Open Access News

News from the open access movement


Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Public funds for scientific articles in German Wikipedia

Torsten Kleinz and Craig Morris, German Wikipedia receives state funding, Heise Online, June 26, 2007.  (Thanks to Glyn Moody.)  Excerpt:

For the first time, the German edition of the open Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia will be receiving state funding. Germany will be setting aside part of its budget to improve information about renewable resources in Wikipedia. Over the next few years, several hundred articles will be written on this issue.

"A number of key words already have excellent entries in the German Wikipedia" within the field of renewable resources, explains Andreas Schütte. Schütte is the executive director of the Renewable Resources Agency (FNR), which receives funding from the German Ministry of Nutrition, Agriculture, and Consumer Protection to conduct research on renewable resources with an eye to launching products on the market. At the same time, Schütte says that a number of key words in the German Wikipedia have very short descriptions, are not up to date, or are missing entirely....

The Wikipedia Deutschland organization will be assisting the program on behalf of Wikipedia. Such collaboration is unprecedented for the open encyclopedia. While no money will be contributed to the expensive operation of Wikipedia's servers, the organization will at least be receiving financial support for the further development of Wikipedia content....