EPSC 2020 Planetary Science Wiki Edit-a-thon
Authors: Piccialli Arianna , Boban Camelia , Heward Anita , Lefever Karolien , Vandaele Ann Carine , Molla Marina , Noack Lena , Pearson Victoria 
Published: March 2021

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia is an open source, web-based encyclopedia, allowing anonymous and registered users to create, edit and improve articles. A survey in 2018 showed that as many as 90% of Wikipedia's editors were male and as many as 81% of contributors were from the Global North [1]. &amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In addition, there are fewer contributions about women, especially in STEM fields, and they are usually less developed [2]. In October 2014, only 15.53% of English Wikipedia's biographies were about women [3]. The WikiProject &lt;strong&gt;Women in Red&lt;/strong&gt; was founded in July 2015 with the objective to address this gender bias in Wikipedia content. They succeeded in increasing the above-mentioned percentage to &lt;strong&gt;18.71%&lt;/strong&gt; as of 11 January 2021 [2].&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Today, Wikipedia is within the 20 most popular websites [4] and every month it attracts more than 1 billion unique visitors [5]. Wikipedia therefore has a huge potential to change publics perception of who is doing science and what a scientist &amp;#8216;looks&amp;#8217; like.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;(Women) planetary scientists on Wikipedia?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In June 2020, there were only 189 planetary scientist biographies on the English Wikipedia, including 48 biographies of female planetary scientists (25%). This percentage is in agreement with the percentage of women in the International Astronomical Union from all ESA&amp;#8217;s Member States (24%) [6], but planetary scientists are clearly underrepresented on Wikipedia. Many of them either do not have a Wikipedia biography yet, or if they do, they are often misclassified under the category of &amp;#8220;astronomers&amp;#8221; or &amp;#8220;astrophysicists&amp;#8221;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A Planetary Sciences&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;strong&gt; Edit-a-thon&lt;/strong&gt;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Diversity Committee of the Europlanet Society aims to highlight diversity within the planetary science community. Therefore, they organised, in collaboration with Women in Red and WikiDonne, the first &lt;strong&gt;Planetary Science Wiki Edit-a-thon&lt;/strong&gt; during the Europlanet Science Congress (EPSC) 2020 [7]. An Edit-a-thon (&amp;#8216;edit marathon&amp;#8217;) is an organized event where editors from an online community (such as Wikipedia in this case) write, translate and improve articles on a specific topic [2]. Thirty persons received a basic editing training, resulting in 1 new article and 5 translated ones. A small subgroup still meets every month to continue the project.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;References&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Insights/2018_Report&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Women_in_Red &amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;[3] Eduardo Graells-Garrido, Mounia Lalmas, Filippo Menczer, &quot;First Women, Second Sex: Gender Bias in Wikipedia&quot;, arXiv, 9 February 2015, p. 3.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;[4] &quot;Wikipedia.org Traffic, Demographics and Competitors&quot;.&amp;#160;www.alexa.com. Retrieved&amp;#160;October 1,&amp;#160;2019.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;[5] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/all-wikipedia-projects&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;[6] Piccialli A., et al., Participation of women scientists in ESA Solar System missions: a historical trend, Adv. Geosci., 53, 169&amp;#8211;182, https://doi.org/10.5194/adgeo-53-169-2020, 2020.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;[7] https://www.europlanet-society.org/epsc-2020-planetary-science-wiki-edit-a-thon/&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;