Proposal: WikiJournal as a sister project

WikiJournal User Group
Open access • Publication charge free • Public peer review • Wikipedia-integrated

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WikiJournal User Group is a publishing group of open-access, free-to-publish, Wikipedia-integrated academic journals. <seo title=" WJM, WikiJMed, Wiki.J.Med., WikiJMed, Wikiversity Journal User Group, WikiJournal WikiMed, Free to publish, Open access, Open-access, Non-profit, online journal, Public peer review "/>

This is a proposal for a new Wikimedia sister project.

WikiJournal
Proposed logo matches current WMF sister project styles uses 2014 WMF colour palette Current logos of user group and specific journals within the group Flat black version for small icons (including specific journals)
Status of the proposal
Status	submitted to WMF Board of Trustees
Details of the proposal
Project description	A site where authors can write their works directly online. The works then undergo independent scholarly peer review before being officially published in the journal. Currently hosted in Wikiversity: WikiJournal User Group, with the three journals WikiJournal of Medicine, WikiJournal of Science, and WikiJournal of Humanities. It is a way of bridging the Wikipedia–academia gap by enabling academics, scholars and professionals to contribute expert knowledge to the Wikimedia movement in the familiar academic publishing format that directly rewards scholars with citable publications. Initial publishing formats include: reviews (many integrated into Wikipedia), original research, case studies, and images/galleries. See also: General landing page | About Wiki.J.Med. | About Wiki.J.Sci. | About Wiki.J.Hum. Summary cover letter submitted to WMF board of trustees for discussion in February 2020.
Is it a multilingual wiki?	Many language versions or single multilingual platform
Potential number of languages	Initially English, eventually many
Proposed tagline	Open-access peer-reviewed academic journals with no publication costs.
Proposed URL	Current: hosted within Wikiversity with links from: www.wikijmed.org www.wikijsci.org www.wikijhum.org Proposed: wikijournal(s).org / journal(s).wikimedia.org / journal(s).wiki.org / j.wiki
Technical requirements
New features to require	A number of unique features will be useful: Updated and prioritised technical requirements list at this location Original technical requirements list It should be possible to categorize users as authors, editors, and/or peer reviewers. Separate namespaces for articles yet to be peer-reviewed, equivalent to Wikipedia's Draftspace, e.g. Draft: or Preprint: or equivalent. (Currently stored in category and as list) Some way of automatically numbering figures with [[file:...]] formatting (currently done in the {{fig}} template). VisualEditor-compatible insertion of cross-references to figures Possibly have the option to make certain pages viewable by only author and specified editors, to allow re-submission to other journals if rejected by a WikiJournal (Currently, confidential works emailed to submissionswikijmedorg). However most journals now accept submissions from preprints. Preferably there should be an option to have restricted viewer access to some files, discussions, and user identities (e.g., anonymous peer-reviewers). Simple on-wiki forms for users with no wikimarkup experience, and automated editing post-wiki: submission of articles ready for review (google form) submission of peer reviewer comments (google form) submission of editorial board application (markup) Automated features based on wikidata and/or bots synchronisation of article info template on main and talk pages of the tracking sheets when reviewer comments submitted metadata-submission to crossref of accepted articles addition of accepted articles to the current volume&issue XML annotation of articles in the JATS format addition of published articles into Wikidata transclusion/import/export with Wikipedia formatting of accepted articles into a specific PDF format (currently done manually via copy-paste to a DOCX template, which is then saved as a PDF. Another option could be to use the WikiMedia infrastructure as a content sink and generate on demand other formats like docx, odt, LaTeX from the wiki syntax (e.g. via PanDoc or MediaWiki PDF-export function). Requires e.g. two-column layout, inject logos, header styles etc. Manual tweaking of automated starting produced pdf would be ideal. Synchronisation to the latest version of the article would be ideal. Ideally we would like converters to wiki from DOCX and LaTeX so that articles can be more easily submitted. Specific left menu items Namespace-specific formatting Namespace-specific default interwiki links (for articles, wikilinks should point to Wikipedia by default)
Development wiki	Preliminary technical tests at https://wikipediajournal.com/Main_Page
Interested participants
Participants (editors, authors and peer reviewers) as of 2019-05-15 Authors: 172 (counting template) Editorial boards: 62 (counting template) Associate editors: 15 (counting template) Peer reviewers: 70 Additional on-wiki participants: about 5–10 Total: approx 300–350 Editorial boards and associate editors WikiJournal Admin board Estimate of editors active in any given month: ≥5 edits per month on-wiki: 25 ≥5 email to mailing lists: 25 Monthly conference call meeting: 10 Notes: 1) a lot of work currently has to be done off-wiki. 2) Almost all peer-reviewers only ever contribute once. 3) Many authors also only contribute once when depositing an article and once when responding to reviewers' comments. Readership from DOI-clicks in line with typical academic journals (800 per article).

Scenario

1. Many Wikipedia articles lack information (especially on complex topics)
   • Although GA and FA involve editorial review of content, there is little formal review from outside experts
   • Lack of quality images
2. Lack of contributions from academic community
   • Wikipedia is often viewed with suspicion by academics
   • Academic authors often seek more recognition than provided in the history tab
   • Writing in Wikipedia is sufficiently unfamiliar to be a deterrent
   • Original research cannot be published on Wikipedia

Possible solution

The Wikipedia community and the academic community can be converged and unified through a journal initiative under the Wikimedia banner. The journals needs to adhere to international guidelines and standard procedures, in addition to being open-access and editable by all. WikiJournal can provide a prototype based on which journals for various themes and subjects can be built on.

This involves two broad aspects: The background structure and the journal contents.

Background structure

Background structure comprises:

• Journal policies: This can be customized based on the journal theme and subject, but would be common overall.
• Templates: Specific templates need to be designed for each journal. These templates would probably not be relevant to any other wikiproject.
• Technical parameters:
  • Unlike other wikiprojects, the journal project calls for specialized logins as authors, editors and/or peer reviewers.
  • We need to consider the possibility of one individual having multiple capacities, and the specific capacity being specified for an edit.
  • Custom PDF-rendering facility.
  • Possible on-wiki storage of confidential information (e.g. anon peer-reviewer identities).

Journal contents

• Anyone would be able to make a submission. Specification of legal name and contact details might be required.
• The submitted preprint contents would undergo a public peer-review by external experts and considered critically by an elected editorial board before accepted into a journal's mainspace or rejected.
• After acceptance, the editing capacities for the article would be restricted.
• A permalink in the form of Digital Object Identifier or DOI would be awarded to each article after publication.
• A citation format for academic publications would be specified.

Present situation

Three journals are currently published by the WikiJournal Publishing Group:

• WikiJournal of Medicine (est. 2014) for medicine and biomedicine (ISSN 2002-4436). It is indexed in Scopus
• WikiJournal of Science (est. 2018) for science, technology, engineering and mathematics (ISSN: 2470-6345). It is indexed in Scopus
• WikiJournal of Humanities (est. 2018) for humanities, arts, and social sciences (ISSN: 2639-5347)
• WikiJournal of Psychology, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences (WikiJournal of PPB) (to be established circa 2024) devoted to psychological health and wellbeing (ISSN: XXXX-XXXX)

WikiJMed was the original WikiJournal, and was the template for the subsequently established journals with broader scope (further info at WikiJournal of Medicine/About). Based on this initiative, WikiJSci (previously "Second Journal of Science") was developed in 2018 and was soon followed by WikiJHum. A composite WikiJournal User Group was formed in 2016 to overlook the development of such journals.

Proposal

A wiki that is open for everyone to contribute, at the same time with the features of scholarly journals in that the published works undergo independent peer-review by subject experts before publication. The authors are clearly credited at the top of their articles, making it more attractive for researchers and scholars to contribute. Articles are indexed and citable. Works may include images and reviews that are supported by secondary sources. Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sister projects can subsequently use material from these publications.

Why separate Wikiproject

• An internal discussion revealed a consensus for a move to a separate Wikiproject.
• It calls for a custom structure that would probably not be required by other Wikiprojects.
  • Certain types of users would need to specify their real names and contact details.
  • Login types might need to be specified.
  • Custom templates.
• Better visibility and awareness. The current journals have limited viewership possibly due to lack of awareness across Wikimedia users.
• Grant requirements would follow a definite prototype.
• The scope is unique. This uniqueness needs to be identified.
  • A separate link as another sister project will enhance its visibility to Wikimedia users and therefore enhance participation and impact.
• The scope does not exactly merge with:
  • Wikiversity: Although there is partial overlap in relation to open research, the scope of WikiJournal goes beyond that. Academic publications are not necessarily same as open academia, open educational resources or learning projects.
  • Wikibooks: Academic publications are not necessarily same as open-content textbooks.
  • Wikipedia: Although Wikipedia is one of the most read information sources, it is often not given the credit it deserves. While a few journals have started taking Wikipedia seriously, it still cannot claim the academic recognition that WikiJournal could claim, not least because Wikipedia article text is not guaranteed to be stable.
• Impact metrics may not be applicable to any other wikiproject and may call for additional support from Wikimedia labs.
• Translation to other language wikis would call for standard protocols, unlike any other sister project.
• It is essential for journals to be enlisted in various databases and to follow various international protocols. A single repository for all such journals will help in minimising the problems of separate listing in such databases or central bodies.
• Established academic journals may set up spaces within such a project to implement similar reviews.

Articles that mention the format
Masukume, G; Kipersztok, L; Das, D; Shafee, T; Laurent, M; Heilman, J (November 2016). "Medical journals and Wikipedia: a global health matter". The Lancet Global Health 4 (11): e791. doi:10.1016/S2214-109X(16)30254-6.  Shafee, T; Mietchen, D; Su, A (August 2017). "Academics can help shape Wikipedia". Science 357 (6351): 557–558. doi:10.1126/science.aao0462.  Shafee, T; Masukume, G; Kipersztok, L; Das, D; Häggström, M; Heilman, J (August 2017). "Evolution of Wikipedia’s medical content: past, present and future". JECH. PMID 28847845. doi:10.1136/jech-2016-208601.  "Health Libraries - Wikipedia-integrated publishing: a comparison of successful models" 26 (2). Health inform. doi:10.13140/RG.2.2.27470.77129.  Shafee, T; Das, D; Masukume, G; Häggström, M (2017). "WikiJournal of Medicine, the first Wikipedia-integrated academic journal". WikiJournal of Medicine 4. doi:10.15347/wjm/2017.001.  WikiJSci Editorial board (2018-06-01). "The aims and scope of WikiJournal of Science". WikiJournal of Science 1 (1): 1. doi:10.15347/wjs/2018.001.  "WikiJournals: A sister project proposal", Wikipedia Signpost (2019)

Discussion

Support

Additional discussion at the talkpage

1.  Support. Mikael Häggström (talk) 18:18, 21 August 2016 (UTC) Editor-in-chief, WikiJournal of Medicine
2.  Support A journal needs specific tools. Having it as its own sister site would be ideal. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:00, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

   I continue to strongly support this project. This is an effective method of bringing in knowledge to our movement. This may also have potential for oral knowledge from indigenous peoples with a less robust publishing tradition.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 11:24, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

   How? BoldLuis (talk) 22:59, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

3.  Support Very promising proposal --Athikhun.suw (talk) 00:52, 28 August 2016 (UTC)
4.  Support I agree with the split. I don't think it belongs with Wikiversity at all, which is for courses and curricula. It makes more sense to me, if anything, that it should be part of Wikibooks, as that is a place for publication of original scientific works. The process for a journal paper is different than a book however so I agree it should be separate. As for the project in general, I think the wiki approach to writing a scientific paper is potentially really great. I know PLOS has their own internal wiki for writing Topic Pages, which are review papers that are written and then eventually transferred to Wikipedia. Non-review papers, however, don't really make sense as part of Wikipedia, so it makes sense to develop them on their own wiki. Mvolz (talk) 17:44, 30 August 2016 (UTC)
5.  Support (finally after changing my mind three times: I never oppose a reasonable request if it has the support of the community --Guy vandegrift (talk) 23:06, 3 June 2019 (UTC)) Disagree with split (Changed vote to neutral with the understanding that the real question is whether the wiki hosts confidential or "private" conversations) Original text: Keep in mind that I speaking from the biased perspective of a Wikiversity Custodian who is only marginally involved with this WikiJournal project. One reason Wikiversity would want to host the journals is that the software developed for WikiJournal could be useful on Wikiversity. An example of such software might include confidential communications between editors and referees that are held on-wiki (instead of on a remote user group). I have no idea whether Wikimedia is willing or even able to host such confidentiality, but it would also allow students and authors to collaborate privately. Also, Wikiversity would be interested in hosting student-run journals. I concede that the prospect of amateaurish student-journals might not be appealing to board members, and fully understand why the board might wish to separate from Wikiversity. If the board chooses to split, I will support that decision. --Guy vandegrift (talk) 01:35, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

   Confidential talks are currently held on a Google Group, which can be used for students and authors even if WikiJournal is split from Wikiversity. Likewise, students have at least the same ability to start journals after a split. Mikael Häggström (talk) 12:57, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

   Allowing for confidential conversations on a Wikimedia sister-wiki would be a major departure from protocol. The wiki that does it will need an independent governing body for each journal or organization that uses it. Someday, it would be nice for universities, laboratories, and journals to have such capabilities. I am neutral about the current proposed split if the confidentality is not included: Without the confidentiality option, I see neither a reason for the split, nor any harm done by splitting away from Wikiversity. But if this new wiki is created with confidentiality options, it will likely recruit university and laboratory-based journals that wish to utilize this option. The question of whether to allow this confidentiality option is likely to go to the top levels of the Wikimedia corporation...Perhaps what we really need is for Google groups to host discussions in wikitext.--Guy vandegrift (talk) 19:03, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

   @Mikael Häggström: The private option is already availablae at https://wikiversity.miraheze.org/wiki/Main_Page--Guy vandegrift (talk) 16:46, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

    Support The scope is unique and can extend to a number of domains. Specific tools needed. Access rights need to be different. It is also important to have the option of certain pages not being publicly accessible such that press embargo for unpublished articles do not get violated and yet editors or peer reviewers get to work in wiki format. Diptanshu^Talk 12:21, 5 September 2016 (UTC) Retracted till the requirements stated at Talk:WikiJournal#Proposing a new WikiJournal - Guidelines? are met. Diptanshu 💬 09:52, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

   Please note that this individual was removed from WikiJournal board in 2018 after he was found to have harassed two other editors and violated the Code of Conduct. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 05:21, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

6.  Support I definitely agree with this. If it does air how would the three statutes you mentioned be done? Would peer reviewer, editor, and author have different edit rights or be purely decorative, and would you have to apply for them? Iazyges (talk) 04:55, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

   Good questions, Iazyges. I see no reason for editors to need any particular edit rights, and readers without any account should be able to edit too, even published works under certain conditions. I think the author role is also rather decorative, since it's the quality of their works that matter. I think the peer reviewers should need to apply, so that we know they fulfill the criteria. Mikael Häggström (talk) 18:55, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

    Support per DocJames--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:59, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

   User voted 2 times. Striking the older vote. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 04:38, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

7.  Support Because an open access journal is very different from WV and WB. --Netha Hussain (talk) 09:03, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
8.  Support because I'm looking for a project like this to publish some ideas. --Felipe (talk) 16:29, 20 November 2016 (UTC)
9.  Support - If this happens, I can read well the promising journal articles by academics. Though I can't write well the stuff, I can be a good reader to this. --George Ho (talk) 22:20, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

   Belated post-vote comment: I recently read peer reviews on scholarly articles and was amazed by comments and responses. I am also intrigued by the peer review templates, like v:en:Template:editor's comments and v:en:Template:Response. I fixed a usage error recently, so I wonder whether the project can adopt either the templates or some software similar to MediaWiki's Support Desk or something like Wikinews's Comments (like this example). Honestly, I found the templates less convenient for peer reviews, so I figured that some discussion software would be a better improvement. --George Ho (talk) 09:34, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

10.  Support -Richard923888 (talk) 15:39, 21 January 2017 (UTC)
11.  Support - there is no reason why a separate journal cannot continue to link with WV but there is immense potential that cannot be achieved by remaining a sub-project. Green Giant (talk) 15:09, 15 April 2017 (UTC)
12.  Support - This proposal has evolved and improved significantly since first proposed in 2016. The flagship WikiJournal of Medicine exemplifies what the project can achieve (see 2017 editorial). Starting up within Wikiversity was useful to incubate the project and prove that such a novel format is even feasible. Becoming a sister project would further support the initiative by adding legitimacy, support, and extra control of sidebar contents etc. There would remain a strong focus on generation, improvement, peer-review and re-integration of high-quality content into other WMF projects (especially Wikipedia), and a WikiJournal sister project would maintain strong ties to the other projects. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 01:03, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

    I should note for transparency that since my original support vote, I'm now Editor-in-Chief of WikiJournal of Science, and I chair the administration board. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 00:07, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

