etc. The corresponding author must provide a contact address (or several) at which they can reasonably be contacted for questions pertaining to the works content. This address should have the reasonable expectation of being contactable for the foreseeable future.

If a large amount of material (typically >1 paragraph or >10% of total) is imported from a compatible collaborative platform (e.g. Wikipedia) the author list must include a hyperlink to the full list of contributors (typically as a hyperlinked "et al"). For more detail see Acknowledgement of sources. This is considered as a form of "Group authorship" as per the guidelines of the Council of Scientific editors, since they effectively contributed to criteria 1 and 2 of the ICMJE author requirements (above). Contributors listed on such a hyperlinked page do not necessarily need to satisfy criteria 3 and 4.

Authorship disputes

Discussions regarding which people to include in the author list of a work, and in which order, should be handled among the contributors and be based on facts.

Confidentiality

Authors should be given by real names in their articles, with a contact address for at least one corresponding author. Readers may potentially infer the identity of any pseudonymous username used by authors when contributing to the article online.

Authors have the option to keep the article and/or their names confidential to the public and peer reviewers until article publication, by requesting such processing in the authorship declaration form.

Further reading

Originality of publication and plagiarism

The work must not contain plagiarised material of any kind. This includes:

  • Unattributed text, images, or data that is copied from any other source
  • Unattributed ideas, concepts, or analysis from any other source
  • Material that is copied from the authors' own published works and without attribution or agreement of the editor of that work

Any significant overlap with another paper must be cited in the work. Any copyrighted material included must have the consent of the copyright holder, in addition to being attributed.

Each submission must be checked for possible plagiarism before consideration for inclusion in the journal by the editorial board. The peer review coordinator of the submission is responsible for carrying out this task.

Further reading

Duplicate, redundant or concurrent submission and publication

WikiJournal of Science cannot commit to peer review and publication of a work that has been submitted elsewhere for peer review and publication without explicit written consent from the other publisher. However, where the other publisher agrees, and ICMJE and COPE guidelines are followed, co-publication in multiple journals can be considered at the editor's discretion. Appropriate content that is dual-published in the journal and Wikipedia is done so under a creative commons license.

Further reading

Acknowledgement of sources

Sources of information, ideas, text and images must be acknowledged. Inline citations must be included to previous literature in support of claims made. Original authors must be referenced for any quoted text or images used under a creative commons license. If a material is imported from a compatible collaborative platform (e.g. Wikipedia), attribution depends on the content type:

  • Images, videos or other media: Attribution and license type at the end of the figure legend
  • Text less than 1 paragraph, or 10% of final work: A hyperlink to the full contributor list must be included in the 'Acknowledgements' section
  • Text more than 1 paragraph, or 10% of final work: A hyperlink to the full contributor list must be included in the author list (typically as a hyperlinked "et al") - For more detail, see Duties of the authors

Cited sources should be from reliable, published sources, preferably peer-reviewed, secondary sources. Authors should read sources before citing them, and their statements should accurately represent the cited sources.

Peer reviewers and editors should only recommend references to be added to a work where they are relevant and beneficial to the work, without unduly compelling authors to cite their own publications, or those from a WikiJournal.

Further reading

Preprints and postprints

WikiJournal of Science permits and encourages authors to share their works via any preprint servers (including the WikiJournal Preprint server) before, during and after submission to the journal. Similarly material previously published under a compatible license is admissible (see the Copyright and licensing section). For these purposes, Wikipedia is considered a preprint server, and content first posted in Wikipedia can be used in submissions.

Authors may also share postprints of their works on any service (in any manner compatible with the license).

Authors are recommended to ensure that preprints and postprints clearly link back to the version as published in WikiJournal of Science. WikiJournal works can likewise link to preprints hosted elsewhere.

WikiJournal preprints server

Preprints (works in preparation and those not yet accepted for WikiJournal of Science) must be clearly marked as such. Peer review is required before a work is considered for accepted into the journal by the editorial board. Peer review is defined as obtaining advice on individual works from reviewers expert in the field who are not part of the journal’s editorial staff. This process is described at WikiJournal of Science/Peer reviewers.

Human research and cases

When a study involves the use human subjects (e.g. patients, research subjects, questionnaire participants), the 'Methods/Experimental' section of the submitted work must state whether experiments were performed in compliance with the relevant laws and institutional guidelines, and which institutional ethics committee(s) approved the experiments.

