Andy Mabbett has been Wikimedian in Residence at the Royal Society of Chemistry since September 2014 (the role is ongoing). He has been - and continues to be - Wikipedian in Residence with a number of museums and galleries, as well as with ORCID. In this presentation, he will explain why the Royal Society of Chemistry, a learned society whose roots go back to 1842, chose to be involved with the Wikimedia movement, and how the Society's interest has grown over a number of years, despite some initially unwelcoming reactions from some Wikipedians. He will compare the role of a Wikimedian in Residence in a learned society - one which is also a major scientific publisher - with Wikipedians in Residence in more "tarditional" host venues such as museums, archives and art galleries. He will give a frank appraisal of some of the obstacles he has encountered, and overcome, and will give details of a donation, by the Royal Society of Chemistry, of many thousands of dollars worth of journal access to Wikipedians. One of Andy's initial goals upon accepting the post was to foster collaboration between Wikimedians working in different languages and Andy will show how this was achieved through collaboration with the Amical (Catalan) Wikimedia community, as well as editors using Italian and other languages. Other topics covered will include the non-Wikipedia side of the residency; including contributions to Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons being key, but also Wikibooks, Wikiquote and others. There have even been contributions to OpenStreetMap and other open-content projects outside the Wikimedia Foundation's purview. Finally, Andy will explain why complaints that the Royal Society of Chemistry's Wikimedian in Residence was not a chemist were irrelevant, and how non-scientists can be encouraged to contribute to other science collaborations in Wikimedia projects. His talk will be framed as a model which other institutions condsidering hosting a Wikimedians in Residence may choose to follow, or to borrow from.

Chemical collaborations in the wiki realm

250th National Meeting (2015)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.