13.  Support Great proposal!--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 06:52, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
14.  Support For reasons adequately described above. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 08:09, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
15.  Support Great proposal with value for the academic community. ~SuperHamster Talk Contribs 17:00, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
16.  Support more than that it is exactly what i had in mind because the lack of open source credited material is recurrent fact on wikipedia and it will expand wikimedia scope. --167.63.49.24 02:52, 2 June 2017 (UTC)
17.  Support - Seems like a reasonable proposal, I don't see why it shouldn't at least be given a try. I think the challenge will mostly consist of getting experts in various fields to peer-review, but that's not impossible to do. InsaneHacker (talk) 06:27, 2 July 2017 (UTC)
18.  Support - I think it is to Wikiversity's detriment that WikiJournal find a separate home, however, it does seem to be a better approach for WikiJournal itself, and it should attract more users to the wiki community. I trust that WikiJournal will encourage academics to develop lessons and courses supporting their work at Wikiversity. -- Dave Braunschweig (talk) 21:49, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
19.  Support I think WikiJournal would have better chances to develop and to engage with expert communities if it were a sister project. -- Daniel Mietchen (talk) 17:38, 31 August 2017 (UTC)
20.  Support I agree my previous speaker. Good point -- DerFussi 06:12, 13 September 2017 (UTC)
21.  Support Per others. -- Thennicke (talk) 23:23, 16 October 2017 (UTC)
22.  Support This sounds like "a hidden gem 💎" situation where something good is hidden in something else, people who would be interested in this but otherwise not in the Wikiversity might be able to see this sooner if it weren't "hidden away". --Donald Trung (Talk 🤳🏻) (My global lock 😒🌏🔒) (My global unlock 😄🌏🔓) 11:44, 10 November 2017 (UTC)
23.  Support Very important project. Ammarpad (talk) 14:45, 18 November 2017 (UTC)
24.  Support This proposal has a unique scope, and would have been the only WMF project to seem trustworthy for referencing by most of academics. In addition to the potential features listed on the top, this project would require much stricter internal procedures and hence Wikiversity does not fit in its current form. --Strange quark (talk) 13:30, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
25. Support I'm ready to give a hand for french version of this sister project. Lionel Scheepmans ^{✉ Contact} _{French native speaker, sorry for my dysorthography} 20:28, 25 February 2018 (UTC)
26.  Support NMaia (talk) 09:32, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
27.  Support Reboot01 (talk) 13:47, April 25, 2019 (UTC)
28.  Support Splitting it could really allow greater participation in WJ from outside stakeholders. StudiesWorld (talk) 10:20, 16 May 2019 (UTC)
29.  Support interesting proposal and splitting can make the arrangements much better! --Alaa :)..! 04:29, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
30.  Support as article author - (Michael Stear) 131.172.248.203 04:30, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
31.  Support as article author - (Kholhring Lalchhandama) Chhandama (talk) 06:20, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
32.  Support - (Fiona Mackinnon) 49.180.152.237 04:57, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
33.  Support - Learnerktm (talk) 06:23, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
34.  Support as article author - (Andrew Z. Colvin) Azcolvin429 (talk) 06:35, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
35.  Support as article author - Boris Tsirelson. WikiJournal evidently is very different from (the rest of) Wikiversity. Tsirel (talk) 07:00, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
36.  Support - as article author - other WV articles I've read have little to do with those of WJ. However, I can understand the concerns raised here [1]. FunkMonk (talk) 07:00, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
37.  Support as article author - (Abdulmutalab Musa) Laamiido (talk) 07:39, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
38.  Support as article reviewer - (Gregor Stiglic) 100.8.28.171 10:18, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
39.  Support as article author - (Lauren Gawne) 14.203.84.11 10:38, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
40.  Support as article author -(Ozzie Anis)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 10:57, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
41.  Support as article author - Andrew Dalby (talk) 11:15, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
42.  Support as article author - I vote FOR WikiJournal to become a full 'Sister Project' of Wikipedia. (Deepesh Nagarajan) 14.139.128.17 11:46, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
43.  Support Dank (talk) 12:23, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
44.  Support Richard Nevell (talk) 12:49, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
45.  Support - FULBERT (talk) 13:02, 2 June 2019 (UTC) - For journals to be taken seriously as academic and peer-reviewed contributors to knowledge, they need to appear solid and independent. Wikiversity is a wonderful idea, though it is not as useful as a dedicated space for open, peer-reviewed journal work. I believe that having a dedicated project space may also allow for some dedicated resources and visibility. This is consistent with the Wikimedia strategy to become the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge through knowledge as a service and knowledge equity.
46.  Support as article reviewer - Niclas Borinder 81.227.107.149 13:37, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
47.  Support We have some details to sort but yes, for the spirit of it all and for committing significant resources to advance this idea in the immediate future, I support. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:10, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
48.  Support as article author - Dudley Miles. I have found the project valuable in getting reviews by academic experts to raise the standard of an article. Dudley Miles (talk) 14:18, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
49.  Support - Jacknunn (talk) 14:30, 2 June 2019 (UTC) This project has huge potential to bring peer-review to Wikipedia and have clear integration into the most famous Wikimedia project. Wikiversity has huge potential - but to speak frankly, it is not a University- The Open University is, and was very ahead of its time and one day, Wikimedia might partner or create something similar under this name. For now, it is not a University, and so is confusing to people not intimately familiar with Wikimedia projects (99.9999% of humanity). Even if it were a proper University, most universities create separate affiliated publishing houses (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_university_presses). I think simplifying this project as much as possible - that is 'creating peer-reviewed Wikimedia content using the familiar publishing norms of established peer-reviewed journals' is a good start, one that Wikimedia can build on and improve in alignment with the founding principles of the foundation. Project S is coming, let's be ready to meet it with a great front end and and even better back one! :)
50.  Support Thank you for this well thought-out proposal, which addresses many limitations that have been identified over the course of the last few years. There are great benefits in separate sister project status, and honestly I don't think WV is a very suitable place for the journals to remain at at this point. --Elmidae (talk) 14:40, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
51.  Support as article reviewer - Jennifer Dawson JenOttawa (talk) 16:05, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
52.  Support as a Wikijournal contributor. One of the reasons I support this is that a journal would let us go farther than writing for an encyclopedia. Often, Wikipedia policies such as NOR (no original research) hinders our ability to be academic. For example, the article I was honored to submit, Themes in Maya Angelou's autobiographies, isn't comprehensive because there are no sources to fill in some aspects of the topic. Although I'm not an academic expert, my experience as a WP editor of this article and others like it has made me into an expert about Dr. Angelou. I'd like to see the mission of the Wikijournal expand to allow original research, in order to expand the comprehensiveness of topics. In that way, we can improve upon the academic nature of WP and fill in the gaps imposed upon us by WP policies and procedures and the gaps that are out there in academic literature. Figureskatingfan (talk) 21:24, 2 June 2019 (UTC)

    Comment Agree. The same problem with Wikipedia in the (quite far) topic - mathematics. Wikipedia's principle is "to inform, not teach/explain", but readers really need explanations and examples, which often leads to violations of the "no original research" norm, and frustration on both sides, readers and editors. WikiJournal is able to complement Wikipedia with explanations and examples using expertise. For example, my recent submission (explanatory essay) "v:WikiJournal Preprints/Can each number be specified by a finite text?". Wikiversity admits original research, but does not restrict it by peer refereeing, which is a completely different story. Tsirel (talk) 05:24, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

53.  Support - (Tseenster) Tseenster (talk) 23:43, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
54.  Support - Benoit Rochon (talk) 01:36, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
55.  Support - as one of the few new projects that I have seen that makes sense. This one just fits. --Philippe (talk) 01:59, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
56.  Support - Wade Kelly Mrkellar (talk) 06:00, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
57.  Support - Steven Chang Gixibyte (talk) 06:40, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
58.  Support - Rwatson1955 (talk) 07:27, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
59.  Support as article author - (Ignacio López) Munguira (talk) 08:04, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
60.  Support Mardetanha ^talk 09:08, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
61.  Support.--Vulphere 09:24, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
62.  Support - (Niall O’Mara) Ngdomara (talk) 09:57, 3 June 2019 (UTC) support
63.  Support as article reviewer - Herbert Haller
64.  Support - this project has a lot of potential and it makes sense to give it the resources it needs to grow. Simon Cobb (Sic19 ; talk page) 13:34, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
65.  Support - Amy Fountain AmyFou (talk) 14:31, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
66.  Support - Arfon Smith 128.177.88.206 14:50, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
67.  Support - This is a solid proposal with a healthy ecosystem of participants. Full-discloure, my wife among them. :) Opposing this based upon technical requirements is a distraction. People use tools other than MediaWiki everyday to support the movement. If we could, I'd rather folks use an open-source solution than have their work buried in some closed-source system owned by for-profit company. Besides, partial blocks exist in MediaWiki and extending that to other use cases is a strength of a flexible open-source platform. Not to get too into the weeds, but it's also commented as "preferred", not a do-or-die requirement for success. These are smart people and I'm sure they can get it done. :) So again, technical fiddly-bits are a weak argument to oppose and I'd rather see us make a strong argument to support a burgeoning new project. Ckoerner (talk) 17:51, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
68.  Support Yes, I find it helpful that wikijournal is it's own project sort of like how wikiversity is it's own project and not included into wikibooks. Wikijournal is a complex process and the peer review process isn't easy for an open project to do, yes, enwikiversity did a great job but I guess with more specific structure, it will be more conducive for academics to review journals which then will allow more growth. For this structure, I will hope it can be developed with wikiversity in mind (in some sense like OTRS can be shared with all projects - the tool and etc). I find it more useful for wikiversity to be solely focused in delivering modules, research and etc. Doing peer reviews and etc may be impossible for some wikiversities (mine homewiki is one of them at that moment). For where it is incubating, I will think maybe at enwikiversity at this moment. --Cohaf (talk) 17:54, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
69.  Support Need I say more? TheAwesomeHwyh (talk) 19:55, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
70.  Support Yes, they will run into a lot of technical problems, but why not try? ;D — Jeblad 20:16, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
71. Question: Will wiki contributors who are not scholars have an opportunity to contribute to the project? SelfieCity (talk) 00:29, 4 June 2019 (UTC) I now understand better per WikiJournal/Editors. I follow this with my vote below. SelfieCity (talk) 00:36, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

     Support The project. SelfieCity (talk) 00:36, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

72.  Support. Yes. This will contribute tremendously towards the open access movement. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 00:42, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
73.  Support. Project makes sense. Hiàn (talk) 01:20, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
74.  Support the scope of WikiJournal is clearly different to Wikipedia and will be a beneficial addition to the Wikimedia family as per above. DaGizza (talk) 03:35, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
75.  Support. I approve of the Wikipedia project and participate in it to some extent (though much more at Wikivoyage and Wikimedia Commons). However, what Wikipedia expressly lacks is peer-reviewed articles by experts. A free journal site where people don't have to pay loads of money to read cutting-edge papers on medicine and various other topics is an exciting idea and would be a great addition to the Wikimedia family. Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:23, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
76.  Support - Dr Katherine Firth, La Trobe University 121.211.87.1 05:50, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
77.  Strong support — Improving the world's access to science may be considered one of the most important contributions the Wikimedia Foundation could ever achieve. With that being said, Tom Reller, Vice President of Global Communications at Elsevier recently said: "If you think that information should be free of charge, go to Wikipedia". Perhaps we should prove him right. — Bryandamon (talk) 06:48, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

    Hear, hear! Tsirel (talk) 08:07, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

78.  Support - user:lirazelf Lirazelf (talk) 07:23, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
79.  Support --Jens Lallensack (talk) 09:29, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
80.  Support Rubbish computer (Talk: Contribs) 20:01, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
81.  Strong support - (Footnotefanatic) this would give the project due status and made it more visible and from there it can hopefully gather additional support from the academy & academics - open access to research and academic scholarship is vitally important and this is one way to do this Footnotefanatic (talk) 07:26, 5 June 2019 (UTC)
82.  Support - Nick Talley 1.129.111.129 09:56, 5 June 2019 (UTC)
83.  Support - This is not doing the same thing as Wikiversity, but is adding a major new capability, and benefiting Wikipedia in the process. Chiswick Chap (talk) 11:42, 5 June 2019 (UTC)
84.  Support (as someone who is not already, but has considered becoming, involved) - Seems like a well-thought-out approach to bringing expert knowledge and writing into the Wikiuniverse. Not the same as Wikiversity. --Joel B. Lewis (talk) 11:44, 5 June 2019 (UTC)
85. Looks like things have gone full circle; Wikipedia started out as a way for people to create articles to be peer-reviewed and inducted into Nupedia, and this looks like sort of the opposite, a journal for stuff to be peer-reviewed, and (among other things) get put into Wikipedia. That amusing anecdote aside I'll  Support this proposal. John M Wolfson (talk) 17:49, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

    Thank you for the amusing anecdote! Tsirel (talk) 06:45, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

86.  Support as article author - (Suzanne Cutts) 203.214.81.221 10:17, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

    #{{support}} as article author - (Please write your name here) ~~~~ <!-- To add your vote, just click "Publish changes" --> seems to be the standart vote, plaease precise. --Habitator terrae (talk) 11:30, 6 June 2019

87.  Support - I longer wait for such a project. Not against the founding principles, because they are just refer to Wikipedia. We can close for the new Project Wikispecies and Wikinews. - Marcus Cyron (talk) 19:09, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

    @Marcus Cyron: Please read also the introduction of the founding principles: "they are considered ideals essential to the founding of the Wikimedia projects" --Habitator terrae (talk) 12:15, 8 June 2019 (UTC)

    @Habitator terrae: - if I would answer this, it would need much too much room. -- Marcus Cyron (talk) 13:47, 8 June 2019 (UTC)

