IMPROVING COMPUTATIONAL BIOLOGY
CONTENT IN WIKIPEDIA. ISCB NEEDS YOU! A prominent aim of the ISCB is to communicate the significance of
computational biology to the wider scientific community,
governmental organizations and the general public. It has come to
our attention that Wikipedia represents a highly used resource
for both public and scientist alike to learn more about science
in general and computational biology. To illustrate the
importance of Wikipedia a search in Google for 'computational
biology' returns the Wikipedia entry as the top hit in the
ranking. A search for 'biological databases', again, returns
the corresponding Wikipedia entry top of the list. Together its
popularity, scope and content make it one of the major global
resources in knowledge provision. But most importantly, the
success of Wikipedia is largely due to using volunteer input to
provide rapid, accurate, free and accessible information to the
general public. ISCB has recently supported the creation of a
Wikipedia Task Force (WTF) with the following aims:1. To disseminate knowledge in computational biologyThis WikiProject is an online, Wikipedia-hosted portal to integrate computational biology relevant articles and people. There are many ways that you can help, from identifying articles that are within the scope of Computational Biology, to adding relevant information to articles in Wikipedia. If you would like to get some initial introduction on how to edit a Wikipedia entry the recent 10 Simple Rules article in PLoS Computational Biology provides some guidance (see www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pcbi.1000941). Also there are a set of training pages available http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User: Rockpocket/Training. We believe Wikipedia provides a unique opportunity to educate and inform on a global scale, and urge ISCB members to engage with this initiative.  |
