The Wikipedia Library was created to solve the problem of Wikipedia volunteers not being able to access paywalled content from non-open access publishers. To that end, it now contains more than 100 collections hosting paywalled content. Users have often requested that the library also index major open access publishers, and we've found that in many non-English countries, major publishers are often hosting their content online without a paywall, which has contributed to a lack of content in non-English languages.

If we want to address knowledge equity issues in the library, and enable the library to be a better one-stop-shop for research, we should enable editors to browse and access open access content from the library too.

The primary reason this hasn't been done yet is that there is a potentially infinite number of sources which could be added to the library, and we were concerned at the workload this would generate for TWL staff to add and maintain data on these sources. We have also simply focused our efforts on the library's primary aim of facilitating access to paywalled content.

Proposed solution

To address this need, we could develop a community-based solution which facilitates Wikimedia community members adding, updating, and maintaining a list of open access publishers. More details on this proposed solution are summarised below:

• My Library
  • A new tab would be added to My Library for open access content

• • Users browsing to this tab would find a curated list of reliable, free, content
  • A link on this page would take users to a Meta wiki page where the community can discuss and process requests for addition on the page
• Open access coordinators
  • To reduce the workload burden on TWL staff, and put the community in control, a group of editors would be given the 'open access coordinator' role in the library
  • These users would have the technical capability to add, update, and remove collections from the open access list
  • They would also be the coordinators of the on-wiki process
• Other changes
  • To facilitate this feature set, there are some other things to be considerate of.
  • We may need to implement T289254 if the list of open access collections is expected to be substantially longer than the other tabs, which only have 50-100 items.
  • 'Open access collections' would likely need to be a separate model from Partners, as they need far fewer pieces of information to be listed, and descriptions would likely not be desirable, due to the additional translation burden.
  • We may want to add additional tags (e.g. Size) if open access collections have no user-facing descriptions.

Open questions

• Currently, users who do not meet the library's access requirements cannot browse the library at all. Would we change that if we add a list of free content?
• Is there sufficient interest from the community that we could find folks interested in being coordinators?
• What should the on-wiki process look like? What would the criteria be for listing a collection?