User:John P. Sadowski (NIOSH)/Training

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Creating an account[edit]

Uploading an image[edit]

Before uploading, consult the "Determining copyright status" handout.

Uploading to Commons

Go to https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:UploadWizard , or from Wikipedia, click "Upload file" on the left bar, then click "Commons Wizard" in the box on the bottom.

  • Upload your files
  • Click "This file is not my own work" (even if it is)
    • Source: Paste the URL and/or a citation for the work
    • Author: Put the names of the authors. If they are employees of a U.S. federal government agency, follow this by a slash and the full agency name, such as "U.S. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health". If the authors names are unknown, just put the agency name.
    • Provide the copyright status.
      • Works of U.S. federal employees: Click "Another reason not mentioned above". In the box, paste {{PD-USGov-HHS-NIOSH}}. This is a code that identifies NIOSH as the source of the media. If the media came from a different U.S. federal agencies, a full list of codes is available at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Copyright_tags#U.S._Government_agencies or type COM:USGOV into the search box. Click the "Preview" button to ensure that you typed the code correctly.
      • Creative commons licenses: Click "The copyright holder published this work with the right Creative Commons license" and click the appropriate item below.
  • Provide a file name, description (caption), and creation date (if it is not autodetected). You also want to add categories. You should always add "National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health" or one of its subcategories. You can think up other categories as well.

Placing media on an article

  • Place the cursor at the beginning of the paragraph where you want the media to appear
  • On the third row of links, click "Insert", and then "Media".
  • Type the filename or a keyword, then click on the image when it shows up. Then click "Use this image".
  • Enter a caption and alternative text (a literal description used for accessibility)
  • Optional: Click "Advanced settings" on the left, where you can change the image size and position.
  • Click "Insert"

To change these settings, double-click on the image while in Visual Editor.

Determining copyright[edit]

Before you upload an image or other media, or use verbatim or lightly adapted text, you must ensure that the text is freely licensed or public domain. This is because Wikipedia is a freely available educational resource. There are three overarching categories.

Works of U.S. federal employees

By law, works that were created by U.S. federal employees are in the public domain and not encumbered by copyright. However, this does not apply to:

  • Contractors, or employees of firms contracting with the government.
  • U.S. state governments, except for California and (with some exceptions) Florida.
  • Governments of most other countries

Material that has been published in a journal where all authors are U.S. federal government employees should still be in the public domain, regardless of what the publisher claims. However, if some authors are not federal employees, it could be tricky.

Works published under a free content license

Look for a statement that the work is available under a Creative Commons or GNU Free Documentation License (GDFL). However, not all Creative Commons licenses are permissible: NC (noncommerical) and ND (no derivative works) licenses are not compatible with Wikipedia's needs. Some journal publishers, such as PLOS, BioMed Central, Hindawi, and others, publish all of their papers under CC. Some other publishers, such as the American Chemical Society, give authors the option to publish under a CC licensce, though in practice only a small number do. The SHERPA/ROMEO tool can quickly tell you the licensing status of any journal.

Free content is not the same as open access. In open access, a work is available without charge, but the publisher or authors retain the copyright

Copyright expired

This is less likely to be relevant, since only works published before 1923 can be easily demonstrated to be in the public domain. There are some technicalities that allow newer works to be used, but they are sometimes hard to verify:

  • For works published before 1978, the work needs to have a compliant copyright notice to be protected. If you can show the work doesn't have a copyright notice, it is in the public domain.
    • Works published between January 1, 1978 and March 1, 1989 fall into a transitional period, where works without a copyright notice are protected only if they are actually registered with the Copyright Office within five years of publication, so you'd need to additionally check the registration records.
  • For works published before 1964, they needed to be renewed. You'd have to check the Copyright Office's renewal records (which are online) for the correct year to show it isn't listed.