88.  SupportEncycloABC (talk) 21:34, 6 June 2019 (UTC)
89.  Support the split. One reason to favor a new project might be to have more control over licensing. For instance, PLOS Topic Pages are currently drafted on a separate site to stay compatible with PLOS's CC-BY license. Perhaps an independent sister site could find policies to allow better compatibility. (Plus lots of other good reasons already mentioned). Quantum7 (talk) 09:38, 7 June 2019 (UTC)
90.  Support The split would support infrastructural integrations that could provide academics with incentives to participate. Jessica Polka (talk) 16:24, 7 June 2019 (UTC)
91.  Support as associate editor in wikijournal of medicine I found it very useful if the wikijournals become a sister project. --Avicenno (talk) 21:05, 8 June 2019 (UTC)
92.  Support It will have a positve effect on scientists in the wikipedia community and the outside view of wikipedia (articles citable and fixed). The direct influence on the quality of content may be limited because I expect only a few (dozen ?) longer articles can be processed for each issue with your current capacity und so it will be on the whole a slow process (like scholarpedia). But the scientists "from the outside" are at the same time encouraged to contribute in wikipedia, for its part of your publication process (Post publication steps). To meet the foundation criteria it should be in principle possible for everyone to submit an article to the editors and it should be open for some sort of (regulated) review from the wikipedia community as a whole besides Peer Review. Occasionally some new observations (original research) come up in wikipedia by common wikipedians (for example, later career of en:Peter Hagendorf, mentioned but not so visible in the english version, for those fluent in german see the german discussion page), so there should be a possibility for short and rapid publication.--Claude J (talk) 08:04, 10 June 2019 (UTC) (de:Benutzer:Claude J).
93.  Support. —— Eric Liu_{（留言．百科用戶頁）} 08:11, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
94.  Support. - I am Davidzdh. 08:25, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
95.  Support, per nominator. --Leiem (talk) 09:05, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
96.  Support As a journal, the trajectory that the WikiJournals would take needs a different set of tools and being within WV may hamper this. Concerns expressed about the name, and the fact that there are many poor-quality and/or predatory journals out there are all valid. Having this as a sister project may attract better profile of people and resources from academia to shape this into a truely open-access journal. And other valid arguments per nom. Prashanthns (talk) 10:36, 11 June 2019 (UTC)
97.  Support a journal does need to have tools that are unique to it and be somewhat independant. I think it is good for Wikimedia to develop a professional journal. The world needs online quality journals and it will be a great opportunity for many to see and understand the process of publishing scientific material. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 14:48, 11 June 2019 (UTC)
98. Critical support. The idea is very promising, but I recognise the apparent contradiction with our founding principles. However, it's not the first time they're relativised to allow the existence of some kinds of projects under a more general scope of the founding principles. Leefeni^{aures audiendi audiat} 20:18, 11 June 2019 (UTC)
99.  Support as a potential author and reviewer and also as an organizer of WikiProject Limnology and Oceanography which attempts to improve aquatic-related Wikipedia content with contributions primarily from the academic community. I think having this journal stand alone as a sister project would increase the buy-in from the academic community for contributing knowledge. There is a lot of enthusiasm from academics for open access and free knowledge but many find contributing to Wikipedia not worthwhile given the constraints of their jobs (e.g. publishing). This sister project would help bridge the gap between academic models of publishing and contributing to Wikipedia. Jayzlimno (talk) 17:32, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
100.  Support. I support this proposal to help make the WikiJournals stand on their own as open-access publications and continue the evolution of the WM and WV founding principles. Smvital (talk) 06:29, 13 June 2019 (UTC) (Editorial Board member; WikiJournal of Humanities)
101.  Support. It is essential to support open research if we want diversity on Wikipedia and on all projects. iopensa (talk) 07:45, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
102.  Support Would help solve the problem that many people are using Wikipedia, but are unable to cite it for academic purposes. Mimihitam (talk) 12:12, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
103.  Support This project is doing well and needs its own home. Walkerma (talk) 03:41, 17 June 2019 (UTC)
104.  Support Hi, I do not have sufficient time to read everything in details to be completely aware about a new sister project issue, but I usually trust the wisdom of the crowd. :That's why I'm mainly support the idea. Furthermore, I'll share my own experience as French wikiversity administrator mainly working on the namespace research. That prove than searching and learning in our community was considered, in a certain point of view, as two different projects. Having search works outside of the main space have also some inconveniences ( web browser referencing , name space appearing on page title, pdf, feeling to be apart, etc.) as having research and learning activities (the only way to browse separately pages is using categories pages). Finally, I want to share my only fear concerning the creation of a new sister project wich is to loose fundamental DNA of wikimédia project :
     1. complete transparency, which seams clearly a lack in this editorial area but indeed very important concerning Scientific misconduct.
     2. absence of all kind of statutory hierarchy or elitism on governance and editorial aspect. Do not confuse with expertise, or skillfulness, I'm well talking about equality of rights between project users.
     3. freedom of choose in software and web space to be involved in all part of the project. Time after time google services, for instance, are taking more and more place in Wikimedia Movement. That's for me a lack of autonomy but also a risk to get habits in using for profit environment in a non profit movement and in the end forgetting the importance of non profit aspect. Of course we are all free to use proprietary software and services provided by rich companies having monopolistic trend, but please, don't make this choice an obligation for being fully part of the WikiJournal process. A question as example do I have to use this google group to be aware about all what's appening in WikiJournal editorial board ? Lionel Scheepmans ^{✉ Contact} _{French native speaker, sorry for my dysorthography} 16:11, 17 June 2019 (UTC)
        P.S. Oh, I've forgoten... We had a debat on fr.wikiversity before deciding to create a Journal scientifique libre still in standby until now. If the sister project starts, it could be great to think about a multilanguages projets with translated pages and tools for transfering and including this French project.
105.  Support. Sounds like the currently existing WikiJournals are a success and authors are happy to publish in them. Giving such WikiJournals more visibility rather than hiding them within WikiVersity sounds like a good move to me.EMsmile (talk) 02:39, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
106.  Support.--Jusjih (talk) 05:31, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
107.  Support - 47.12.117.66 15:54, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
108.  Support - I am in support of efforts to bring academic work more to the public space. I support open access peer-reviewed literature and this sounds like a fantastic effort to make that bridge, Allison Lee. Allisonlee9 (talk) 14:16, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
109.  Support - As a long-time Wikiversity contributor, custodian, and bureaucrat and university academic, there are merits to Wikiversity as a place for cultivating learning and teaching materials and experiences and research projects, but open access peer reviewing and publication of articles is also needed. The Wikimedia environment currently lacks designated space for development and publication of open access academic knowledge. There is an important pivot currently taking place towards open access journal publication (e.g., Plan S), so this is an opportune moment to create a dedicated WikiJournal sister project. -- Jtneill - Talk 05:28, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
110.  Support. --Csisc (talk) 17:22, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
111.  Support This is a very worthwhile initiative. I recall various WMF efforts to shoehorn traditional knowledge from the Global South that has never been written down in reliable sources (e.g. oral citations) in a way that violates WP:NOR. WikiJournals is the proper way to do it. MER-C (talk) 17:07, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
112.  Support I become frustrated when I lack resources or research articles to write a Wikipedia article on a subject which is not researched well or the available sources are too old to be considered good. It will be very helpful for original research and filling the gap of resources we need for Wikipedia.-Nizil Shah (talk) 06:54, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
113.  Support Muhraz (talk) 07:19, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
114.  Support—___CAPTAIN MEDUSAtalk 10:49, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
115.  Support interesting concept, worth at least a trial phase. – Ajraddatz (talk) 17:33, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
116.  Support I think a Wikimedia academic journal would be great for academics and wikipedians wanting to publish their research. I have a few reasons for this support, which I shall try and outline here.
     1. I think that WikiJournal articles are very highly read, much more so than paywall restricted journals. My anecdote here is that I published an article in the WikiJournal of Medicine (Eukaryotic and prokaryotic gene structure) and I think it is probably my most read piece of work. I get a report from Researchgate every month and I think pretty much every month it says I had the most read piece of research in my institute (around 400 staff), solely due to that review in WikiJournal of Medicine.
     2. The mainstream academic publishing model is terribly expensive for authors and for readers as well. Authors pay businesses thousands of dollars to share their research in a niche journal that is financially out of reach for most people. Yes, open access journals exist in mainstream publishing, but in those cases even more costs are pushed onto the author. Scientific societies often run their own journals and encourage their members to publish their research in these paywalled journals, which is a great idea but costs a lot and in my opinion usually results in a very restricted audience for the work. The journals then pass on some of the publication fees to the society, which encourages societies to remain bound to the journal, a costly loop. I have experienced limitations on where and how my research can be shared because of financial demands, this should not be a problem in a wikimidea hosted journal. A wikimedia type academic journal project, as described here, could replicate all of the rigour of mainstream journals but allow anyone to share their research with some permanence, regardless of financial support. This would benefit academic and non-academic authors.
     3. Academia is slowly moving away from rewarding work shared in old and elite journals, and instead recognising authors who's work is widely shared and read. Wikipedia's topic pages are an example of this shift and I see in my own limited experience here that my work here was far more rapidly cited compared to my other works. I believe this is due to the trust in an open peer review process coupled with the high visibility of academic articles linked to wikipedia. Rohan Lowe (talk) 06:02, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
117.  Strong support. We really need bottom-up approaches to the creation and dissemination of scholarly knowledge (*not* just by "academics"). In the modern world, where Wikidata is the greatest Open store of validatable linked knowledge we need radical new ideas and technology and Wikimedia can play a large part. Disclosure: I am a retired academic. The academic "publishing" system is failing to change and in many ways is getting worse. Decisions are made by corporate publisher managers who have no contact with authors or readers. Although there are some excellent volunteer and society journals most of the structure is a priesthood. Knowledge only flows one way (publisher->reader) and the process creates non-reusable PDFs often only available a year or more after submission. There is no ownership by the readers and reviewers and authors (who are drawn from the same "community"). The system is grossly inefficient at all levels , obscenely overcharging, often based on false values (the "publisher-academic complex values reputation rather than knowledge) and neocolonialist. It's anglophone and discriminates against the Global South. It's resistant to new technology, forbidding new ways of publishing and has little concept of helping the reader. Wikimedia has pioneered many changes - inclusiveness, multilinguality, linked data and collaboration. All of these should be mainstream in knowledge dissemination and I promote Wikimedia as the world's best example of how to address these. An emerging Wikimedia "publishing" system (I'd look for a new term) would act as a major example of how to do things better. I support the effort that T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo) has put in forseveral years. Petermr (talk) 07:53, 5 July 2019 (UTC)
118.  Support. Seems a good idea! Enivak (talk) 13:45, 5 July 2019 (UTC)
119.  Support. I think it's a great idea. However, given some academic scholars conscious or unconscious bias towards Wikipedia, has anyone considered a removing Wiki from the name? I would modestly suggest Collaborative Journal of Medicine etc. This would ensure that the articles have a separate scope, whilst still improving Wikipedia, may address unconscious bias, and also may encourage more articles to be submitted as review articles by students and scholars, reviewing and critiquing primary studies. This would, in my opinion, allow the new project to be more widely cited and taken seriously as scientific publications. --E.3 (talk) 13:06, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

     @E.3: Interestingly, that was actually one of the suggestions in the 2016 name change vote! The sister project would likely need to have 'wiki' or 'wikimedia' in the title for consistency with the other projects, however the names of the journals are much more flexible. One thing I've come to appreciate about having wiki in the name through is that affiliation with wikimedia may be useful to highlight as a point of difference compared to the very large number of OA journals (many of which are predatory). T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 08:28, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

     @Evolution and evolvability: fascinating and I would have voted that the highest same as you. I am very pro open access publication, especially in this format, knowledge for all. However, there is a tendency for researchers to publish in the highest impact journal possible in the field. As it is continually reminded to students in professional courses not to cite Wikipedia, are academics and students aware that they are not citing Wikipedia when citing the Wikijournals? And have there been many citations of the published articles so far to build journal momentum and encourage further submissions? I think if it was named the Collaborative Journals (a Wikimedia Foundation Journal) or the like, I'd be a little more motivated personally to submit here rather than elsewhere, and that's as a forward thinking pro-Wikimedia academic. I suspect some other academics may feel the same. --E.3 (talk) 15:36, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

     @E.3: I don't really have the answer to that, other than the attempt to address it is via the Academic_peer_reviewed template on wikipedia. The equivalent 'Topic Page' articles from PLOS Computational Biology and PLOS Genetics are very highly cited (mean >50), so the limitation is likely low awareness of the WikiJournals. It might also be worth more clearly promoting this category on Wikipedia, but that'd be up to the Wikipedia community. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 00:38, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

120.  Support No reason to oppose. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 22:48, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
121.  Support It's time for the Journals to come out of incubation. Acer (talk) 03:41, 21 July 2019 (UTC)
122.  Support A very similar idea has been on my mind for several weeks now, and I just found this project that closely aligns with my thoughts. I am in full support. However, here are a few additional thoughts to consider:
     1. Reasons the current academic publishing system needs to be revamped:
        1. Journals are moving away from print editions and are almost entirely electronic
        2. Currently, there is a limit on how much can be published since Journals only accept a certain number of articles and have page limits. There should theoretically be no limit on how much valuable information can be published in a given timeframe. Hence, in the future there should be no page limits and no limit on the number of articles
        3. Journals take year(s) to publish research, so the research is old by the time it gets out
        4. Review process is biased towards things that are interesting or that align with mainstream thinking
        5. Review process is subjective (easier to publish in Nature after you've already published in Nature)
        6. Research is already financed largely by taxes. Public should not need to pay to access results.
        7. The current system is buoyed mainly by the academic measurement system. If faculty were not measured on the rank and number of publications, the current system would collapse rather quickly.
     2. Features that should be part of a future academic publishing system:
        1. Anyone can upload anything (like Wikipedia)
        2. Need a standard format for articles (abstract, nomenclature, figures, tables, equations, APA, etc.). Also need a standard editing tool (html/xml/latex/word/overleaf, etc.) so that the files can be viewed online but downloaded as PDF. Make authors handle editing and formatting. Copy editors often introduce more errors than they catch. Allow dataset uploads, videos, etc.
        3. Open review (anyone can comment, but people can see your comments and you can see theirs. No blind reviews)
        4. Author has the ability to edit the article to update or fix errors, but the old version still exists and is viewable by the public.
        5. DOI assigned at upload
        6. Free to download and read. Perhaps charge to upload (very cheap since no editing/review is necessary). Only need enough money to support the cloud storage of the articles.
        7. Provide aggregate data-mining tools on the articles
        8. Authors can upload papers on any subject
        9. Automatically check for plagiarism
        10. Authors are required to use their real names and information and linked to something like ORCID (no hiding behind online user names)
        11. Must encourage reviewers to review. One option: Require a review of a certain number of other articles every time you upload an article. Each review you complete gives you a token. Once you have enough tokens, you can contribute an article of your own. The review is a series of questions, just like AirBnB or Amazon product reviews, to ensure academic quality. Reviewer responses will be public. I realize this sounds dangerous to open the review process to the public rather than to qualified reviewers. However, I think there are more pros than cons to this approach. Because the reviews will not be blind and will be open to the public, and because authors will be required to use their real names (not online user names that create a mask), this approach should improve the quality of the reviews and decrease the bias. Users will want to review papers on topics they are familiar with so that they don't make erroneous comments. Authors will be incentivized to put out good work and fix mistakes if a reviewer finds one.
        12. Searchable. Must have advanced search capabilities to limit search to specific authors, institutions, key words, etc.
        13. Must be decentralized - like blockchain technology - the database should be decentralized so that no single organization can control search results, etc. This keeps the power in the hands of the users.

     Just some thoughts. Doug Hunsaker 15:10 23 July 2019 (UTC)

123.  Support Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) 21:54, 6 August 2019 (UTC)
124.  Support I'd love to see where this would go, especially with the right software support. stephen (talk) 05:30, 15 August 2019 (UTC)
125.  Support. If successful, this initiative could make predatory publishing obsolete. — Newslinger talk 03:08, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
126.  Support. As an academician, I support the initiative wholeheartedly. Csgir (talk) 05:04, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
127.  Support. I would like to see a voting system for each paragraph in a journal paper. This would provide a review system as well as allowing the overall consensus of the community to emerge. It would be particularly useful to use those paragraphs with consensus in wikipedia, since simply citing a peer reviewed journal paper is not an indication of consensus. The voting option would also allow concensus to change overtime to overcome the bias that comes which older papers build up of being more cited. Each paragraph could also have have a critique explaining why they disagree. This would make the review system much more transparent. The critique in turn could be voted on. Those areas without concensus would also give an indication of which areas need further research. Voting options would allow people to disagree with some parts of a paper while still allowing it to be published unlike the traditional peer review system. NeedsGlasses (talk) 09:41, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
128.  Support. This is a great idea. --Yodin^T 11:32, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
129.  Support. Walterwiki (talk) 13:32, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
130.  Support. The founding principles are not set in stone, and they do not have to apply to everything the Foundation or the community does. (It would also seem that they are mainly descriptive rather than prescriptive.) That they accurately describe what the projects are like now does not mean that they must be accurate forever into the future. I think the proposed project is in broad alignment with the overarching goals of the movement, would be a good fit for the capabilities of the existing MediaWiki software, could generally benefit the community and the WMF as another viable sister project, and could have advantages for those who publish their work there in comparison to traditional journals. Jc86035 (talk) 16:20, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
131.  Support. In real life, I'm a professional academic scientist, and I've come over time to have a lot of concerns over the traditional journal publication process. I think the proposal here has a lot of potential to test things that could address those concerns. And I also think that if it fails (from, for example, a lack of interest in submitting high quality work), it will be quite possible to decide to shut it down and mark it as historical. So I see it as a worthy experiment from the perspective of traditional academics. As for the perspective of WMF projects, I've read and thought about the opposes based on the concerns about core principles, and it seems to me that, as a separate project, it's acceptable to try out something different. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:01, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

     @Tryptofish: I think those who are proposing this have been experimenting for years. I didn't register the timestamps at first but this survey (or whatever it is) was initiated on 21 August 2016. - Sitush (talk) 18:05, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

     @Sitush: Thanks, I didn't see that either, until you pointed it out! I came here from the new watchlist notice at en-wiki. But anyway, I support continuing the experiment. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:08, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

132.  Support. I was sceptical about the journals back in the day (unlike some, I have long been aware of them), but so far I think they are turning out better than I expected, in particular in terms of getting "peer" external reviewers. Johnbod (talk) 19:54, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
133.  Support per MER-C and Doc James. We shouldn't try to compete with more established journals or even necessarily worry about whether the journal gets indexed. I see this as an experiment in solving a particular problem, which is to record under-represented cultures in a format that fulfills Wikipedia's Verifiability policy. Clayoquot (talk) 17:52, 22 August 2019 (UTC)
134. Strong support per Rohan Lowe, Petermr and many others. There seems to be a good community behind this idea and it seems like an achievable and useful project. If the founding principles of Wikimedia don't quite apply here, there's nothing to bind us to them. What's more important is that a growing community with a similar ethos to our other projects want to contribute something useful to, well, "the sum of all human knowledge". I'm thoroughly unconvinced by opposes by people who give little reasoning, oppose based on technical grounds that are solvable (like MediaWiki/LaTeX concerns), wouldn't want to themselves publish in WikiJournals or just don't seem to like it. — Bilorv (talk) 21:27, 22 August 2019 (UTC)
135.  Support A reasonable extension to the Wikimedia family that would provide benefit both to academia and Wikipedia community. I suspect it will become very big very quickly. Scope creep (talk) 10:48, 23 August 2019 (UTC)
136.  Support Many people have cited the Founding principles as a reason to oppose this proposal, however, I feel they have missed the primary point of the wikimedia movement: the free and open accumulation of knowledge. This project would allow the movement to address one of it's biggest shortcomings- original research. OR has always been disallowed because it was not verifiable, but this project could allow us to finally start seeing OR in the wikimedia movement. The various processes the Wikijournals project will need to implement will be a step away from our usual method of doing things, however, I feel that despite these differences the project will be a valuable addition to the wikimedia movement. Sario528 (talk) 18:01, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

     It isn't our role to get involved in original research, and to do so by publishing it in one place so we can use it in another is a clear conflict of interest/case of circular referencing. You're asking for an extension of the founding principles and thus opening a hornet's nest of problems. We started as a tertiary source, an encyclopaedia, and ever since have been engaging in mission creep. Perhaps I've missed it but where is "the free and open accumulation of knowledge" a part of our mission statement etc, in the sense of us generating the knowledge in the first place? Where does that end? Do we start opening burger bars with free food on offer to proselytise and to accumulate knowledge by oral means which we then make accessible? Nor is this stuff free: it has a cost in staffing and software development, and doubtless another gravy train of "necessary" WMF travel grants etc. - Sitush (talk) 18:21, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

     It's not Wikipedia's role to get involved with original research, that's why Wikijournal will be a separate project. Once an article has been peer reviewed and published, it will be no different than any other reference we use. Any potential conflict of interest or circular reference can be guarded against by both projects, just like Wikipedia already guards against COI and bad refs. We may have started as an encyclopedia, but the movement has grown past the bounds of our beginnings. Wikijournal will not be generating anything, simply verifying and publishing information like Wikipedia already does. The only difference will be a much stricter verification procedure then what Wikipedia uses because Wikijournal's articles may be or contain original research. All wiki projects cost time and money to staff and develop, which is why we have always been dependent on volunteers and donations. The important part is that the information free and open to the public. Sario528 (talk) 20:36, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

