2024:Program/The Women Genera Project

Session title: The Women Genera Project

Session type: Lecture

Track: Open Data

Language: en

The Women Genera project is an international collaboration between botanists, data analysts and Wikidatians to create a dynamic dataset in Wikidata linking flowering plant genera to women in whose honour those genera were named. The enrichment of data in Wikidata during the project’s research phase ensured that multiple institutions including the International Plant Names Index, Tropicos and the Biodiversity Heritage Library benefited prior to the publication of the research publication based on the research. The presentation will show how the methodology used can be replicated to create future datasets celebrating and amplifying the contributions of marginalised groups.

Description

This presentation will introduce the ‘Women Genera’ research project and will discuss how vital Wikidata was and continues to be to this international research collaboration. The participants in the Women Genera project were motivated to develop their dataset not only to highlight the women after whom plant genera had been named but did so in Wikidata to allow those names, roles and lives of these women to be shared more openly and widely with others and give others the freedom to enrich the data. Amplification of the contributions of women to botany through the use of Wikidata empowers the wider community to better recognise and celebrate the role of this particular marginalised group in the history and development of science.

The presentation will highlight how project engagement with Wikidata led to benefits to other existing digital infrastructure such as the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), the International Plant Names Index (IPNI) and Tropicos which culminated in improvements to the content held by those institutions. Research undertaken and contributed to Wikidata led to the reuse of Wikidata identifiers and their associated data in the website Bionomia, assisting with creating or improving profiles for women botanical collectors.

It will aim to show how the enrichment of data via Wikidata also benefits the wider botanical community providing them with opportunities to improve the data in their own institutions, in particular specimen data used to generate published research. By enriching Wikidata items for women via the “collection items at” property this project has also assisted natural history collections themselves to become better connected via Wikidata. The use of Wikidata in this research project has assisted in contracting the digital distances between specimens, people, publications and natural history institutions.

This presentation also aims to show how collaborative efforts and the methodology and workflows applied during this project can be used to create future datasets celebrating and amplifying the contributions of marginalised groups in science.

Session recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZJ9OtiQxH8&list=PLhV3K_DS5YfJdC5P86rsDsUtxEow0gDnR&t=22336

How does your session relate to the event theme, Collaboration of the Open?

This project is an international collaboration between botanists, data analysts and Wikidatians working together to create an open and queryable dynamic dataset in Wikidata. The aim of this dataset is to highlight the contributions of a historically marginalised group in natural history. As such it is an example of a multi institutional and multidisciplinary collaboration of the Open.

What is the experience level needed for the audience for your session?

Everyone can participate in this session

Resources

Speakers

Siobhan Leachman / Ambrosia10

Hi I'm User:Ambrosia10, also known as Siobhan Leachman. I live in Wellington, New Zealand. I co-organise both the Wikipedians in Wellington Meetup as well as the virtual Aotearoa New Zealand Online Wiki meetup, both of which are held monthly. For my contributions to various WikiProjects see https://wikidata.wikiscan.org/user/Ambrosia10 . I'm interested in New Zealand, natural history, the OpenGLAM movement, supporting GLAM engagement with WikiProjects, and increasing the participation with and the generation of content in English Wikipedia, Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons. I am keen supporter of Women in Red, WikiCite, events such as #1Lib1Ref, as well as Wikidata WikiProject Biodiversity and Wikidata WikiProject Research Expeditions. I am the chairperson of the BHL-Wiki working group and was awarded the Wikimedia Laureate award in 2023. More detail on my other contributions to the Wiki-verse can be seen on my ORCID profile https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5398-7721.

Sabine von Mering

Hi, I am User:S.v.Mering, also known as Sabine von Mering. I am a data scientist with a background in botany and live in Berlin, Germany. For several years I have been contributing to the Wikiverse, especially Wikidata. I am involved in several WikiProjects linked to biodiversity, natural history collections, and women in science and research expeditions.

My ORCID profile can be found here: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2982-7792