Wikipedia is one of the largest, most accessible sources of information online. It has thousands of well-referenced entries which make it a popular first stop for learning about a subject. Female scientists have been traditionally been underrepresented in history books and are underrepresented in Wikipedia. This gives the impression that women in science are unsuccessful and can be discouraging for girls in STEM. Since a lot of citizen science efforts are led by women and because Wikipedia uses crowdsourcing to improve its content, having a Women in Science Wikipedia Edit-a-thon is a natural fit. Join the Network for Women in Science (NWiS) at the Scripps Research Institute in improving Wikipedia articles on female scientists! Take a hands-on, crash course for editing Wikipedia entries and practice what you’ve learned by helping to improve existing Women in Science entries or even creating new ones!
FAQ for adding Women in Science
Why add Women Scientists to Wikipedia? Here’s a blog post from the Wikimedia foundation on why the representation of women scientists in Wikipedia is important.
What are existing efforts for this task? Check out the Wikiprojects for Women in Science. It was co-founded by a graduate student who added women in science wikipedia articles whenever she received sexist comments.
What are the guidelines for adding scientists to Wikipedia?
Here is a great guideline on the notability of academics for Wikipedia.
What are the guidelines for biographies in Wikipedia?
There is already a nice guideline for writing biographies in Wikipedia. Note that additional guidelines apply to living people.
What are the guidelines for biographies of living people in Wikipedia?
Please see the guidelines for writing biographies of living people for Wikipedia.
Where can I find Women in Science who might be good candidates for Wikipedia biographical articles?
The Women in Science Wikiproject has a nice list.
Other notable women in science who might be good candidates include:
Scientific American’s post on notable women in science that passed away in 2016.
Women Rock Science – a nifty site that features women in science.
Potential candidates of special interest to NWiS or citizen science community
Please note, you should not write biographies for anyone you know personally to avoid conflicts of interest
- Donna Blackmond, PhD. Meets Academic Notability criteria: 3, 5, 8
- Hollis Cline, Ph.D. Meets Academic Notability criteria: 5, 6
- Cindy Ehlers, PhD. Meets Academic Notability criteria: 2, 5
- Velia Fowler, Ph.D. Meets Academic Notability criteria: 1, 5
- Jeanne F. Loring, Ph.D. Meets Academic Notability criteria: 5/6
- Barbara Mason, Ph.D. Meets Academic Notability criteria: 2, 3, 5
- Lindsey Miles, Ph.D. Meets Academic Notability criteria: 5, 6
- Marisa Roberto, Ph.D. Meets Academic Notability criteria: 2
- Erica Ollmann Saphire, Ph.D. Involved in some citizen science and Meets Academic Notability criteria: 2
Potential candidates via Wikidata query
A citizen science enthusiast, @tacitsci, and the sole participant in last year’s San Diego Citizen Science Expo Wikipedia activity wrote a Wikidata SPARQL query to retrieve women in science with entries in Wikidata. This can be used in the Wikidata Query Service. Thank you so much, Tom!
# women scientists on Wikidata
# useful resource:
# TAXONOMY OF FIELDS AND THEIR SUBFIELDS
# http://sites.nationalacademies.org/PGA/Resdoc/PGA_044522# using ?linkcount as a rough measure of how well researched the individual is;
# lower link count suggests articles about that individual need more work;
# if ?humanLabel has a ‘Q’ value, then apparently no English Wikipedia articleSELECT ?human ?humanLabel ?fieldLabel ?dob ?pobLabel (COUNT(DISTINCT ?sitelink) as ?linkcount)
WHERE {
?human wdt:P21 ?gender .
?human wdt:P101 ?field .
?human wdt:P569 ?dob .
?human wdt:P19 ?pob .
?sitelink schema:about ?human .
FILTER(?gender = wd:Q6581072) . # female
FILTER(
# all encompassing
?field = wd:Q336 || # science
# broad categories
?field = wd:Q2329 || # chemistry
?field = wd:Q413 || # physics
?field = wd:Q420 || # biology
# specialties
?field = wd:Q7094 || # biochemistry
?field = wd:Q7202 || # molecular biology
?field = wd:Q207011 || # neuroscience
?field = wd:Q431 || # zoology
?field = wd:Q46255 || # geophysics
?field = wd:Q333 || # astronomy
?field = wd:Q944 || # quantum mechanics
?field = wd:Q81197 # nuclear physics
) .
SERVICE wikibase:label { bd:serviceParam wikibase:language “en”. }
}
GROUP BY ?human ?humanLabel ?fieldLabel ?dob ?pobLabel
ORDER BY ASC(?linkcount)
LIMIT 100