     No. We already have articles in the pipeline that claim to be based on Wikipedia articles, and which are going to be peer reviewed with input from a significant editor to that WP article, then published in a WJ, then brought back to en-WP. That is circular and COI. - Sitush (talk) 20:50, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

     I think w:WP:Circular means something different. The WJ article does not cite the WP article as a reference, and the WP article doesn't cite the WJ artcle as a reference. They are attempting to transparently attribute CC BY-SA material to the author and location of origin per w:WP:REUSE (ethics guidelines). Similarly, the journals attempt to rigorously check for COI disclosure in line with academic best practices (ethics guidelines). You can see examples here and here. To avoid confusion, it is not only articles in the pipeline that intend to do this, but it has actually already been done with 17 published articles from a WikiJournal and one article from Open Medicine. The article whose peer review was organised with the BMJ was done slightly differently, but I'll w:User:Anthonyhcole/sandbox link here in case it's useful. If the community opposes citation of articles that were adapted from Wikipedia, that would also have to be kept separate from citation of articles that wre written from scratch and then subsequently incorporated into Wikipedia (including the ones from PLOS Comp Biol, PLOS Genet and J. Cheminformatics). T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 13:11, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

137.  Support.5Ept5xW (talk) 18:58, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

     Why? I'm a bit lost because you have no rationale and I can't even figure out where else you have contributed previously. Is this actually your first edit globally or am I confused with meta's way of showing user history etc? (Entirely possible!) worked out the struck bit - it was indeed my poor understanding of meta layout. - Sitush (talk) 20:50, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

138.  Support I like to see the mission of the Wikijournal expand to allow original research, in order to expand the comprehensiveness of topics. If it's so called "peer review" is a joke IMO." Fix it. Dr. Loo^{Lets talk about it} 22:19, 23 August 2019 (UTC)
139.  Support As a researcher working on Wikipedia, I'm quite excited to have my work here assessed by external experts. I'm most excited about articles without any OR: good review articles. It's extremely valueable to have more review articles in many fields of science that are understandeable to newer scientists in the field. I see a slight advantage of getting OR research out like this as well: I assume that quite a few hobbyists in the humanities have accrued knowledge that is now not available to the scientific community. Allowing OR in a journal like this, might make it easier for these people to connect to the scientific community. Reflecting back on the one peer-review I did from somebody outside of the scientific communinity, I think that person would have benefitted from preparing the article in Wikipedia, with our normal reference requirements. Femkemilene (talk) 19:02, 24 August 2019 (UTC)
140.  Support Per Femkemilene, "as a researcher working on Wikipedia, I'm quite excited to have my work here assessed by external experts." Buckshot06 (talk) 14:58, 25 August 2019 (UTC)
141.  Support This fits right in with Wikimedia's philosophy of making all knowledge freely available! Currently, you have to pay to submit papers to journals and you have to pay to access journals, limiting the availability of information to the masses. Just as Wikipedia made an encyclopedia freely available, saving people from paying thousands per edition of the Britannica, Wikimedia has a chance to do the same thing but for academic journals! This is perhaps even more important than Wikipedia as it deals with the sciences, which are necessary to progress mankind! TheSameGuy (talk) 17:21, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

     On a side note though, I think the domain names currently chosen are "ugly". A better proposal would be to use the domain name wikijournal.org and then use the type of journal as the subdomain, such as med.wikijournal.org, sci.wikijournal.org, and hum.wikijournal.org TheSameGuy (talk) 17:29, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

     @TheSameGuy: Unfortunately, "wikijournal.org" is already taken by someone who had pretty much the exact same idea. It doesn't seem to be very active, though; there are a total of ten user accounts on the English version and eighty-one on the Russian version, and the last 30 days' recent changes for both versions comprise six edits by the site admin (all on the Russian version). Perhaps the site admin would be interested in giving the domain to the WMF. Jc86035 (talk) 18:19, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

     Or even better merging with our efforts, bringing Russian with them :-) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 11:25, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

     The were some initial discussions about that in 2017 (here) with the main issue being that the wikijournal.org content was not peer reviewed. the owner of the domain subsequently indicated in 2019 that they are looking to sell the domain (here) but consensus at the time was no action until this process finished. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 12:14, 26 August 2019 (UTC

142.  Support This will benefit Wikipedia. We need expert reviewers. Current review processes on Wikipedia (GA, FA) are broken and not very useful; much of the effort is focused on minutiae of prose and reference formatting, while few are willing to go for thorough review of content with respect to accuracy and comprehensiveness. Expert reviews will be an asset. --AhmadLX (talk) 08:51, 26 August 2019 (UTC)
143.  Support Don't know how successful this will be but it seems like it would be worth a shot. Haukurth (talk) 12:22, 26 August 2019 (UTC)
144.  Support. Ninja✮Strikers ^«☎» 16:31, 26 August 2019 (UTC)
145.  Support. I think there are some kinks to work out, but I think this could end up being a very useful tool all around. ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 23:13, 26 August 2019 (UTC)
146.  Strong support. Will indeed be a useful tool. Lefcentreright (talk) 16:45, 27 August 2019 (UTC)
147.  Support for the reasons specified above. About time we have a proper journal project around here. — AfroThundr ^{(u · t · c)} 20:48, 27 August 2019 (UTC)
148.  Support --Igel B TyMaHe (talk) 07:43, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
149.  Support. Very promising idea. Homoatrox (talk) 16:18, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
150.  Support. Ribeiro2002Rafael (talk) 18:00, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
151.  Support. Digital editor for The Mailer Review. We've been doing something similar, though not as ambitious, on Project Mailer. —Grlucas (talk) 22:59, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
152.  Support Arep Ticous 18:21, 31 August 2019 (UTC)
153.  Support Very promising proposal. Things may be rough at first as always but there is a higher chance of this project succeeding. Masum Reza^☎ 14:23, 2 September 2019 (UTC)
154.  Support - I support making WikiJournals as a seperate sister project of WikiMedia Foundation. --Gorlapraveen123 (talk) 16:22, 2 September 2019 (UTC)
155.  Support Dan Graur — The preceding unsigned comment was added by Dogrt (talk)
156. Support as sibling project, especially now that the journals have more visibility. Though it also works well at present on wikiversity. To one of Nsk92's points below, document conversion is a solvable problem. There are many good free-software markdown-based publishing tools—WJ could run its own conversion tools; or could offer a submission workflow that allows LaTeX and PDFs to be posted via an off-wiki form, then after initial processing export to markdown for hosting on the wiki. Most of the 'technical requirements' list are nice but not requirements for this to take off. –SJ talk  01:39, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
157.  Support with the option to publish in more languages than only in english -- Achim Raschka (talk) 12:55, 4 September 2019 (UTC)
158.  Support Supporting publications and research is a fundamental approach to support diversity, inclusiveness and a broader international perspective for all our projects. I strongly support the idea of this dedicated wikimedia project. iopensa (talk) 08:32, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
159.  Support - long overdue. As for FA, if you're interested in seeing more pros and cons for a similar project proposal with parallels: User:Atsme/WikiProject Accuracy and on the TP you'll see the debate. Atsme^📞📧 14:08, 16 September 2019 (UTC)
160.  Support This is indeed a major step towards OA journals. John Samuel 07:20, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
161.  Support First, because if we don't do it someone else will do, and it's better to have it inside our infrastructure, with easy links through Wikidata. Second, because we will attract more academia related people and ease the transition between projects, making Wikimedia more resilient to academic criticism. And last, because Wikiversity is not a very well known project, so we are not breaking anything with the split. I would like to make one comment, about the language inclusion. I think this project should be multilingual from the start, instead of having separated language instances. -Theklan (talk) 14:36, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

     Theklan, why is it bad if someone else does it? There's an entire Free Journals Network and thousands of freely licensed journals which publish at no cost for the authors, usually on free software. Nemo 06:44, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

162.  Support. Gego 08:44, 9 December 2019 (UTC) I love this idea and would also point to my old proposal WikiResearch WikiPapers as to the reason why I think this is essential - especially since the Wikipedia-community just got the Internet Archive to support our quest for good links and sources
163.  Support. It can help to bridge the gap between Wikimedia movement and academic world. We have an interesting project in the Czech Republic called Students write Wikipedia where university students are encouraged to publish their student works or parts of them in Wikipedia. One of the obstacles is that their works include original research which is not allowed in Wikipedia articles. Suggested project could provide excellent space for them. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 16:57, 26 January 2020 (UTC)
164.  Support. no publication costs.--Kitabc12345 (talk) 05:25, 2 May 2020 (UTC)
165.  Support Ziko (talk) 22:02, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
166.  Support. This proposal would be an amazing resource for the open science movement, in a way that draws from and complements sister projects, and would be really hard to accomplish otherwise. --Pi Delport (talk) 08:39, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
167.  Support As someone who has contributed, I love the idea of it being its own project. 1) it makes it more professional, 2) it’s another open access journal—something of which we need more of, and 3) it allows for people to get their foot in the door. Credentialism is a plague in academia, and this project allows for academically driven novice and amateur researchers to get legitimate peer review. Azcolvin429 (talk) 16:24, 22 December 2020 (UTC)
168.  Strong support for a Journal free of cost to publish and access. Public peer review, collaborative research, rigourousness, open to suggestions and scrutiny, Wikimedia ethics, non-predatory, motive of public welfare, friendliness to Citizen Journalism etc., would make it a unique, much needed journal. The established journals are profit driven. WikiJournal would be very much in line with WIkimedia Projects' mission and would complement the existing scientific journals Vis M (talk) 12:51, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
169.  Support SHB2000 (talk | contibs) 12:58, 1 August 2021 (UTC)
170.  Support – This has potential to disintermediate the sharing of scientific information. Preprints are nice but those are necessarily drafts and a WikiJournal could have articles that are "published". And there are serious people with serious credentials in this community who could participate in making it work. I think it is worth trying. Harej (talk) 05:27, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
171.  Support We need a multilanguage project, and it is impossible without separate site. It is not just about English. --BruneiWMUA (talk) 13:42, 10 October 2021 (UTC)
172.  Strong support FYI, there was a presentation at WikiConference North America 2021 on WikiConference:Submissions:2021/Current developments in Wikipedia-integrated academic journals by User:Saguaromelee and Eric A. Youngstrom, PhD, Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience; Co-Founder and Director, HGAPS.org. Prof. Youngstrom said he was skeptical about Wikipedia and Wikimedia Foundation projects until he actually tried publishing in a WikiJournal. He found the referee process much more supportive. He got much wider distribution of his research both before and after the official publication date. As long as the editors who make the final publication decisions are appropriately qualified, I would expect WikiJournals to support better science while also strongly supporting Wikipedia's "prime objective" of supporting universal "free access to the sum of all human knowledge". Youngstrom suggested that a Wikipedia article could be published as a literature review, which would be a frozen version to support academic citations, while the original on Wikipedia could continue to evolve as newer information is processed into the article. I think similar things could happen with original research starting on Wikiversity: A version could appear in a WikiJournal, while the research continues to accumulate with the Wikiversity article. DavidMCEddy (talk) 17:09, 12 October 2021 (UTC)
173.  Support I strongly support the application for WikiJournal to be a sister project. The added visibility of the journal will be a great asset to not only the WikiJournals, but Wikimedia as well. Throughout my 5 years of involvement with this project I have seen it grow and flourish. WikiJournal has outgrown Wikiversity. It was a great starting platform, but it is now time for it to fly on its own. I support the split of WikiJournal from Wikiversity and believe the project differentiated enough to become a sister project. I am excited for what the future brings for WikiJournal User Group. SHaggstrom (talk) 17:45, 19 August 2022 (UTC)
174.  Support I am strongly in favour of the application of WikiJournal to be a sister project. The project is a great link between the Wikimedia community and the scientific community. Ecsussman (talk) 09:02, 22 August 2022 (UTC)
175.  Support Mstefan (talk) 12:40, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
176.  Support Worthy project in bringing open research in the shape of organized journals to the wikiverse!--Pharos (talk) 20:34, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
177.  Support per above. Crainsaw (talk) 16:40, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
178.  Strong support per above. Wüstenspringmaus _talk 13:04, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
179.  Strong support This has significant opportunity! Wheatley2 (talk) 06:09, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
180. Gamaliel (talk) 16:55, 6 October 2024 (UTC)
181.  Support Per above! I think this proposal has a good idea. --린눈라단 (talk) 16:05, 30 October 2024 (UTC)
182.  Support --Zemxer (talk) 19:13, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Oppose

Additional discussion at the talkpage

1. Disagree with split I don't see why it's valuable to split this from WV—this is perfectly within its scope. In fact, it is one of the real triumphs of that project and splitting it off would probably be to the detriment of that site. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:52, 21 August 2016 (UTC)

   Having Wikiversity lose WikiJournal might be a huge loss to you, Justin. However, all's not lost for Wikiversity, and there is still hope for Wikiversity. Indeed, Wikiversity has English courses, like v:English as a second language, most of which needs further improvements. Recently, I had to help one of users who utilized his poor English writing skills at English Wikipedia. To help him improve his English skills, I had to direct him to v:English and b:English. I received thanks for helping him. Therefore, Wikiversity may be needed for users who want to improve their English writing skills for English Wikipedia. Don't you think so? --George Ho (talk) 05:44, 26 June 2017 (UTC); edited, 05:54, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

   @George Ho: Honestly, it seems like your English is better in the months that I've seen you posting across WMF sites. I definitely believe that there is potential in Wikiversity but I just don't think this should split from it. We'll see how it goes. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:50, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

   Thanks for complimenting my English. ;) --George Ho (talk) 05:54, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

2.  Oppose they don't need an entire sister project. It has to stay in WV.

   Strong oppose to separate login. Just add the obligation to fill an informations tab in Preferences to allow contributing CreativeC38 (talk) 10:19, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

   this user voted 2x, therefore have struck one vote--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 15:29, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

   @CreativeC38: Why does it have to stay on WV? You don't think there's any merit whatsoever to having it as a separate site instead of a subpage on WV in terms of presentation, attracting experts etc.? InsaneHacker (talk) 00:24, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

   Also, the "oppose" and "strong oppose" vote are yours. I'm informing readers to avoid misleads. BTW, sometimes you feel that Wikiversity won't be the same without WikiJournal. However, Wikiversity has been Wikiversity, especially without WikiJournal. Also, it has some good lessons for others to read, like v:English. --George Ho (talk) 03:48, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

3.  Oppose Various "technical requirements" violate the Founding principles, especially the second one. While I understand the reasons, I don't think that such a project should be part of the Wikimedia "wiki family"; academic publishing works primarily through the reputation of its authors and publishers while Wikimedia projects work mostly on the basis of the dedicated interest of number of editors (both casual, sporadic, one time and regular ones) irrespective of their qualifications and trying to put both of them together isn't going to work due to the culture contrast. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 15:18, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
   • that 'culture contrast' has existed for many years, a journal of this nature would only be a positive...IMO--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 16:12, 2 June 2019 (UTC)

     Yeah, and we've had problems with it. I don't disagree with the existence of such a project, I object to making it part of the Wikimedia family. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 16:25, 2 June 2019 (UTC)

   Comment This is a feature, not a bug. The founding principles are not divinely given universal desiderata for all online collabotation. To me (both as an academiac and Wikipedia editor) two things have been clear for years:

   1. that NPOV and omnieditability are deleterious for scientific publishing, where it is imperative to let a case to be made before subjecting it to critique;
   2. that a very large number of people wish contribute original research online, and are frustrated by the fact that even quite elementary observations are not welcomed anywhere within the Wikimedia ecosystem (let alone on Wikipedia itself).

   This means that while the existence of this project would greatly benefit the Wikimedia movement, whether it should be run by Wikimedia is a separate question, one that comes down to how much the "elites" are willing to face the fact that ~all Wikimedia projects are dependent on scientific publishing, which very much does not run on Wikimedia principles. I would be quite happy to partially "jump ship" to an entirely new organization and wiki environment geared for a different type of collaboration. This has an obvious critical-mass problem though, and starts being only tangentially related to this exact project proposal. (Due to this deep-set conceptual tension, I have opted to not contribute to Wikiversity; hence I do not have enough of a dog in this race to currently clearly lean on either support or oppose.) --Tropylium (talk) 17:08, 8 June 2019 (UTC)

   Good points! I believe it is possible to run such a site within th Wikimedia movement, even if a bunch of people often confuse the tool with the goal. The goal isn't to use a specific process or software, it is to provide free knowledge to the world. — Jeblad 12:24, 15 June 2019 (UTC)

   One additional note is that the journals currently specifically only require the external peer reviewers to have subject-specific credential. Authors have ranged from professors to students to people unaffiliated with any university. There is also currently the option of double-blind peer reviewing which may further address this. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 13:10, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

4.  Oppose, per Jo-Jo Eumerus. - SchroCat (talk) 16:00, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
5.  Oppose primarily per Jo-Jo Eumerus, with the added caveat that according to mw:Template:Page security extension disclaimer, MediaWiki was not written to provide per-page access restrictions, and almost all hacks or patches promising to add them will likely have flaws somewhere, meaning that the technical requirements violate not only founding principles but also the very way the code for MediaWiki is designed. * Pppery * _{has returned} 00:39, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
6.  Oppose - I have an issue with "Although GA and FA involve editorial review of content, there is little formal review from outside experts", as if Wikipedia requires experts in fields to supersede our core values of being accessable to all. If it were that expert grammatical user that copyedited through articles, fine. But this seems more as though we'd have an editorial role which chinks badly with me. Lee Vilenski (talk) 08:18, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
7.  Oppose this particular solution. Support in spirit. I think it's reasonable to have Wikijournals be a separate project from Wikiversity, but Jo-Jo makes very good points about our Founding principles that I don't think are adequately addressed. Wugapodes (talk) 20:51, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

   Nsk92 (talk · contribs) brings up three really good points below that should be given a lot of consideration. I've talked with faculty in my department about the newly started WikiJournal of Social Science and what Nsk92 says below mirrors a lot of the hesitancy I heard from my colleagues. For example, even though I keep all of my experiment and analysis materials publicly available on GitHub (gaining popularity in Linguistics) I draft my papers privately and only post completed manuscripts partly for the reasons Nsk92 brings up, but also partly because drafting is a very personal process and there are many times where I have made claims in drafts that I wound up walking back or completely rejecting later. I also draft my papers in LaTeX though only some journals in my field accept those manuscripts, others require conversion to MS Word which is already hard enough, and the potential that some researchers might have to convert their manuscript into three different formats for submissions and resubmissions is not a selling point to academics who aren't fans of duplicating work. These are not insurmountable problems, but I would want to see them addressed more thoroughly before a new project is spun out and the technical implementation solidified.

