🥗 Lunch meetup: Open Science Meetup
The Wikimedia and open science movements share the common goal of developing high quality openly available content, yet collaborations between the communities have been limited.
Over the past 18 months, the project partners\* have conducted a survey of Wikimedia affiliates to gain an understanding of open science activities within the movement. The survey provided data for an initial mapping, with roughly 20% of the affiliates responding, and of those, 90% expressed an interest in being informed of, or engaged in, open science activities within the movement.
We shared these [results](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Open_Science_Wikimedia_collaboration_Wikimania_2025.pdf) at Wikimania in Nairobi as well as in a blog [post](https://diff.wikimedia.org/2025/12/16/strengthening-wikimedia-collaborations-with-and-for-open-science/) on Diff, which resulted in additional affiliates and institutions reaching out to express interest in collaborating.
Building on this strong interest in collaboration, we are organizing a call in March to discuss the development of an Open Science Wiki Community or applying to WMF to establish an Open Science User Group. Such a community or User Group could raise awareness of open science within the movement, organize convenings, and, critically, provide coordination, as currently there is a lack of awareness of what the affiliates are doing and the potential synergies through collaboration.
Wikimania presents a unique opportunity to bring those in the Wikimedia movement interested in open science together to meet in person in Paris to discuss next steps for collaborations.
\* Project partners: Wikimedia Sverige, Wikimedistas de la Universidad Nacional de La Plata in Argentina, BOAI Org.
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