# WikiJournal of Science/Publishing

WikiJournal of Science Open access • Publication charge free • Public peer review • Wikipedia-integrated
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WikiJournal of Science is an open-access, free-to-publish, Wikipedia-integrated academic journal for science, mathematics, engineering and technology topics. WJS WikiJSci Wiki.J.Sci. WikiJSci WikiSci WikiScience Wikiscience Wikijournal of Science Wikiversity Journal of Science WikiJournal Science Wikipedia Science Wikipedia science journal STEM Science Mathematics Engineering Technology Free to publish Open access Open-access Non-profit online journal Public peer review
www.WikiJSci.org ISSN: 2470-6345 Frequency: Continuous Since: December 2017 Funding: Wikimedia Foundation Publisher: WikiJournal User Group
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WikiJournal of Science is an ISSN-registered, peer reviewed, open access journal in science, technology, engineering and mathematics published free of charge. The journal is hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, the same organization that runs Wikipedia. Articles that pass peer-review are published as a citeable, indexed PDF, and suitable text and images are integrated into Wikipedia and related projects (with a link to the indexed PDF). The vast readership of Wikipedia results in a high effective impact of included works. Criteria for inclusion for article submissions to WikiJournals are mainly that they are scientifically sound, appropriately supported by references, fall within the scope of the Journal to which the work was submitted, not already have been submitted for publication elsewhere, be of an appropriate open license and include a declaration of any conflicts of interests. Publication formats include original research and several forms of reviews. Articles are preferably submitted via this submission page. Alternatively, submissions can be sent confidentially to (Submissions address not yet created).

## Criteria for inclusion

The criteria for inclusion in the WikiJournal of Science are as follows:
* The article is scientifically sound and appropriately supported by references
* The article is relevant to any STEM field, excluding medical and biomedicine
* The article content is not already submitted to a publisher that prohibits further publication
* The author(s), creator(s) and/or sole owner(s) of the exclusive copyright of the work agrees to have it published under the "Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International" license (preferably), or any Wikipedia-compatible license or multi-licensing thereof
* Potential conflicts of interests are declared (see the submission form for details)
The journal is currently particularly encouraging submission of articles containing media (such as images and videos) that can be regarded to be of benefit to Wikipedia articles, or other Wikimedia projects.

## Publication formats
#### Research articles
##### Original research

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

#### Review articles
##### Focused

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

##### Encyclopedic

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

##### Multimedia

Multimedia reviews are short articles centred around one or more key figures. This can be medical photography, imaging, a diagram, schematic, video, or animation. The article gives relevant background, explains the image, and acts as an extended figure legend. Media files may require further editing after peer review. For videos it is recommended you attach an exact transcript of the dialogue, such as by timed text.
Review articles can be written and processed in two ways:
* Existing Wikipedia articles can be submitted via this page on Wikipedia, with subsequent peer review amendments then integrated back into Wikipedia.
* New content can be written on the WikiJournal preprint server, and can be used to expand and revise Wikipedia pages after acceptance.

## Author guidelines
#### Research articles
### Accuracy

All results needed to support the conclusions are clearly presented, including appropriate controls and statistical tests. Diagrams are clear and easy to interpret if presented with the figure and its legend in isolation. Work is put in context by referencing existing literature.
Methods are described in enough detail for findings to be reproducible. Established protocols are summarised and referenced. New protocols are described in full.
Publication of full supplementary data sets is strongly encouraged.

### Balance

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

### Accessibility

Authors are encouraged to also submit a lay summary that should be understandable to a reader with only secondary school background.
Hyperlinks to Wikipedia articles are used to clarify terms (usually once per article).
The standard section organisation of Introduction, Results, Discussion, Methods is encouraged. Wording is as concise as possible.

#### Review articles
### Accuracy

Review articles give accurate and up-to-date coverage of the topic. Diagrams are clear and easy to interpret if presented with the figure and its legend in isolation.
Accuracy of review articles is ensured by thorough referencing to attribute claims. Sources that have a lower level of scrutiny or not been peer-reviewed (e.g. news articles and research preprints), may be used if there is no better source, such as for emerging or rapidly evolving topics. Use of such sources is indicated (by e.g. "Media reports state...", or by marking the ref with an asterisk).

### Balance

Review articles aim to describe the academic consensus position on the topic. Where there are multiple hypotheses or viewpoints on an aspect of a topic, they are given due weight based on their relative support in the academic literature, and are attributed in the text to their respective authors. For contentious points, we recommend also citing a review article to demonstrate that the point is well-accepted.
If a history section is included, consider citing particularly impactful/seminal works. The citation is sufficient to indicate who did the work, so phrases such as "Smith et al. have previously demonstrated that" are discouraged.

### Accessibility

Strive to make the each section as understandable as possible to the widest audience likely to be interested in it. Authors are encouraged to also submit a lay summary that should be understandable to a reader with only secondary-school background.
Hyperlinks to Wikipedia articles are used to clarify terms. Acronyms and abbreviations are expanded on first use.
Sections are organised to make the article as easy to read as possible. Wording is as concise as possible.

### Articles intended for English Wikipedia integration

Articles intended for Wikipedia integration (in whole or in part) must also comply with its guidelines.
* Articles are written such that a knowledgeable generalist can understand them. The abstract, which in Wikipedia is an untitled lead section, must be understandable to a general audience. (WP:TECHNICAL)
* Wikipedia cannot include any original research (including synthesis of ideas). Original research—such as tentative conclusions, personal perspectives, outlooks, and opinions—can be included in a separate section for the published journal version of the article; it will be omitted from Wikipedia. (WP:OR)
* Wikipedia's policies on references for medical claims are stricter than for other areas (WP:MEDRS).
In addition, the Wikipedia policies on neutrality (WP:NPOV), permissible sources (WP:RS), and style (WP:MOS) should be checked. When in doubt just ask the editors.

## General guidelines
### Main text
#### Clarity

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

#### Content

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

#### Figures

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

#### References

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

### Additional information section

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

#### Data and supplementary information

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

#### Competing interests

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

### Attribution of creative commons material

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

### Publication

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

### Post-publication revision

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