    

   I really do support the spirit of this proposal, but the single most important thing in my mind is that this project be ironclad from the launch. The field of Anthropology tried something similar to this project with en:w:HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory and while it started off with great buy in from prominent anthropologists, a number of administrative problems led to it losing a lot of favor and eventually going partly closed access. You can read about some of the issues on Anthrodendum and on a blog post from Dutch anthropologist en:w:Don Kalb. If this is going to succeed it cannot be based simply on aspirations as that was one of the critical failures of HAU. To quote Kalb: "If one seeks a Left emancipative politics, should one then not organize oneself commensurately, without insisting on 'radical sacrifice' from young precarious foot soldiers [academics] in order to produce value that is then extracted and valorized by others higher up in the game [WMF, journal editorial boards, etc] and rarely given back? Should we not require our horizontalist gurus to take some responsibility over their organizational offspring? OA [Open Access] has lent itself perfectly to brute academic capitalism and hierarchy, just as internet platforms in other sectors have not brought the horizontalist information society promised by early internet utopias. On the contrary." Writing a paper takes a lot of work and for academics is literally their livelihood. They will not publish anything they believe to be important in a journal no one reads because that means they are spending time writing and rewriting an article that their department and dean will not be impressed by when it comes time to decide if they get a contract extension or tenure.

    

   I say this with all the love for this idea in the world: if this project wants to be more than an alternative FA process or publisher of low impact original research it needs to really grapple with why academics are not interested in contributing at the moment, and the reason is not simply the association with Wikipedia. According to en:w:Crossref, no article in the 4 combined volumes of the WikiJournal of Humanities or the WikiJournal of Science has received a single citation in any of the 90 million papers crossref has indexed. The WikiJournal of Medicine seems to be better in this regard. The first volume, published in two issues in 2014, has gathered 62 citations across all 12 of its articles, but half of them come from a single article, "Medical gallery of Blausen Medical 2014", and another 15 from "Medical gallery of Mikael Haggstrom 2014" meaning a full 75% of citations to that volume went to two articles, and the whole volume averaged a little over 5 citations per article which is skewed by the two heavy hitting articles. The median number of citations is 1, which matches the average citation number if we remove the two galleries I mentioned (1.3). Perhaps I have higher hopes for the WikiJournals than is intended, but we should not go into this with pretensions. If this is going to target academics interested in publishing serious research rather than Wikipedians getting a doi for their FA, there needs to be a much more concrete plan for what the researchers will gain from publishing with us and we need to consider at what point those changes go against our founding principles. Wugapodes (talk) 05:31, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

   The conversion of HAU to closed access is defnintely a sad case study. We've also looked quite a bit at the closure of Open Medicine and SpringerPlus. For Open Med, a key feature was editor over-loading and cost of the hosting platform. For SpringerPlus, it was inflexibility of their system to be able to adapt to different fields' workflows. A few things that will likely be important for ensuring sustainability are:

   • Aiming to automate parts of the process (e.g. suggesting potential peer reviewers to editors, formatting, plagiarism checking)
   • Author-driven formatting by writing directly in the same interface that will be published online (WikiJournal preprints), as well as import/export to pdf or MSword
   • Growing a pool of associate editors who can be automatically contacted to assist in organising peer review when an article is submitted in their field
   • Focus on 'digital native' features (sortable tables, animated diagrams, hyperlinking)
   • Focus on potential for wikimedia-integration for 'real-world' impact (especially wikipedia, wikicommons, wikidata)
   • Focus on radical openness and transparency (peer reviews, strategy, and even indexing applications are open)
   • Maximise flexibility of the system for different fields (e.g. allow unblinded, single-blind, or double-blind peer review upon request)
   • Maximise flexibility of submission formats (e.g. gallery articles have proven to be very well cited)
   • Maximise flexibility of versioning (transparently indicating which the last peer reviewed version is and what the differences are). Many other journals are particularly interested in this but their systems are not well set up for it, e.g. living systematic reviews.
   • Keep publication costs low, with minor not-for-profit support sought from Wikimedia Foundation (and eventually others).
   • Collaboration with other journals (e.g. PLOS is already interested in moving topicpageswiki.plos.org to a joint wikimedia journals platform, and it might also provide a useful location for organising one-off experiments like this one by the BMJ). Conceivably articles could even be co-pulished between a trad journal and a WikiJournal (similar to doi:10.1136/bmj.j3453 and doi:10.1186/s40900-017-0062-2).

   It's definitely the case that citations to WikiJournal User Group articles have so far been low. In part this has been from discoverability: overall the project is relatively little known. A key task will be publicity and dissemination around relevant communities so that people are more aware of the project's existence. Comparatively, PLOS Topic Pages have a ridiculously high average citation number (>50). Review articles will likely eventually be major impact factor boosts (as they are for all journals) and there are also long lists of high importance stub/start/missing wikipedia pages. Review articles can form the initial core that then gathers different types of original reserach articles (and case studies and systematic reviews etc). T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 10:44, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

8.  Oppose This proposal goes against our core values... Experts are placed on the same level as everyone else for a reason. This isn't true in every case, but some of their articles come off with an arrogant tone. Additionally, some of them try to shove their view down peoples' throats. Having different permission levels based on a piece of paper someone can hang on a wall is the worst thing that can happen. All kinds of editors are needed in order to create and maintain articles. Hurricane Noah (talk) 04:02, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

    Oppose in the proposed form: "Preferably there should be an option to have restricted viewer access to some files, discussions, and user identities (e.g., anonymous peer-reviewers)." violated the ability of almost anyone to edit (most) articles without registration (Founding principles). Expecially if the acces to discussions should be restricted. But the whole seem to be a good idea! Habitator terrae (talk) 12:01, 5 June 2019 (UTC) After a while of think about Neutral because of the big gap, that would be filled by this interesting idea. Habitator terrae (talk) 11:43, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

   I think the project can work fine with most discussions open. It's mainly discussing confidential peer reviewer identities that would have to be kept mainly hidden (approx 25% of peer reviewers still request anonymity). Solutions may be some off-wiki plugin that find-replaces anonymous peer reviewer names so that when an editor types "have your heard back from Jane Smith" it saves the text on-wiki as "have your heard back from anon reviewer 1234" and vice-versa when reading it. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 10:44, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

9.  Oppose The proposed journals lack a clear profile in their respective subject fields. Also, Wikimedia is neither a publishing house nor an academic institution. It would not be attractive to scholars from any field to publish with WikiJournal. Wiki~ indeed is a rather poor name for an academic journal. As was mentioned in the discussion on Wikimedia-l, there already is a lot of poor "research" to be found on Wikiversity.--Aschmidt (talk) 15:45, 9 June 2019 (UTC)

   I am happy to publish in WikiJournals. Once one of these journals is pubmed indexed I imagine more people will be interested aswell. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:57, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

   Likewise, I'm happy to publish in WikiJournal. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 01:33, 19 June 2019 (UTC)

   Same with me --Mimihitam (talk) 10:11, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

   Ditto. This concern (repeated several times below) seems bizarre and misplaced. --Joel B. Lewis (talk) 19:32, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

10.  Oppose as an exercise in navel-gazing self-indulgence. If some Wikipedians want the respect and gravitas of academia, it can be done elsewhere. Cheers! ——SerialNumber54129 12:15, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
11.  Oppose. The idea of creating "Open-access peer-reviewed academic journals with no publication costs" is both admirable and timely. But the model proposed here is still far below passing the proof of concept stage. I am a practicing active tenured research mathematician, with 75+ published papers and extensive experience both as a reviewer/referee and a journal editor. The main (and in my opinion, fatal) problem with the proposal is that the proposed WikiJournals require the articles to be submitted and published in MediaWiki format. This requirement creates the following issues:

    A. Preparation of such an article by its authors would have to be done in the open, presumably in a sandbox that one of the authors creates in their user page on WikiJournals. While editing access to such a sandbox might be restricted to a group of authors (although even that would be difficult to implement), the content itself would be visible to everyone while the article is being prepared. Scientific research is an intensely competitive endeavor, and priority of credit for a specific discovery or development is paramount. In medicine, for example, if two papers with similar results are published 1 day apart, the paper that was published 1 day earlier gets the credit and the priority. [That, by the way, is why in medicine pre-publication of research papers is extremely uncommon]. Other fields have less drastic priority standards, but priority still drives everything else. Serious researchers will not want to expose their new ideas, techniques and data to competitors until they have a reasonably finished product that they can claim credit for.

    B. If a paper is rejected by one of the WikiJournals, the authors will want to re-submit it elsewhere. That would require converting a paper from MediaWiki to a different format, such as LaTeX, MS-Word etc. That's not an easy matter, especially with longer papers. In Math and Physics, for example, close to 99% of the papers are now prepared in latex. Many (if not most) math and physics journals now require the articles to be prepared in latex, and do not accept any other alternatives. Math papers now tend to be mostly in the 20-30 pages range. Most authors will be unwilling to invest the time needed in preparing a paper in MediaWiki format if there is a substantial likelihood that they later will have to do a large amount of work to convert the article to another format.

    C. Very few practicing research scientists are familiar with the MediaWiki format and have even a rudimentary experience with editing in that format. Requiring the article to be submitted in that format, with no other alternatives, cuts off the great majority (again, I would say something in the 98-99% range) of potential contributors. One can argue that this situation can change over time and that eventually people will learn, but in 17 or so years of existence of Wikipedia that has not happened yet. Unless people are, at least for the first few years, given the option of submitting papers in other formats, I can't see the project as actually taking off.

    There are various other concerns that I have, but the above points are the most important ones. They could be overcome by allowing the papers to be submitted and hosted in, say, pdf only format. However, that seems to run contrary to Founding principles, and I doubt that WMF will agree to it, even as an interim measure. Nsk92 (talk) 12:38, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

    I agree that import/export tools to convert to and from latex/docx/pdf would be extremely valuable (technical wishlist). Currently authors either write directly in markup or prepare in a docx then copy-paste (usually using visualeditor). Conversion tools would likely also have use across other wikis, since it's not uncommon for new articles on wikipedia to be similarly prepared in a docx. The majority of journals (even biomed journals) these days accept articles that were previously online as preprints (list and database), so that aspect is becoming less of an issue. Indeed it's becoming more common for people to publish preprints specifically as scoop protection (examples: 1 2 3). Additional related questions at this page. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 13:40, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

    If and when an automated converter from pdf and/or LaTeX to MediaWiki becomes available and is shown to actually work well, there will be something to talk about. Until and unless that happens, IMO the project is dead in the water and is an egg that is not ready to hatch. Even the limited docx conversion option using the visual editor that you mention above is not really workable. It would be a huge pain to try do do such a conversion manually on, say, a 20-30 page paper and would still require knowing a fair amount about how MediaWiki works. Plus the fields that only use LaTeX, like math, physics, and most of computer science, would be completely excluded. Regarding the copyright issue. Yes, most journals now accept papers that had been posted as preprints, but with important restrictions. The journals do not provide attribution to prior preprint versions and they do not allow subsequent alterations of those preprint versions. The standard arXiv license does not require attribution. By comparison, the CC BY-SA 3.0 License used by WMF projects requires attribution when the work is later reused and published elsewhere. I am not aware of any cases where journals have provided such attribution to preprint versions and they may well be unwilling to do that. Nsk92 (talk) 14:46, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

    Also, even if various automatic converters and alternate submission formats become available, I still don't see how the proposed model can be viable for fields like medicine where credit for new work only attaches at the moment when a paper is published and not before. These fields do not use pre-prints, and scientists there closely guard their work and data until the moment of publication. The WikiJournal model requires the submitted paper to be posted in a preprint form while the paper is being reviewed. The great majority of medical researchers will be unwilling to do that. They will insist on the text of the paper remaining private and publicly unavailable while the paper is being reviewed. I don't see how the WikiJournal model can accommodate such a requirement. Without such capability the pool of medical and biological researchers willing to submit to WikiJournals shrinks dramatically. You may get a few occasional oddball submissions and maybe, if you are lucky, some survey papers. But people doing serious cutting-edge stuff will publish elsewhere. Nsk92 (talk) 15:23, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

    Just out of curiosity, why would you have to prepare submissions in an on-wiki sandbox? I know plenty of Wikipedia editors who draft articles externally and then copy/paste them into Wikipedia. --Laser brain (talk) 13:05, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

12.  Oppose per Jo-Jo Emerus. Lepricavark (talk) 12:43, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
13.  Oppose per Jo-Jo Emerus, SerialNumber54129 and NSK92. If anyone wants to see their paper published in a peer-reviewed, indexed etc journal, well, there are already bazillions of the things to which they could submit. As with recent proposals related to videos, this seems to be driven by the medics. - Sitush (talk) 13:31, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

    I recently read Making History, Now and Then, written by the historian David Cannadine. In the prologue, around pp 5 – 7, he discusses the bloat in published history research, notes that quality has been sacrificed for quantity and that there is so much of it published on ever more narrow subjects that it is impossible for academics to keep up even with reading for the bits that do relate to their topic of interest. He notes that the UK's Research Assessment Exercise (a form of performance monitoring for academics) necessitates and even drives this situation, for without publication the academic runs the risk of losing funding opportunities or even tenure etc. He says much more in the same vein but one thing the Wikimedia movement should never be is a job creation/retention exercise. It is bad enough that the WMF bloats as it does without us adding into that mix potential conflicts caused by self-serving publication-seeking academics. If they can't get it published in the existing journals, both closed and open access, it probably is not worth saying. I have other concerns, too, such as editorial independence and the undesirability of potentially creating sources which we then use ourselves. I am pretty sure I raised some of these issues in an earlier discussion on this subject but I'm blowed if I can remember where it is. - Sitush (talk) 15:40, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

    A further point: most of our articles on most of our projects are poor, and we're adding more every day. Creating yet another project just diverts attention - these people are not going to edit Wikipedia, for example, for precisely the same reasons that they have always not edited it. Someone above mentions Wikidata as an example of a good open-source "validatable" project which this proposal could somehow complement. Odd then, that I seem to find more errors on Wikidata than even on en-WP every time I look at the thing. And the chorus of people such as Doc James answering an Oppose above with "I'd be happy to be published in it" (paraphrase) just suggests that this is a vanity project, sorry. As earlier, if you want to be published, submit to a publisher. - Sitush (talk) 17:13, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

    I think it's fair to say that it was originally developed by the wikimedia medical community (WikiJMed was the first of the WikiJournals and Open Medicine was the first to put an existing Wikipedia article through peer review), however there's been broad interest across a few fields. Do bear in mind that currently the WikiJournals are the only journals that accept Wikipedia articles as valid preprints (though I hope that will change, the CC BY-SA license is incompatible with much of established OA publishing). The 'publish or perish' issues in academic are definitely an issue (even alluded to in an early Nature article about Wikipedia and RNA Biology), as is the over-focus on 'impact factor' as a metric. The depth of this issue isn't going to be fixed by this platform, but I think it has can go some small way to demonstrating value beyond traditional publication metrics. So that the link is also here, this is the village pump discussion on avoiding creating sources that are then cited on wikipedia.

