In celebration of International Open Access Week and this year’s theme of “Open for Collaboration,” SPARC and the Wikimedia Foundation’s Wikipedia Library are co-hosting a global, virtual edit-a-thon for Open Access-related content on Wikipedia. 

Wikipedia is the first source that many consult about Open Access and related topics.  Because of this, our community has an important interest in ensuring that Wikipedia has accurate, comprehensive coverage of Open Access in languages that make this information available to everyone around the world.

Specifically, the edit-a-thon will aim to accomplish three goals during the week: to improve already existing Open Access-related pages, to create new content where it needs to be added, and to translate Open Access-related pages into languages where they don't yet exist.

You don’t need to be an expert Wikipedia editor to contribute.  In fact, you don’t need any editing experience at all!   All you need is an interest in Open Access and willingness to share your knowledge by adding it to an article or translating information into a new language.  Training for new editors will be provided as part of the event.

A homepage for the Open Access Week Edit-a-thon has been setup on the Wikimedia website at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/The_Wikipedia_Library/OA_week.  On this page, you’ll find everything you need to participate, including:

• Detailed instructions for creating, improving, and translating Open Access-related articles
• Lists of Open Access-related articles that need to be improved
• Suggestions for relevant articles that need to be created
• Information of daily check-ins and training events
• Links to tutorials on how to edit Wikipedia for beginners

Our initial goal is to have 1,000 community-contributed improvements to Open Access-related content made during the week, and we need your help to reach this mark.  

We will be hosting two introductory webcasts that will cover the basics of editing Wikipedia. Scheduled for September 30^th from 10-11am PDT / 1-2pm EDT / 5-6pm GMT, the first introductory webcast will be especially for librarians and will be hosted by Phoebe Ayers, a librarian at MIT and former member of the Wikimedia Foundation’s Board of Trustees. UPDATE: A recording of the September 30th training webcast at https://join.onstreammedia.com/play/sparc/7087-edit-a-thon-training....

We’re excited to celebrate this year’s “Open for Collaboration” theme with a virtual event that everyone in the Open Access community can participate in, and we hope you will join us! We also encourage those who are interested to host in-person edit-a-thons on Open Access during the week and register them here on the Open Access Week website.

If you would like to receive updates on the edit-a-thon or volunteer to get more involved, please register your interest here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1WQ4h5bMtSJyNBFY7Y9eX3KMWifyYDbAJNn....  

If you have any specific questions, you can reach the edit-a-thon organizers at the following addresses:

            Jake Orlowitz: jorlowitz [at] Wikimedia [dot] org
            Nick Shockey: nick [at] arl [dot] org