Journal participants must ensure that proper consent for publication has been obtained from individuals who are reported on in a submitted work, or from a proxy thereof. This includes case details. The individual(s) being reported on should be aware of the possible consequences of that reporting. For case studies, and in any work where a study subject may be identified, WikiJournal of Science requires authors to assert that a written informed consent was received. The author must specify whether or not the subject or proxy has seen the final version the details to be published (including pictures). If a final version has not been shown, the author should specify what the study subject or proxy has seen and that he or she has agreed to include in the publication. This requirement also applies when a report involves deceased persons. Journal participants do not themselves collect the signed consent forms routinely, but it should be kept by the author, and may need to be shown at a later time in case of suspected scientific misconduct. The consent form must include:

  • Specifics about what material will be published.
  • An agreement to the online publication of the material.
  • Place for the name as well as for the signature of the subject.
  • Revocation rights: Information to the subject that she/he may revoke the consent at any time. The signer should receive contact information to the person who has explained and administered the form. Before a work is published, a revoked consent must result in the removal of subject details from the submitted work. After work publication, removal of subject details may not be possible, but consideration should be made to minimize the amount of subject details.

The wording of the form should make it clear that, even with the best efforts at keeping confidentiality, anonymity cannot be guaranteed. There is a risk that the patient may be identified by someone, somewhere, once the work is published.

Additional information should be included in certain cases:

  • For patients, the form should indicate that signing it does not remove their rights to privacy.
  • Hazards: A statement of regulatory compliance is required if the work involves chemicals, procedures or equipment that have any unusual hazards inherent in their use.
  • If the study subject is not the signer, the relationship of the signer (i.e., the proxy) to the subject must be included. The form should include a statement to indicate that the individual or group does not have legal, mental, or physical capacity to consent, and the reason why. Examples include underage children, persons with cognitive or intellectual disabilities, or deceased persons.
  • If one person is signing for a family or other group, that person should attest that all relevant members of the family or group have been informed.
  • If there is a compensation or any form of financial benefit to the subject, the nature thereof should be clearly stated on the form. Preferably, study subjects should not expect to derive any financial benefit from publication of the case.
Example
Further reading

Animal research

When a study involves the use of live animals, the 'Methods/Experimental' section of the submitted work must state whether experiments were performed in compliance with the relevant laws and institutional guidelines, and which institutional ethics committee(s) approved the experiments. Furthermore, no papers will be accepted where animal experimentation has been used when alternative methods were available, and the aim of the research must be directly related to some potential benefit to humans or animals. The editorial board may ask peer reviewers to specifically comment on cases of concern.

Further reading

Errors in published works

Trivial errors in published works, such as spelling or formatting errors, may be corrected by anyone even after publication. It is preferable that the authors are informed about changes to their articles, but it is ultimately the responsibility of the authors to keep track of such changes, such as by adding their articles to their watchlists.

Significant errors that affect the meaning of the work may require the paper to be corrected and re-checked by peer review, or retracted. If an author discovers an error or inaccuracy in their published work, they are obliged to inform the editors. Similarly, when an editor is informed of a significant error in a published paper from the author or a third party, they must inform the author that the error must be corrected, explained, or the paper retracted.

Other unacceptable submitted content

In addition to plagiarised material, WikiJournal of Science cannot accept submission of material that contains:

  • Breaches of copyright
  • Data or images that have been forged, manipulated, adjusted or misrepresented in any way that may mislead a reader
  • Knowingly falsified information
  • Libellous content
Further reading

Notes

  1. ↑ For medical, biomedicine and medical humanities, please submit to WikiJournal of Medicine.
  2. ↑ For articles intended for integration into Wikipedia, WikiJournal of Science editors are able to advise on best practices for content, formatting and referencing. We can also assist in integrating suitable material into Wikipedia after the article is published. Please note that it is up to the consensus of the Wikipedia editor community as to whether to accept, edit or omit any added content.
  1. ↑ Vizcaino, Arantxa (2020). Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (in en) (Seventh Edition ed.). doi:10.3916/school-of-authors-100. https://www.revistacomunicar.com/wp/school-of-authors/publication-manual-of-the-american-psychological-association-apa-seventh-edition-2020. 
  2. ↑ "The Science of Scientific Writing". American Scientist. 2018-01-03. Retrieved 2021-03-14.
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