    I actually disagree that a journals project on wikimedia would divert attention from other WMF projects. Dozens of Wikipedia articles or high quality have been created by copying over review articles from journals (mainly WikiJournals and PLOS journals so far). I'm hopeful that it could also eventually draw more researchers to wikidata. Also, the majority of contributors are first-time wikimediains, i.e. it is bringing in communities that would not have otherwise contributed to any wikimedia project. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 07:38, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

14.  Oppose and very strongly per Sitush and Jo-Jo. Yikes. Praxidicae (talk) 17:54, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
15.  Oppose. Open-access e-journals exist already, it's called arXiv. What exactly is WikiJournal bringing to the table that arXiv isn't? If there is something missing that WikiJournal will provide, is it some feature arXiv can/will fix anyway in the future? How about collaboration with arXiv, has that been considered? The current proposal doesn't mention them at all, which seems like it's ignoring a giant elephant in the room. If the Foundation wants to expand, it should consider either niches that are currently unfilled by anyone, or issues where a proprietary site is currently the most significant provider (e.g. commercial FindAGrave -> some open WikiGraveyard project). This seems more like if Wikimedia decided to make its own version of OpenStreetMap - just competing against an existing open source project for unclear benefit. SnowFire (talk) 21:33, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

    As preprint servers, ArXiv and its sister platforms aren't focused on the peer review side of the equation, but there are clear shared goals that could make collaborations with organisations such as ArXiv, OSF, PeerJ, figshare or even PKP's OJS are potentially very useful (though have not been a primary focus so far). Similarly, PLOS is a potential partner on the platform for its topic pages format, and other journals have expressed interest if doing so were made easier by not having to host their own dedicated wiki, a small number of technical items, and CC-BY default license. Collaborations with platforms like ORCID or scholarly societies, like the APA may also work well. There can be significant potential value-add of a wiki format, such as interactions with WikiCite, scholia statistics, inclusion of en.wp wikilinks in articles, adaptation of review articles to wikipedia pages, possible article translation, flexible versioning of articles, open and audit-able history, post-print self-archiving, and other wiki features. A sister project would make exactly these sorts of collaborations easier. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 01:16, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

16. (was weak oppose, not current). Seems an good idea, but needs improvement. It also seems like wanting to deteriorate Wikipedia, as both are informational sites. I am not generaly aginst that, but i oppose it for now (weakly, through; i may hcange my mind). Eni vak (speak) 21:45, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

    I would contend that it has improvement of Wikipedia specifically as a specific goal (landing page). Several articles written from scratch have been subsequently integrated into Wikipedia (example), and others were written on submitted from Wikipedia via WP:JAN (example) (category). Similarly, other articles have been valuable for wikiversity courses (example), or wikicommons (example). See also 2018 WikiJSci aims and scope editorial and Signpost article. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 00:41, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

    Well, as I said in my own oppose, such articles should not then be cited in Wikipedia. That is effectively circular referencing, peer review or no peer review. How on earth can we guarantee the independence of the peer system etc if we're the ones publishing the stuff? This is ethically dubious and certainly contrary to en-WP policy. - Sitush (talk) 02:27, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

    After seeing Nsk92's reasons, I change to Strong oppose Eni vak (speak) 13:23, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

17. Using Wikipedia donations to fund a project that is dedicated to the publication of original research, something that violates a core content policy of Wikipedia, is an idea that feels fundamentally wrong to me. ToBeFree (talk) 04:04, 22 August 2019 (UTC)
18.  Oppose Neutral This sounds exciting and I want to jump in, both feet first. However, I find Sitush's comment grounding. Changing to oppose after reflection on Randykitty's comment. Chetsford (talk) 07:32, 22 August 2019 (UTC); edited 16:32, 22 August 2019 (UTC)
19.  Oppose. Nsk92 makes several excellent points. Let me add some myself. With all due respect, the journals as they currently stand are absolutely unattractive for academics to publish in. Sure, Google will make the articles discoverable and perhaps Google Scholar, too. However, I cannot imagine that they would be included in more selective databases such as en:Scopus and the en:Science Citation Index anytime soon. Or in en:MEDLINE/en:PubMed, the all-important measure of quality in the life and medical sciences. Like it or not, it still is a fact of life that almost all researchers are extremely wary of submitting their work to a journal that has no en:impact factor. They may want to risk it if a journal looks like it fills a niche and might get indexed, especially if the journal has an en:editorial board of established and reputed experts in the field and is supported by a reputed publisher. A new journal that is not in those databases, has no IF, and is edited by a group of junior researchers (some of them still postdocs), is not going to attract any quality submissions from any established researchers and without such submissions the journal is not going to get indexed (yes, that is indeed a en:vicious circle). Please don't see the foregoing comments as somehow denigrating. There's nothing wrong with being a junior researcher ("up-and-coming" is currently the favorite expression I think) or being a post-doc. That's how all researchers start. But an editorial board consisting only of up-and-coming people, combined with an unknown publisher with an unknown track record of starting succesfull journals, is just not going to instill any confidence that the journal will get indexed anytime soon. I'm sorry, I feel like I am unnecessary harsh here, but I don't really know how to sugarcoat this better... Academic publishing is a complicated business and even reputed large publishers don't always get it right. --Randykitty (talk) 13:48, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

    Would you be willing to give conditional support predicated on the journals applications to relevant indices? Indeed WikiJMed passing the COPE audit and being indexed in DOAJ were both important steps in improving the journal's processes. WikiJSci has a current application in processing to SCOPUS (application here) and applications will be prepared for PMC and the ISI Web of Science ESCI index in the near future. Several articles have already been submitted by established academics/researchers/scientists inc. [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]. Peer reviewers have generally been considerably more established. In particular, authors have been keen on the review-style format, similar to what has been seen in PLOS Topic pages since 2012 (and RNA Biol's format before that). Indeed, the median number of citations for a PLOS topic page is close to 100. Additionally, authors have reported a particular interest in publishing review articles in wikijournals in order to show service to outreach in subsequent grant applications, with a greater interest in viewership numbers. I therefore think that with an initial focus on review-style articles, as the journals have so far done, takes advantage of the unique features of the medium (inclusion of wikilinks, transparency, versioning, platinum OA, potential for content use in other wikimedia projects) and it will remain to be seen what the subsequent distribution of submission then is for the different article formats. Finally, note that a wikimedia journals platform could host journals from outside the current WikiJournal User Group. Several society journals are struggling with running costs at the moment and a flexible platinum OA platform could be highly attractive. The main problem has been knowledge of the journal's existence. I've actually found academics, societies and publishers across a range of disciplines highly receptive to the idea but surprised they'd never heard of it (recent examples include keynote talk at APA and talk & panel discussion at AMWA. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 18:07, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

20.  Oppose: I'm sorry, but as one of those up-and-coming academics (well, I'm a student for now, but...) whom Randykitty just mentioned, I cannot support this endeavor.

    I have significant questions and issues: regarding the scope of dissemination of knowledge, as, quite frankly, I can't see many academics reading or contributing this, as it's tainted both by the "Wiki-" prefix and by its lack of distinguishing characteristics (vis-à-vis other open-access, peer-reviewed journals), as Aschmidt rightly states; how this may conflict with our founding principles and the concurrent loss of anonymity, as Jo-Jo Eumerus properly notes; ToBeFree's note on usage of donations and how finances will be affected by this, and whether that violates our core ideas and beliefs, which is certainly something to consider; the ever-expanding bloat of all Wikimedia projects, the mission creep here, and how that affects priorities on other Wikimedia projects (which is a personal bugbear of mine); and, as Nsk92 expounds, given the competitiveness of us folks in academe, how the usage of MediaWiki format, etc., will trip up researchers, as opposed to, say, LaTeX.

    Look, I know MediaWiki, I can probably write a paper in it and make it look good. But I'm an academic: I'm also struggling to make a name for myself, and I can't see why I'd publish here instead of one of the more established journals. Javert2113 (talk) 17:17, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

21.  Oppose. What credibility can be given to papers that cannot get published in the present academic media? WikiJournal seems unlikely to interest serious authors. If I write a paper that proves the earth is flat and cooling, I can cite numerous irrefutable scriptural sources to support these evident facts. What qualifications are required for a peer reviewer that might dispute my findings? Who elects the so-called "editorial board"? There are too many holes in the proposal. Aymatth2 (talk) 21:12, 22 August 2019 (UTC)
22. weak  Oppose. I do applaud the spirit of this, but I can't get my head around how this 'works', given wikipedia's ethos of No Original Research, which is what most journal papers in essence are. I also don't see this as bridging any gap between researchers that do use wiki and those that don't.Casliber (talk) 02:17, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

    @Casliber: perhaps I'm missing something here, but though Wikipedia has an ethos of NOR, there's no such ethos on many other WMF projects (e.g. Wikiversity, which explicitly allows it, or Wikibooks, which "discourages" it in some circumstances but not others). Do you disagree with these projects' existence too? — Bilorv (talk) 11:45, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

    Yeah true - I still worry that it just reinforces wikipedia vs other journals. Also, given material is 'published' on wikipedia and WV, strikes me as possibly superfluous. Casliber (talk) 13:00, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

    Regarding the (non-peer-reviewed) research on Wikiversity - it definitely ranges from the excellent v:Helping Give Away Psychological Science, through to the necessary bans of v:Cold fusion topics. Indeed, peer review by external and independent reviewers is a mechanism that can specifically address these issues. Regarding OR on Wikipedia, for review-style articles in a WikiJournal, authors are instructed to give a balanced summary of the relevant topics and that "Wikipedia cannot include any original research (including synthesis of ideas). Original research, such as tentative conclusions, personal perspectives, outlook, or opinions can be included in a separate section for the published journal version of the article; it will be omitted from Wikipedia. (WP:OR)". No original research parts from articles should be copied over to Wikipedia. The same is true in the guidelines for PLOS's topic page formats which do the same thing. Some WikiJournal articles are specifically original research articles (example), but note that no OR content from these is added to Wikipedia. They are stand-alone articles. In some cases they may be useful items to point to in Wikiversity courses (example). In terms of bridging any gap between researchers that do use wiki and those that don't, the majority of authors and almost all the peer reviewers are non-wikipedians who previously had never considered contributing to a wikimedia project. In one case a group of writers specifically declined to help write a wikipedia article, but subsequently agreed to write a review article for wikijsci that was then copied to be a wikipedia article. I think there' therefore preliminary evidence that the project can therefore reach demographics that wikipedia has traditionally struggled to engage. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 16:54, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

23.  Oppose All the Wikimedia projects are the work of (usually) pseudonym-bearing editors who usually incompetent for their preferred topics. Even if this project would bring together competent editors and everything would be done with serious faces, in the end it's not consistent with the spirit of Wikimedia, with the risk to be a stillborn wikiproject, just like most of language versions of Wikiversity are. If a person has a wish to write a scientific article for a journal, that one will not look for easy ways such as attempts of publishing on a free wiki site as frankly speaking, these authors are usually working for recognition, not for free knowledge sharing. --Wolverène (talk) 06:59, 23 August 2019 (UTC)
24. Oppose. We are not Judge Dredd. We don't create material in order to have it placed on Wikipedia via a backdoor. Oppose this and the existing WikiJournals if the intention is to use them as sources for Wikipedia. The purpose of Wikipedia is to summarise existing knowledge, not to create new or alternative versions of it. The danger was seen right at the start of Wikipedia of what it would mean if Wikipedia allowed original research - of how truth could be subtly altered by those wishing to pursue an alternative agenda, particularly political and commercial, which is why one of our core policies has always been No original research. If there is a problem in a gap in reliable academic sources, so be it. It is not Wikipedia's place to alter the world, it is Wikipedia's place to hold up a mirror of the world for others to learn. We don't direct and mould information or people's opinions, we present reliable and accepted information and allow the people of the world to learn and grow freely, without manipulation or control. [And why are people numbering their comments? This is a discussion with both oppose and support statements and questions and comments - the numbers appear meaningless and are distracting]. SilkTork (talk) 10:10, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

    @SilkTork: the "backdoor" may be outright gamed through the process. See my concerns just raised at en-WP Village Pump. - Sitush (talk) 10:51, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

    We are not Judge Dredd. We don't create material in order to have it placed on Wikipedia via a backdoor. This pretty much sums up what my biggest concern is here, followed by who determines what is accepted? We already have a problem combating junk science and quackery, why would we open up all projects to more? Praxidicae (talk) 13:41, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

    Regarding backdoor-ism, I agree that there shouldn't be original research on Wikipedia. Firstly it's an encyclopedia and secondly all of its systems and policies are developed to summarise information from other sources. Note that current author guidelines include the phrase Wikipedia cannot include any original research (including synthesis of ideas). Original research, such as tentative conclusions, personal perspectives, outlook, or opinions can be included in a separate section for the published journal version of the article; it will be omitted from Wikipedia. (WP:OR). For fully original research articles, the purpose of requiring external peer review of such articles in journals is to independently audit that information. Citation in en.wp of any journal hosted on a wikimedia journal sister project will depend on the wikipedia community assessment of reliability, likely heavily guided by the journals seeking external auditing of their ethical guidelines by COPE and practices by DOAJ/SCOPUS/ISI/PMC. At the moment, none of the WikiJournals are considered green category on the w:WP:RSP. Any review articles being copied to Wikipedia from an academic journal is tracked at this category, so is easy to watch. I'd actually make the case that just as much an explicit front door as AfC or just straight creating a new page in wp mainspace, since such articles have to adhere to all wikipedia's policies as well as being independently checked for e.g. source cherrypicking or outdated references. From the en-WP Village Pump discussion, I've hopefully explained the anti-gaming mechanisms there regarding content copied from a WikiJournal to Wikipedia: just as no article written during an editathon is forced into Wikipedia, no review article published in a journal is forced in to Wikipedia. Regarding who accepts what is accepted, preprints can be written by anyone (with plagiarism and lible checks similar to other preprint servers and WMF projects). A journal can publish an article from the preprints server is someone nominates it, it is peer reviewed by at least two independent, external experts (coordinated by the relevant editorial board), and assigned a doi by one of the journals. That could be one of the current WikiJournal User Group journals, or new journals yet to start up, or existing academic journals that start using the platform. You can see the relevant WikiJournal User Group editorial guidelines here, publication ethics here, and bylaws here. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 02:57, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

25.  Oppose Sitush and RandyKitty have both raised significant concerns. I'm particularly concerned with content being generated here and then put into Wikipedia. The risks of it being gamed as a source-generating process are major. I think I'd be neutral if a prohibition was put on wikijournal being used to source Wikipedia. Nosebagbear (talk) 11:04, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

    Regarding content being written here then copied to Wikipedia, note that this is not the only route for content to be added to wikipedia. Wikipedia articles have been imported from multiple different academic journals since 2012 (example). I think that the articles that pass academic peer review through the journals are competitive by w:WP:AfC standards. Regarding citation of the journals in wp, whether any journal hosted on a wikimedia journal sister project would be w:WP:RS will depend on the wikipedia community assessment of reliability, likely heavily guided by the journals seeking external auditing of their ethical guidelines by COPE and practices by DOAJ/SCOPUS/ISI/PMC. At the moment, none of the WikiJournals are considered green category on the w:WP:RSP. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 16:13, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

26. Oppose. I looked at the wikipedia article on Rosetta Stone and the wikijournal article on the same subject. They're nearly identical. The wikipedia article was declared a fine article in 2010. So how does the publication of the Rosetta Stone article in the wikijournal in 2019 contribute to the sum of human knowledge of the subject? Not much, if my brief look at one article is representative. The wikijournal proposal seems to be, as somebody said, a "back door" into wikipedia, a violation of wikipedia's fundamental principles (no original research, anybody can edit, etc.) I think the wikijournal idea, if successful, would be competitive rather than complementary to wikipedia. My preference would be to establish a process by which a wikipedia article could be judged a fine article—and editing would thereafter be strictly limited. In other words, improve wikipedia, rather than diluting wikipedia's influence by branching out into scholarly publishing. If we believe that wikipedia has a future, let's focus on it and not side projects. Smallchief (talk) 11:36, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

    @Smallchief: Evidently it did not occur to you to look at the history of the article Rosetta Stone. Had you done so, you would have discovered that it was significantly improved in May of this year, via the inclusion of material from the Wikijournal article. (Here is the last version before the edits were made.) This is a pretty effective demonstration that every complaint in your comment is misplaced. I look forward to you switching to "support". --Joel B. Lewis (talk) 12:48, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

    ... which should not have happened on en-WP because it is circular stuff. - Sitush (talk) 13:07, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

    @Joel B. Lewis: In response to you, the revisions in the wikipedia article in May 2019 were taken from the wikijournal article. Which illustrates my point: why was the wikijournal article needed? The author of the wikijournal article took the existing wikipedia article (judged "fine"), made a few revisions and updates, and published it on wikijournal. Instead of compiling a wikijournal article he could have added his revisions directly into the wikipedia article, and not bothered with the effort of a wikijournal article. Less fuss. Less bother to edit wikipedia directly, rather than indirectly. The quality, or lack thereof, of the revisions would be equal in either case. "Circular stuff" as User:Sitrush said. Conclusion: wikijournal is a complication, not an asset. It bogs down rather than facilitates the improvement of articles. So, no, dear friend, I won't be changing my oppose vote. Smallchief (talk)

    I guess there's nothing I can do if every single complaint you made turns out to be completely backwards but upon learning this you don't change your mind, but I don't think it reflects well on you or your position. --Joel B. Lewis (talk) 14:43, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

    Please be assured that I have given your opinion the attention it merits. Smallchief (talk) 15:45, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

    Regarding why the wikijournal-organised external peer review of w:Rosetta Stone was needed, it's value is in providing an independent assessment of quality from outside of the wikipedia editor community. I've long suspected that many WP GAs and FAs would do well if subjected to academic peer review and it's very reassuring to see many such pages highly rated by expert peer reviewers - a complementary system. However, this is not true for all articles (example of Wikipedia GA article). Regarding whether the process should be done on directly on Wikipedia, certainly external experts can be asked to comment on wikipedia pages directly rather than indirectly, however historically this has not been hugely common or systematised (WP:EXHELP). The familiar format of journal peer review seems to have been relatively successful in reviewers responding to requests. However my understanding is that your concern is the process of getting external peer review via the fuss of exporting a copy - and I can totally understand that. There have been multiple conversations about whether it'd be more streamlined to organise the review whilst the content is still on Wikipedia (more like the BMJ did in this userspace and word document for w:Parkinsons) Both options have their benefits and drawbacks, but definitely worth discussing. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 16:04, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

    Additionally, regarding dilution, I actually think that a wikimedia journals platform would complement Wikipedia more closely than several of the existing sister projects. See the close interactions and improvements to wikipedia content already done (category) ranging from new articles that cover missing/stub topics through to wikipedia FAs submitted for external assessment by independent peer reviewers. A key aim of the project is not to compete against Wikipedia (see scholarpedia or citizedium). I also don't think it draws people away from Wikipedia. All the the contributors who were already wikipedians have remained so, and it has specifically engaged a large number of people (both authors and reviewers) who previously had never thought of contributing to a wikimedia project. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 16:54, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

27.  Oppose This strikes me as not a good idea on many levels. In fact I cannot see more than a few small upsides to it.

    • Wiki software and policies are good for collective creation and distribution of knowledge. However journals are not about collective creation, they are about publication of expert research and insight. Harnessing global contributions is not really the tool for the job.
    • If it is the software that is the attractive aspect, then that can just be downloaded for anyone's journal.
    • We do not need a repository under a central domain to expand the proliferation of open-access journals; see for example Directory of Open Access Journals, with 13K+ journals indexed.
    • Is there a social benefit to competing with the 13K exisiting open-access journals? I don't think so.