This only applies to works first published in the United States. For works first published abroad in 1923 or later, it's a bit of a rabbit hole. It generally depends on whether the the work was in the public domain in its home country on January 1, 1996, and the technicalities above do not apply.

Choosing an article to improve[edit]

Worklists:

NIOSH publications:

  • Good: review articles in journals, book chapters, technical news articles, Alerts, Criteria Documents, Current Intelligence Bulletins, Workplace Solutions
  • Bad: research articles in journals, Engineering and Physical Hazards Reports, Fact Sheets (?), Impact Sheets, Firefighter Fatality Investigation Reports, Fatality Assessment and Control Evaluation Reports (FACE), Health Hazard Evaluation Reports (HHE), Technology News, Program Performance One-Pagers, Worker Health Study Summaries

Content gap analysis:

  • Pick a topic you are interested in. It could be a field of study, a work practice, a material, a method, a piece of equipment, etc.
  • Search to see if an articles exists, or if it is covered in a broader article.
  • Check if material is incorrect, outdated, or missing.
  • Gather sources.
  • Fix it!

Identifying reliable sources[edit]

Wikipedia's rules on sourcing are very different from academic writing, or even other types of digital media such as blogs. In general, you should write from review articles, guidance documents, and other technical publications.

Identifying reliable sources for Wikipedia is closely related to the hierarchy of sources:

  • Primary sources are original materials that are close to an event, and are often accounts written by people who are directly involved.
  • Secondary sources provide an author's own thinking based on primary sources, generally at least one step removed from an event.
  • Tertiary sources are publications such as encyclopedias and other compendia that summarize primary and secondary sources.

The best sources are secondary sources

Wikipedia, as an encyclopedia, is a tertiary source, and thus you should mainly write from secondary sources. Good examples of secondary sources are:

  • Review articles in peer-reviewed journals or books
  • Guidance documents from NIOSH or other national health and safety agencies
  • Technical news articles from trade publications like The Synergist or Chemical & Engineering News, or journals like Science and Nature.

It's important to include both NIOSH and non-NIOSH sources because Wikipedia is supposed to be neutral, and we want to make it clear that we're not just trying to promote our own research.

Primary sources should be used with caution

It's easy to cherrypick and come up with a laundry list of articles. Primary research articles also lack context and may have be refuted by other papers. But there isn't an overall ban: primary research articles can be used if you have a reason:

  • The paper is prominently mentioned in a review article, and additional detail is required.
  • A well-written introductory section is being used as a review of other papers.
  • The topic is new enough that there are no review articles.
  • Available review articles are outdated, and newer significant results are only available in a primary source.

Don't write text that includes your own original research or opinions...

No original research is one of Wikipedia's core content guidelines. It means you can't use the results of NIOSH studies that have not been published yet, and you can't include your own opinions or interpretations of research. Like everything else in Wikipedia, the only opinions and interpretations that can be used are those are in published reliable sources, with due weight given to all viewpoints present in the literature.

Note that NOR applies means you can't write about your own unpublished research or opinions. It is not a prohibition on citing published primary research, which is treated above.

...but original images are okay

The no original research policy doesn't apply to images and other media. So if you have unpublished photographs, micrographs, diagrams, or other media from your research, it is okay to upload them to Commons and use them in articles.

Further information

To access these, type the shortcut code into the search box of Wikipedia.

Improving or creating an article[edit]

Build the web, add categorgies and WikiProjects

Ways to get your article noticed[edit]

Did You Know

The Did you know... section of the Main Page features hooks for newly created or expanded articles. You only need to write 1500 characters of prose (about three paragraphs) for a new article, or do a 5x expansion for an existing article.

Good articles

Good articles represent the next highest level of quality control, requiring a review by another contributor. 0.4% of Wikipedia articles reach this status.

Featured articles

Featured articles are considered the very best of Wikipedia's articles; to be promoted to this status, articles must undergo an extensive peer review process by other Wikipedia contributors. Only 0.1% of Wikipedia articles are Featured Articles.

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