Wikipedia’s volunteer editors to have access to all Taylor & Francis journals

Taylor & Francis (T&F) has extended Wikipedia editor access to all its journals. 

Wikipedia’s volunteer editors will now have free access to all T&F and Routledge journals through The Wikipedia Library, a project of the Wikimedia Foundation.  

The foundation is the global non-profit organisation that hosts Wikipedia and other projects and the extended journal access means that active Wikipedia editors will be able to read and cite millions of peer-reviewed journal articles across every discipline, from anthropology to zoology. 

Wikipedia is one of the most widely used sources of information on the internet and has more than six million articles in the English-language version alone. The information on Wikipedia is curated by a global community of volunteer editors around the world. These editors compile and share information on notable subjects from reliable sources, such as newspaper articles and peer-reviewed journals, in accordance with the encyclopedia’s editorial policies and guidelines. 

Since 2015, the Wikipedia Library and T&F partnership has supported active volunteer editors, who often lack access to university collections, to read the publisher’s journals in the arts and humanities, strategic studies  and business. The new agreement, which extends the programme to more than three million articles across all subject disciplines, will substantially increase the diversity of content available to Wikipedia editors. 

Sam Walton, senior product manager at the Wikimedia Foundation, said: “We are excited to expand our collaboration with Taylor & Francis and offer even more resources to Wikipedia editors as they conduct research on a range of critical topics. This collaboration helps Wikipedia remains reliable and trustworthy for its millions of monthly readers, drawing on quality reference materials from Taylor & Francis journals.” 

Martin Wilson, head of content at T&F, added: “Wikipedia is the first port of call for so many of us when we want to find out about a new topic and Wikipedia editors do an amazing job helping to keep it as accurate and up to date as possible. We hope this extended partnership with The Wikipedia Library will make Taylor & Francis Online an even more useful resource for supporting that work.” 

SAGE and Wiley have previously worked with Wikipedia to give editors access to journals.