    In sum, I see few upsides. From small to large scale, journal publishing is a clique business for small groups. The things that make wiki publishing effective are not going to help that much in the process.ThatMontrealIP (talk) 13:38, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

28.  Oppose As a scientist, this sounds promising until you read the comments. Superfluous or encourages trash, that are the most likely results after a while. An additional thought: why would you want to move away from publishing in a common language? If knowledge is supposed to be universal, starting other language journals will fragment that. Plus, wasn't there just a controversy over a wiki-namespace pushing their alternative interpretation of history?--!nnovativ (talk) 13:58, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

    I'd actually contend that independent, external peer review of content by people with relevant credentials goes some way to avoiding alternative interpretations of history or fringe science - for example this peer review of a Wikipedia GA or this criticism of Wikipedia's Wehrmacht content. See also response to comment 184. Regarding common language, note that there are non-English academic journals already (examples in German), but I think more useful will be keeping each journal unified and have translation of published articles. For example, imagining a short review on"Epidemiology of Hepatitis D" gets submitted, reviewed, accepted, then translated into the languages for the regions where Hep D is most prevalent. Note that the Wikipedia article on w:Hepatitis D currently entirely lacks an epidemiology section. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 15:07, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

29. Strong oppose The idea of "external peer review" seems great until you see at the realities of this version of it in practice. I just went to look at the WikiJournal of Medicine and selected a published article/paper at random; the first I chose nailed my concerns to the floor. It is currently cited by articles on Wikipedia, and it's so called "peer review" is a joke IMO. Wikipedia already has a credibility problem, and the last thing we need is to promote our own original research, base our articles on it, and justify the sham(e) with laughable claims of peer review. I'm no expert, but I fail to see how this "peer review" of Cell disassembly during apoptosis can be considered even remotely thorough enough for it to then be considered a "reliable source" on Wikipedia articles like Bleb, where it takes pride of place. The whole idea makes me very nervous. To change my mind I would need to see a far higher bar; if anything, due to our obvious connection, for Wikipedia to cite anything from its own sisters, those sources need to be absolutely and unquestionably reliable – frankly, more so than external sources. I mean seriously; we're considering citing our own original research (apparently we already are!) because a couple of people (one of whom commented anonymously) said "yeah, looks fine to me!" *Face Palm*  fredgandt 19:48, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

    I will freely admit that I am not an academic, but it is my understanding that even the most prestigious publications generally use a three person peer review team, and those reviewers nearly always have the option to remain anonymous if they wish. I looked at the article you linked, and I don't see the issues that you apparently do. From my understanding of the process, the reviews for that article serve as an excellent example of how peer review is supposed to work. Sario528 (talk) 20:49, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

30.  Oppose The next step will be to claim that an article published in this way constitutes a Reliable Source for Wikipedia. This will open all sorts of gaming the system for those with axes to grind. Xxanthippe (talk) 09:41, 24 August 2019 (UTC).

    That is assuming that they can also convince multiple independent, external peer reviewers with expertise in the topic (though that's true of all peer reviewed journals). Would you support with the precondition that the journals seek external auditing of their ethical guidelines by COPE and practices by DOAJ/SCOPUS/ISI/PMC? T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 11:39, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

    COPE is a joke, FWIW. Winged Blades of Godric (talk) 16:12, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

31.  Oppose per Randykitty - he nailed it. Also, per SN54129 and Sitush.

    Somebody, up above, mentions WikiJournal will encourage academics to develop lessons and courses supporting their work at Wikiversity.

    That's a first for me—I am inclined to know of a real-life-academic publishing stuff in journals and then, pushing it to academic courses. Strange, to be mild.

    Somebody wrote a book, failed to find any publisher and now clings on to this potential project to publish a 380-page-dissertation.

    Some published author (in this journal) writes:- Although I'm not an academic expert, my experience as a WP editor of this article and others like it has made me into an expert about Dr. Angelou.

    True to my suspicions, it has become (and will become) the refuge of some below-par academics/non-academics trying to carve a name in the intellectual backwaters of Wikipedia. I need to do a comprehensive check on the academic excellency of the authors and reviewers.

    No article across any volume of the WikiJournal of Humanities or the WikiJournal of Science has received a single citation in many of the exhaustive databases, that I checked. WikiJournal of Medicine fared marginally better with a few scattered cites.

    This does seem to be a vanity project of exploiting our NOR requirements. One !voter even explicitly mentions It will be very helpful for original research. LOL.

    Somebody mentions this as a tool in enabling diversity.

    No clue.

    Some author, who has earlier published in the journal, writes:- Academia is slowly moving away from rewarding work shared in old and elite journals, and instead recognising authors who's work is widely shared and read.

    That's a fundamental trait that you shall not be in this business—I have heard this garbage from the precise kind of folks who actively cooperate with OMICS (and company) to bolster their CV.

    We really need bottom-up approaches to the creation and dissemination of scholarly knowledge (*not* just by "academics") .... the "publisher-academic complex values reputation rather than knowledge) and neocolonialist. It's anglophone and discriminates against the Global South.

    [Placeholder]

    Winged Blades of Godric (talk) 16:59, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

    Education-focused articles are pretty common. I've mainly seen them in medicine (e.g. BMJ's education article format, or the Nature-run Scitable. There are also entire journals dedicated to education-focused articles (e.g. Biochemical Education).

    Please bear in mind that WikiJSci and WikiJhum have been publishing for barely a year, so a high citation level isn't expected. I'm not sure why you weren't about to find any citations to them - here's an example. WikiJMed has been running for a bit longer and has a reasonably healthy citation rate for a new journal that doesn't yet have it's own site.

    I can't speak to the particulars of the doi:10.15347/wjh/2019.003 article, but it was relatively readable upon submission after FA and appears to have been well-reviewed by both of the external experts on the topic. If it doesn't meet Wikipedia's standards, the Wikipedia version can absolutely be updated (no Wikipedia article that has imported WikiJournal content has ever been protected or semi-protected as far as I know). Indeed, the earliest example of an academic article being copied to Wikipedia that I know of is w:Circular permutation in proteins and it has undergone many changes since then, going through GA and also having additional info inserted.

    I think your portrayal of "some author's" views as "garbage" is unjustified. There have also been a wide range of very successful and legitimate OA journals built on the philosophy of offering something that the old elite journals don't (BMC, PLOS, PeerJ, eLife, mBio, JOSS, the whole preprint ecosystem), and there are plenty of studies of the value of open access, readership and altmetrics in addition to (and often more useful than) the impact factor of the journal that article appears in. Note that OMICS is a well-known predatory publisher, and none of the hallmarks of a predatory journal exist in any of the journals included in this proposal (indeed, they don't even have APCs). T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 11:20, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

32.  Oppose, for most of the reasons already given, especially the founding principles. It's just not within WMF's scope to be an original-research publisher with tiered and credentialed editorial access controls. There are already other open-access journals; WMF doesn't need to produce more of them. A wiki is a terrible way to do it anyway, since the content (which others would need to cite) will keep changing. Scholarship generally works by building on previously published work with newly published better or narrower work, not by changing what the old work said.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  18:05, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

    On the preponderance of OA journals, note that the WikiJournals do publish some pretty unique formats that aren't represented in other OA journals, and those have been the most popular formats so far for submissions. Regarding article versioning, there'a actually quite a bit of interst in this concept in journal publishing circles. Mediawiki's history happens to make it particularly adapted to transparent versioning. Note that the Technical wishlist states that DOIs should point to specific versions in the history. There are a few possible facets:

    • Post-publication review comments on the talkpage. There have been attempts in other journals to dome something like this. Sadly PubMed Commons closed down citing low usage, however a number of other journals do so.
    • Correcting errors in articles with clear and transparent versioning.
    • Adding new information to articles or adding additional update sections to the bottom of articles - both with clear and transparent versioning. e.g. living reviews, new examples, better figures, or even textbook-style versioning (addressing this phenomenon: 2002, 2006, 2009, 2012, 2013, 2017...).

    Points 2 and 3 would require minting a new DOI via crossmark after any meaning-changing edit after checking by a reviewer so that any citation is pointing to the specific version in question (copied from similar discussion on talkpage). T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 18:39, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

33.  Oppose, particularly if the proposal for WikiJournal articles to overwrite existing Wikipedia articles isn't dropped per the comments of myself (and everyone else not associated with the WJ proposal) here. Even if that is dropped, I still consider it an waste of time and money; being a publisher of reviewed original research is neither something within the WMF's scope, nor something that the WMF is well-placed to do. It's not as if there's a shortage of existing open-access journals in any of the fields this proposal aims to cover; this is essentially a group of hobbyists asking for permission to syphon off our donor funds to subsidise a vanity project. If Wikiversity want to host this I have no issue with Wikiversity continuing to host this, but I strongly oppose any change that will have any potential impact of any kind on any other existing WMF project.Iridescent (talk) 18:36, 24 August 2019 (UTC)
34.  Oppose: While open-access peer-reviewed journals are useful, their content creation processes are at some remove from the basic principles of this set of projects, as others have noted above. In addition, the concerns about content material churning between these journals and the encyclopaedia which have been raised above and on en Wikipedia Village Pump make it safer for a clear line to be maintained between encyclopaedia content and reliable 3rd party source references which can provide supporting references. AllyD (talk) 13:23, 26 August 2019 (UTC)
35.  Oppose: Per Iridescent, Sitush, Randykitty, per my antipathy towards the overwriting possibility, and per Laser brain's June 2019 comments at Wikipedia at "A proposal for WikiJournals to become a new sister project". Shearonink (talk) 14:50, 26 August 2019 (UTC)
36.  Oppose using it as part of the unified login. I do not see any way to reconcile the needs of a great academic journal with how things work on the public Wikimedia projects. I would love to see the project succeed under a separate login under the Wikimedia banner. -- Dolotta (talk) 23:49, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

    Wouldn't the lack of unified login make the matter even more suspect? Tracking whether there is a conflict between a person's activities on the WJ project and on other WMF projects would be more difficult, causing more inherent risk of COI etc. - Sitush (talk) 03:47, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

37. Probably  Oppose. It's not clear, how this project can solve listed problems. Also, it conflicts with one of main WP rules - en:WP:OR. Will this project articles be considered as reliable sources? If yes, then it will be very inviting for any marginal theories. It's interesting idea, but, i think, that existing external independent journals are enough to publish any work; internal dependent journal has doubtful benefit. Лапоть (talk) 16:33, 10 September 2019 (UTC).
38.  Oppose Per Jo-Jo Eumerus's oppose. If the founding principles say that pages in WMF projects should be mainly editable by "almost anyone", than a project proposing to automatically revert substantial edits to its articles doesn't seem like the best fit. In addition, I share the concerns others have raised over original research. As others have said above, the scenario raised makes it sound like Wikipedia articles that "lack information" could be fully overwritten by content from WikiJournal pages, which aren't guaranteed to be reliable; it will take WikiJournal publications time to gain a reputation as high-quality reliable sources, and even experts can make mistakes. If this proposal passes, I urge caution in dealing with the various language Wikipedias. Working with the different communities will lead to better results for all parties. Giants2008 (talk) 21:54, 22 September 2019 (UTC)
39.  Oppose It's pretty much all been said by Jo-Jo Emerus, Nsk92 and Wugapodes. I am violently opposed to "original research" being published as part of a Wiki-project. I've just had a knock-em-down-drag-em-out fight with someone pouring their research into a Wikipedia article as if it is already agreed-on science. There are enough problematic publication venues without us adding another one. --WiseWoman (talk) 19:15, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

    @WiseWoman: Are you opposed to Wikiversity? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 07:22, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

    @WiseWoman: It is quite a surprising idea outside Wikipedia. Original research has already been accepted by many Wiki projects, including Commons (most photographs and their captions), various wikiversities including the English Wikiversity or some wiktionaries including the English Wiktionary, and nobody has ever suggested seriously they should leave Wikimedia projects. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 16:50, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

    WiseWoman, Wikivoyage is full of original research, to the point where it's based on OR. SHB2000 (talk | contibs) 12:08, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

40.  Oppose per Iri, Jo=Jo, and others. enL3X1 ¡‹delayed reaction›¡ 22:23, 4 November 2019 (UTC)
41. Strong oppose As a committed contributor for over a decade, my appreciation for Wikimedia sites lies in their dedication to fostering inclusive intellectual pursuits, devoid of any discriminatory biases. While it's undeniable that Wikipedia bears a certain stigma within academic circles, its profound impact in democratizing knowledge, liberating it from the confines of academia, and making it freely accessible to all is also undeniable. The current model invites anyone to contribute, fostering a sense of collective ownership. For those in academia, the call would be to meet us halfway and embrace the existing inclusive ethos and structure of Wikipedia and Wikiversity. Both platforms offer open invitations for editing and discussion, ensuring a meeting point for enthusiasts and experts alike. While there's merit in exploring ways to better integrate Wikimedia projects into educational curricula as part of the 2030 goals, creating a new wiki with special privileges for selected users, irrespective of their merits inside the community, appears to deviate from the principles that define the Wikimedia movement in my judgement. - Klein Muçi (talk) 01:09, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Neutral/comment

Additional discussion at the talkpage

1. Comment I propose to lessen the requirement to first make the article available in wiki format. Consider my case: I wrote a book (i.e. a very long article) in PDF format (generated from LaTeX) with my original research in mathematics and make it publicly available under an open license. I have a trouble publishing it, because journals don't publish 380 pages articles and book publishers refuse to publish a book which is already available online. I want to allow me to submit the PDF file and be reviewed in WikiJournal project. Note that converting PDF into wiki markup would be a hard work, and this way it would be needed to update after each change in my book (e.g. when I add a solution of a conjecture or correct a typo). --VictorPorton (talk) 23:44, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

   @VictorPorton: We definitely hope to implement some easier ways of importing LaTeX, DOCX and PDF submissions on the submissions page. That will likely require help from the WMF's dev team. Currently, the main conversion option is probably Pandoc. We have had people submit as docx files, and the journal editors have manually reformatted for wikimarkup, but that's not a scalable solution. Note that currently only Wiki.J.Med. is accepting original research, whist the other journals starting up are focusing on review articles (at least initially) since these are 'safer' options for building the journals early on. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 02:55, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

   It seems that we will never (or at least in near 50 years) have a good automated conversion from LaTeX to wiki. I propose not to convert but to allow the author to upload a PDF file and publish in the wiki just a link to author's files, not the article itself in wiki markup. --VictorPorton (talk) 12:33, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

   We also need some reasonable policy about updates of already published articles. For example arXiv allows to upload more than one version of an article. (This is especially important with articles building a theory rather than proving a single result.) We need it too. Probably every change should be peer reviewed. Or we can trust authors that they improve their materials over time not make it worse. --VictorPorton (talk) 12:39, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

   The downside of if we were to have only a pdf version and no wikimarkup version, is that it would make it hard to integrate material into other Wikimedia projects (one of the current main goals of the journals). However, this is not set in stone, so could change. As for multiple versions - I agree with the need for more specific guidelines (it happens not to have come up yet). In addition to the history tab record of all edits during drafting on the preprint server, my expectation is that anything that changes content of a published article would have to be re-reviewed to retain legitimacy. Indeed I can imagine that people could publish updated 'versions' of a review article, as already happens for textbooks. I'd suggest more in-depth discussion be on the main WikiJournal discussion page. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 13:51, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

   Anyway my book won't be completely copied to Wikipedia. So to convert the entire book and every its part into wiki markup format is just largely useless work. If we need to publish some part in a wiki, we can convert parts of the book or article on as-needed basis. --VictorPorton (talk) 22:03, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

   Hello, Victor. Here is v:en:WikiJournal Preprints, which has instructions on sending PDF files via email and provides email address for those wanting to send PDF files. --George Ho (talk) 02:15, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

2. question(comment) we have 26 signatures above plus journals which have been added [10] and [11] ...so where are we in terms of the process of this proposal?(how much longer)thank you--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 20:27, 11 September 2018 (UTC)
   • @Ozzie10aaaa: yes, previously comment has been from people who happened to come across the page. The Sister Projects Committee suggested the gathering of contributor data and to make sure that people in different projects are aware of the proposal, so I have placed some notifications around a few areas in wikipedia, wikidata and mailing lists. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 09:31, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
3. Question: – I assume any new journals are going to incubate within this project, right? (I don't see us being equipped at Incubator to get involved.) StevenJ81 (talk) 17:08, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

   @StevenJ81: - I think the best way would be for new journals to incubate within the project, since it would include some specialised tools, templates and experience to facilitate this. Conceivably, it would also be a location where established academic journals could set up a space to implement a wikipedia-integrated wing of their journal (similar to how PLOS currently has topicpageswiki). T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 13:09, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

   @Evo&Evo, thank you very much. If this goes forward, I'm happy to share my experience managing incubation, but I am relieved that this is not going to be our responsibility at Incubator. StevenJ81 (talk) 13:45, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

   Neutral On the whole, I do not have a strong opinion. As a completely practical response:

   • I have a mild bias toward the policy objections of the "oppose" group.
   • I believe that one way or the other, this initiative is likely to continue, whether as an independent wiki or as part of Wikiversity. And of those two choices, the effort is probably better served on its own wiki.
   • My only real "strong" opinion is that the less this can be directly tied to the "Wikipedia" name the better. So a test site with a name other than "wikipediajournal.org" would be well advised. StevenJ81 (talk) 13:25, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

4. Comment (@Mikael Häggström:) The name of the proposed sister should not use camel case; that is, it should be either "Wikijournal" or, perhaps, "Wikijournals" (following the pattern of "Wikibooks"). The existing sisters don't use camel case: Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikinews, Wikibooks, etc. --Pi zero (talk) 03:14, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

   Comment Very much agree- it would very much annoy me if this were to become the only Wikimedia project to use it. TheAwesomeHwyh (talk) 17:40, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

5. Comment Has there been any comment by the WMF on Wikijournal becoming a new sister project? TheAwesomeHwyh (talk) 17:48, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

   @TheAwesomeHwyh: This is being done as a first step to be thorough in developing the project and gauging community opinions before presenting it to the WMF board of trustees via the current Sister Project instructions. However, note that current trustee User:James Heilman is aware of the project. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 14:04, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

6. Question: (perhaps @Mikael Häggström?) I would hope to find all of the following addressed prominently and solidly, if this endeavor is being proposed as a standalone undertaking. I haven't seen them, thus far (have I missed them somewhere?).

