Congratulations to working group member Daniel Mietchen on becoming the first Wikimedian in Residence on Open Science

Daniel at Rencontres Wikimedia France (1)

His appointment is announced in this blog post from Wikimedia, which encouragingly stresses the importance they place on open science:

“The open science movement is fighting to make scientific research – especially publicly funded research – more transparent, freely accessible and reusable. The goals of open science are closely aligned with our mission, yet for years there has been little institutional contact between our movement and initiatives such as Open Access and Open Data. Joining forces with individuals and organizations who are working to promote a culture of openness in the scientific community should be high on our agenda.”

This joining of forces is already underway as the project is hosted by the Open Knowledge Foundation Germany, where OKF will act as a partner for the provision of content and external expertise in Open Knowledge and particularly Open Data.

You can read more about Daniel’s plans in his introductory blog post here and interview with the Wikipedia Signpost. There are also plenty of opportunities to get involved, as detailed in his call to the working group for input. This is a fantastic collaborative opportunity so we hope plenty of people are able to contribute!

[1] Thesupermat, Wikimedia Commons under CC-BY-SA