Analytics/Research and Data/Research with Community

Being a small team of researchers in Research and Data, we strive to expand our team's capacity in the areas of importance to Wikimedia Foundation and the movement. To do this, we work with researchers outside of the foundation when we find mutual research interests and in the form of formal collaborations. Formal Research collaborations come with different levels of commitment by the two parties. We explain this in more details in Collaboration types section below.

Collaboration types

Research collaboration between R&D staff and non-WMF researchers can be characterized by one or more of the following categories.

Access to private data

R&D has access to some of the private data available to WMF. The collaborations with non-WMF researchers that require access to private data are handled by either an R&D staff working with the private data or granting access to non-WMF researcher, or both.

In order for a non-WMF researcher to have access to private data, the following requirements should be met:

• The proposed research should be considered highly aligned with WMF's and/or the movement's needs,
• The research and its outputs should follow WMF's open access policy,
• A non-disclosure agreement (NDA) needs to be signed by the researcher.

Funding

R&D does not provide funding support for research collaborations. Funding for research that forwards the goals of the Wikimedia Movement may be available through Individual Engagement Program.

Research/technical support

Formal research and technical support/collaboration by R&D staff is possible under the same conditions as mentioned in Access to private data, except that no NDA need to be signed in this case. This is to assure that the staff's time is spent on strategically important research projects, and that the research follows WMF's open access policy.

Hosting

R&D does not formally commit to hosting collaborators due to space constraints in the SF office, however, temporary hosting of collaborators by WMF can be arranged on an ad-hoc basis.

Endorsements

The Wikimedia Foundation (not R&D) can support individual research projects of particular strategic importance by providing a formal endorsement. All projects endorsed should satisfy WMF's open access policy.

Expectations

Research collaborations are based on mutual expectations between non-WMF and WMF R&D. The specifics of the expectations are detailed out per collaboration. What is common among all collaborations it that they all need to follow WMF's open policy.

List of collaborators

This list contains information about our current collaborators.

Researcher	Institute	Project page(s)	Length of collaboration	WMF research staff contact	Signed NDA	Signed MoU	Signed Volunteer Agreement
Morten Wang	University of Minnesota	Measuring article importance		Aaron Halfaker	Yes	No	Yes
Robert West	Stanford University	Improving link coverageIncreasing article coverage	6 months to 1 year	Leila Zia	Yes	Yes	No
Jure Leskovec	Stanford University	Improving link coverageIncreasing article coverage	6 months to 1 year	Leila Zia	No	No	No

Interested in collaborating with us?

We are currently interested in expanding our understanding in the following areas: XXX

If you would like to collaborate with us, please send an email to wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org with subject "[collaborations] project_title", a link to your proposal, the list of people in your team, and links to their resumes. We will give preference to research projects that are aligned with the two areas mentioned above.