   • (1) By what criteria are submissions to be reviewed?
   • (2) How, if at all, are submitting authors to be assessed/accredited, and how is their work documented, especially in the case of original research?
   • (3) How are the privileged users of each journal to be selected for accreditation (editorial board, reviewers, or whatever you call them)?
   • (4) How are journals to be created?

   Review criteria are first on the list because everything else may depend on them. On English Wikinews (for a pointed example), the review criteria are based on project-tailored wiki principles, and individual users accumulate earned reputation for their strengths-and-weaknesses in understanding, and implementing, those criteria. These earned reputations are then applied to (2) and (3), independent of any user's project-external credentials.

The implications of (4), criteria for creation of new journals, depend on how much variance the journals may have in review criteria. With any publication regulated by an editorial board of some sort, there is some risk that the regulating body might go off the rails, undermining the publication's collective reputation; but a well-defined journal-independent set of review criteria may help to reduce this risk. --Pi zero (talk) 17:23, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

1. @Pi zero: I'll try to be concise here by relying heavily on links, but I'm happy to discuss at greater length on the talkpage.

   • re 1) Submissions are reviewed based primarily on their content, referencing, style and (where applicable) ethical standards. Some requirements are journal-specific (e.g. WikiJMed has requirements around patient consent) More details at Peer reviewer guidelines & Reviewer publication ethical duties (adapted from COPE) & Process guidelines.
   • re 2) Submitting authors need not be accredited (many submissions have been from students, or people completely unaffiliated to any institution). If authors list an affiliation but do not correspond from an email account of that affiliation, then they may be contacted via that affiliation webpage to confirm identity. Requirements for work documentation is based on scholarly norms and peer reviewer assessment. More details at Author publication ethical duties (adapted from ICMJE).
   • re 3) Editorial board members and associate editors are selected by community vote and would have privileges to view anonymised/encrypted peer reviewer identities. Peer reviewers are selected on an article-by-article basis by a handling editor (peer review coordinator) and could request privileges in maintaining an anonymous/encrypted username only known to editorial board members and associate editors for that article (~25% of peer reviewer request hidden identity). More info at Bylaws for editorial roles.
   • re 4) Journals would be added via vote to the WikiJournal User Group after incubation which would provide assistance, crossref doi minting, and possibly COPE membership. Individual journals would need to apply separately for external accreditation (e.g. DOAJ, PMC, SCOPUS, Web of Science). Conceivably, journals gain accreditation via affiliation/partnering with an already established journal. More details at Journal inclusion bylaws & Journal startup instructions.

   Great questions. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 13:53, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

   @Evolution and evolvability: At least for now I'll stay here on the main page (rather than the talk page), as most of my remarks (questions and otherwise) bear directly on the proposal to make Wikijournals a wikimedian sister. (Note, as I remarked earlier, it's important the name should not use camel case.)

   • re 1) For the current discussion of suitability to a wikimedia project, I'm particularly concerned that the principles of review I see here don't appear (again, am I missing it?) to show the stamp of the wikimedia ethos. Taking again the example of English Wikinews (which seems by far the closest existing wikimedia sister, with review before publication, expert reviewers, and many years experience with the challenges of having those features in a wiki), en.wn groups its journalistic review criteria into five areas: copyright, newsworthiness, verification, neutrality, and style. Note especially that the practical treatment of neutrality is different for news articles than for encyclopedia articles. Presumably neutrality would take a different form again for Wikijournals. It's deeply worrisome to me that on the two pages you've linked, a string search turns up no occurrences of the string "neutral".

While it is good to see some review guidelines delineated, from experience both on en.wn and as an academic peer reviewer, I'd recommend somewhat more structure, especially a Style Guide of some sort; en.wn has n:en:Wikinews:Style guide, which is deliberately short enough to be read straight through if a user is so inclined. Also note, specifying review criteria at a journal-independent level, especially for those aspects that should reflect the wikimedia ethos, should make the entire Wikijournals project infrastructure more stable.

1. • re 2) I'm interested in how one determines the bona fides of contributors. As mentioned, en.wn systematically accumulates earned reputation of each contributor. Exactly because anyone can submit their work for review —which is part of the wikimedia ethos, after all— determining bona fides is a significant concern.

   [addendum: A relevant link: n:en:Wikinews:Neutrality.]

   --Pi zero (talk) 18:08, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

   @Pi zero: Thanks for the clarifications - it's very useful to have the insight of the wikinews project.

   • re 1) So far we have relied on the judgement of the authors and peer reviewers (mainly either experienmced wikipedians or experienced academics) to give balanced account of the current state of a topic. However to be more robust, it could be worthwhile to expand the Author Guidlines and Peer reviewer guidelines, possibly with some info adapted from the extensive PLOS reviewer resource, the Cell crosstalk post and/or the Springer review-reviewer guidlines. Most peer review guidelines focus on review of original research, so ensuring that there are also guidelines for review of review articles may be useful more broadly.
   • re 2) Currently the bona fides of authors is done via light-touch initial editorial review as to whether to organise peer review, after which it is mainly up to the peer reviewers to check the content (with deliberate efforts made to handle articles based on content&referencing, not author). Any stated affiliation/credentials is confirmed via faculty email address in the authorship declaration form. Although editors are typically long-term contributors, many authors and most peer reviewers only contribute once, so internal reputation from persistent activity necessarily isn't as useful a measure.

   T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 04:18, 11 June 2019 (UTC)

   @Pi zero: As part of addressing this and expanding the guidelines in general (per comment on this page), I've created a draft page here: v:WikiJournal User Group/Guidelines/Draft. I've also contacted the author of the Cell crosstalk post to ask for the their perspective, ideas and feedback. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 02:16, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

2. I can't support yet. Please see my thread at the talkpage. Tony (talk) 10:48, 7 June 2019 (UTC) Please see the thread I started at the talkpage. Tony (talk) 02:28, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
3. Comment As a side note (maybe this has already been suggested), what if WikiJournal was made a part of Wikipedia like it's a part of Wikiversity now? That would get it more attention than it currently gets. SelfieCity (talk) 17:05, 8 June 2019 (UTC)

   @SelfieCity: Apologies for the late reply. The current presence of WikiJournals on Wikipedia is at w:WP:JAN. The downside of moving the whole project over to Wikipedia is that I think the wikipedia community would likely object to the original research articles or article sections that the journal also publishes, even if not in mainspace. It also wouldn't solve the need for some specialist tools etc for the academic publishing workflow. Having said that, the branding review as part of the 2013 strategy may append "a Wikipedia project" to all of the sister projects anyway, which I' min favour of. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 07:26, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

4. Comment How many votes will need to be added here before there is a chance of this project being created? SelfieCity (talk) 22:17, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

   @SelfieCity: A good question. Now that the Signpost article is out I think that all the major wikimedia demographics should have had opportunity to respond. The next steps are to create a more detailed and prioritised list of features and then contact the WMF board (and sister project committee, though that seems to be inactive). There will also likely be some discussion at Wikimania Stockholm. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 07:26, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

   OK, thanks for the information. What kind of time scale would you consider? SelfieCity (talk) 13:26, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

   @Selfiecity: The prioritised list should be ready by the end of July to be discussed in Wikimania Stockholm in mid Aug. After that, the timing of any further steps would be mainly up to the WMF board.T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 03:37, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

   Once again, thanks for explaining. Do you mind if I help with the list, when you all are ready? SelfieCity (talk) 01:02, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

   @Selfiecity: Absolutely, keep an eye on the talkpage as the de facto starting point. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 23:53, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

5. Support. There was a discussion on the English Wikipedia a few months ago which involved a bunch of journal redirects, and I wished then there was some way to form consensus on whether or not the journals mentioned in the redirects were valid enough to be cited. This project would seem to work to resolve that concern of mine. Steel1943 (talk) 02:41, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

   Turns out that this is a bit over my comprehension, so I figure it's best if I just stay out. Steel1943 (talk) 02:19, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

6. Question: The 'Journal contents' section states: 'The submitted preprint contents would undergo a public peer-review by external experts and considered critically by an elected editorial board before accepted into a journal's mainspace, or rejected.' This raises a few questions for me:

   • Who chooses the 'external experts'? How are they recruited to peer review preprint content?
   • Are the 'external experts' going to be renumerated somehow? Or will they be doing it for free? And we all know what you get when you pay peanuts.
   • In the event of a conflict between these 'external experts' and the elected editorial board, whose decision takes preference? Who will resolve such conflict?
   • Why does a peer-reviewed journal need the work 'wiki' in it? It's about as far away from my understanding of a 'wiki' as you could get. A propos, I have spent much of the past twenty years telling students that wikipedia is in no way a reliable source for academic work and should not be used. I suspect this is an ingrained and in some ways cherished feeling amongst academics. The idea that (yet another) wiki will become a reliable, credible source for academic endeavour, regardless of the rigour of the peer review behind it, is slightly ludicrous. As a sidenote, I and my colleagues often direct students to wikiversity should they want to see how not to do academic work or research. Isn't there a strong likelihood that this new project could end up in the same category? Fortnum (talk) 15:34, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

   @Fortnum: The questions about who recruits outside reviewers and how is answered above; see the response to PiZero's questions. It is completely standard in academia for experts to review papers in their area of specialty without remuneration—it is part of our service to the research community. Editors use input and recommendations from the reviewers to make editorial decisions; reviewers are never in a position to make the decisions directly themselves. --Joel B. Lewis (talk) 16:30, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

   For further information, external experts can be recommended or excluded by submitting authors via the authorship declaration form. External peer reviewers are contacted by the peer review coordinator via these guidelines. Peer reviewers are not remunerated, however automated publons integration may be another longer-term goal. The editorial boards and associate editors are elected via these processes and have these ethical duties. When significant disagreement occurs between reviewers, typically additional external reviewres are sought. Final decision lies with the editorial boards, but the peer reviewer comments remain openly vieweable to make the process transparent to audit. General journal management is heavily guided by the relevant COPE guidelines.

   Wikiversity contains a very wide range of quality, ranging from some of the best such as the work of v:Helping Give Away Psychological Science, through to the worst (epitomised by the necessary bans of v:Cold fusion and other fringe topics). Indeed, the focus on external peer review is specifically to address quality control that can be an issue in sister wikis. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 01:17, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

7. 'Neutral' Something needs to be done. En Wikipedia is hostile to expert writers. And wp:RS rules out actual reliability and expertise as a criteria for sources. Ideally, this would be fixes in En Wikipeda although I fear that it has lost the ability to evolve or fix things. But this sounds like it woule be messy/ have a lot of problems. North8000 (talk) 17:47, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
8. Comment I have already voted above (positive for record) but wanted to address a couple of points that have been raised since I voted. I do not think the editorial boards are made up of up-and-coming and post docs etc. Some maybe this but not all. I am on the editorial board and have a 30 year career in science. I am an editor and reviewer in several journals with many publications. Sio this is an unfair generalisation.

   all new journals have to start somewhere. Anyone extecting a new journal to come online and be competing immediately with Nature or similar journals is being a bit unrealistic and also quite unfair.

   Yes it is true academics have a poor opinion of Wikimedia, in particular they see untruths being spread. Not just poor science but pseudoscience. When they try to fix these issues they are met with hostility from editors with no genuine background in the topic at hand just very good at wiki-lawyering. If Wikimedia wants to become all it can be it has to try new things. It is not going to start at the top of the field.

   For the record I am happy as a well known academic to publish in these journals and most importantly the model is not that of a predatory journal. These are what need to be avoided.

   Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 19:51, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

9. Comment This is more of a question - This discussion has been going off and on since 2016, the first Comment in this section is from 2017. Is this proposal being revived? Was it moribund? Why is it just now showing up in my notifications as a new proposal "A proposal for a new Wikimedia Sister Project, WikiJournal, to coordinate the collection and external peer review of new content is open for discussion"? This is all a little confusing... Shearonink (talk) 02:52, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

   The Sister Projects application process is less formalised than we initial expected (SPCOM looks to have been inactive for a few years) so no automatic notifications of the proposal went out at the start. To invite feedback from as diverse a cross-section of the existing community as possible, we've started trying to invite comment from different parts of the wikimedia community (locations posted and pageviews). The widest net was the Watchlist-message so we wanted to wait until there was demonstrated interest before asking if such a broad notice was appropriate (here). If there are other routes of dissemination you can think of please consider letting them know (especially for wikimedia demographics that may otherwise be missed). T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 07:50, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

10. I think we should create WikiGeneology at the first. WikiGeneology is more important than WikiJournal --Kaiyr (talk) 08:06, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
11. I don't know now exactly. If I see some exist (ready) materials I'll support the new project. Question: : by the way, will WikiJournal only in English or it will be multilingual? Should it be Russian version, for example? --Brateevsky (talk) 12:00, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

    @Brateevsky: The 3 projects (WikiJournal of Medicine, Science and Humanities) have already published peer-reviewed articles. You can take a look at the group page to find the published articles. It is initially English but expandable to other languages down the road. For example, the French version's Journal scientifique libre page has been there on standby for several years. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 01:29, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

    Also on the topic of languages, there was something similar noted at this link. Option 1: Peer review in English, then translation to other languages (has the advantage of a larger pool of potential reviewers) and similar to what journals like w:Angewandte Chemie do. Options 2: the set up of journals in other languages (would require critical mass of interested editors in that language). Option 3: Collaboration with an existing non-english-language academic journal (similar to how PLOS topic pages work). T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 02:14, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

    Thanks, OhanaUnited and T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)! --Brateevsky (talk) 06:12, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

    @Brateevsky We have published a paper in both English and Nepalese in 2020. It is also possible to have special issues dedicated to a specific country, like a Ukrainian edition. While English is the international language of communication in science, we recognize that regional or local research are beneficial if they are also communicated to the audience in their native language. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 17:20, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

Alternative proposals

WikiJournal as a publishing house

WikiJournal as a publishing house I am a little confused about how a WikiJournal project would work: would other users be allowed to come along and edit already published research? Would it be like Scholarpedia where you need credentials? Rather than make a separate project as such, maybe "WikiJournal" could be a regularly-published periodical or a publishing imprint that has stable versions of articles that have been collaborated on at Wikiversity. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:13, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

As summarized at the structure of WikiJournal of Medicine, anyone may edit pages, even published ones, but substantial edits to the main text of such articles would be reverted. Instead, users should then make a separate draft, and have that draft peer reviewed as well. Peer reviewers must be experts in the subject, but authors do not necessarily have to be. Collaborations at any site with a permitting license may be submitted. Mikael Häggström (talk) 19:16, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

WikiJournal Public-Private-Versioning and Dynamic Paper Management in a Wiki

For a Journal the concept of Public-Private-Versioning could be used to facilitate a community-based paper development (the community could contribute during the evolution of the paper - transparent history of the evolution of the paper, and private versions are created by a reviewing process (see Open Community Approach).

Furthermore, a KnitR-Backend or SageMath-Backend for Wikiversity papers can be used for statistical and/or numerical analysis of data for the paper (see KnitR in Wikiversity). --Bert Niehaus (talk) 15:11, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

Apologies for the delayed reply! I think the project would need some feedback on the best overall architecture to use behind the scenes (what can be done directly with MediaWiki, and what can be third-party) so long as they interface well. One limitation we've had, for example, is that reviewers have to submit comments via a google form because there is not yet visual editor in talk pages, and anonymous editors need to privately register their identity and affiliation with the editorial board. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 06:19, 1 June 2019 (UTC)