The Knowledge Equity Network is a collaborative community of engaged institutions, organisations and individuals across the world with a mission to change the way we share knowledge to make the most meaningful impact, for the benefit of all.
Through the development and enactment of the global Declaration on Knowledge Equity, the Network represents a collective commitment and aspirations to reduce inequalities through increased access to knowledge.
Wikimedia UK was one of the early partners involved in the development of the Declaration, and its fair to say that the Wikimedia community has similar aspirations and has already made dramatic progress in facilitating knowledge equity through its various projects, infrastructure and global community. There is Wikipedia itself of course, the internet’s most popular information site, often among the top search engine hits for academic subjects, and which occupies a distinctive place in the information ecosystem, linking informal discussion to scholarly publications.
Wikipedia, however, is just 1 of 16 interconnected free knowledge projects supported by the Wikimedia Foundation:
Two Wikimedia projects – Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata – have a special role, providing digital media or data to all the other projects (as well as to sites and applications external to Wikimedia).
The original idea of the web was that it should be a collaborative space where you can communicate through sharing information
Tim Berniers Lee
On the modern web, plagued by misinformation, Wikipedia is one of the few remaining domains where the utopian vision of the early years still applies, relying on volunteers and a set of fundamental principles (the 5 pillars of Wikipedia) to freely share knowledge cited from reputable sources. This of course includes peer-reviewed literature as the best available claim to knowledge.
There is huge potential for universities to engage strategically with Wikimedia with benefits in the areas of information literacy and research impact, sharing openly licensed text and images to improve Wikipedia, for example and linking Wikipedia citations to open access repositories.
This was the fundamental idea that prompted our Wikimedia Champions project which ran first as a pilot in 2022, with two post-graduate researchers from the Faculty of Biological Sciences and again in 2023, with 7 PGRs representing 4 different faculties across the University and covering a range of different subjects, from dress history, to DNA origami, gene targeting and cryogenic electron microscopy,
With the support of staff at the University and a professional Wikimedian, Dr Martin Poulter, the Champions learned about Wikimedia and examined Wikipedia in their subject area, identifying areas of need and making contributions. The University team included Dr Joanna Brown from the Digital Education Service, Nick Sheppard from the Library and Dr Chris Hassall from the Faculty of Biological Sciences.
As part of the project, the postgraduates edited Wikipedia, produced infographics and wrote up their reflections on the experience. The wider team created generic resources including two videos of specially commissioned poems, training videos (here and here) and a podcast, to help inspire and enable others to contribute to Wikimedia/Open Education projects in the future.
Some of the benefits to the postgraduates included:
- Greater understanding of Open Education and Wikimedia
- Experience of communication of research to a wider audience (via text, images, etc.) using Wikimedia
- Ability to respond to and incorporate feedback from Wiki community
- Greater understanding of copyright, accessibility, etc.
- Teaching and learning development (including presentation skills)
- Report writing
- New skills in the development of infographics
- Experience of team work
Wikimedia Champions’ contributions to Wikimedia:
New articles:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dress_history
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_Do_and_Mend
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_origami (Simple English Wikipedia)
Major edits:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_targeting
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrophysics
Images on Wikimedia Commons:
Cryogenic electron microscopy workflow
Fabrication of DNA origami nanostructures
Gene targeting mechanism vs non homologous end joining
In the context of knowledge equity, and with Champions from 5 different countries (UK, Chile, Brazil, India, USA), we were also able to translate some of these into other languages:
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historia_del_vestuario
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_Do_and_Mend
Cryogenic electron microscopy workflow in: Español, Galego, Português, Cymraeg, العربية, Italian
Spanish version of Cryogenic electron microscopy workflow:
Resources
Contributing to the global commons: A Wikipedia “how to” session (YouTube video)
Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata: why and how? (YouTube video)
Wikimedia Champions at the University of Leeds (podcast)
The open knowledge revolution: contributing to the global commons with Wikimedian Dr Martin Poulter
Leeds University Libraries Blog 
