User:Antony-22/Advice for scientists

This is my advice for scientists who want to learn to contribute to Wikipedia


 * Yes, Wikipedia work can help your career as a research scientist. Don't believe people who say that you can't put Wikipedia articles on your CV!  I do, and I've gotten at least one job because of it.  Wikipedia work is great to put as a Broader Impact on an NSF grant, and other agencies such as the NIH appreciate open science impacts.  There's also a long tradition of assigning students to improve Wikipedia articles for a class in lieu of a term paper (see the Wiki Education Foundation for more information).
 * A Wikipedia article is not like a Twitter or Facebook page. It is not a space that you own or control; it is collaboratively curated by many contributors.  It is not "your" article so much as an article about you that you have some (limited) input into.  In fact, it's better to avoid calling it a "page" at all.
 * Wikipedia closely follows what reliable sources say. Wikipedia is not a place to express your opinions; it must be written in a neutral voice and not be based on original research.  It's not enough that you think a statement is true due to your own expertise, you need to find a source to back it up.
 * Cite secondary sources such as review articles rather than research articles where possible. If something has been cited in a review, that's an indication that it's notable enough to be included in the article.  We want to avoid Wikipedia articles being filled with descriptions of random research articles that haven't been shown to be notable.  "Perspectives" and "news and views" articles in scientific journals, or other scientific publications such as Chemical & Engineering News, are also wonderful sources for Wikipedia since they are third-party publications that put a research article in context.  I have further guidance about this in User:Antony-22/Citing academic sources.
 * Citations are used only to verify statements in the text. This is different than the norm in academic papers, where often you'll see a single sentence with many references for the purpose of giving examples and generating reverse citations.  In Wikipedia, the text itself should stand alone to let the reader learn something even if they never read the cited source, and only cite the minimum amount of references needed to verify that text.
 * Don't copy and paste from sources. In nearly all cases, these works are copyrighted and can't be copied verbatim to Wikipedia.  Also don't copy text and then change a few words around; this is considered close paraphrasing.  Recap what the sources say in your own words, like they taught you in high school.
 * Avoid writing about yourself, your own research, your company, or your company's products. Don't use Wikipedia for self-promotion, and follow Wikipedia's conflict of interest guidelines.  If there is a problem with an article whose topic you have a relationship to, the proper thing to do is raise the issue on the article's talk page and/or post a note to a relevant WikiProject asking for input.  See Conflict of interest and Best practices for editors with close associations.
 * Biographies should not look like CVs. Don't paste in a laundry list of awards or publications.  Tell the story of their research career in prose.  Why did they go into science?  Who was their graduate advisor, what what was their dissertation research?  How did their research interests change over time?  What accomplishments led to their top awards and publications?  These details are often found in "perspectives" articles or even popular media publications.
 * You can contribute images, too. In general, academic IP agreements only cover patent and software copyright, so individual researchers retain copyright in any images they produce as part of their research, as long as they haven't been published in a journal that requires transfer of copyright to them.  So if you have any, say, microscope images that you're not planning to publish, you can upload them to Wikimedia Commons.  In addition, you can upload images from journals such as PLOS that are available under compatible Creative Commons licenses.