Wikimedia Research

Welcome to the new home of Wikimedia Research.

Mandate
Our mission is to produce knowledge about Wikimedia’s users and projects. We use qualitative and quantitative methods to provide strategic insights and technological solutions to the Wikimedia movement and the Wikimedia Foundation, to foster innovation and to inform the development of new products. Our audience includes the Wikimedia Foundation's audience teams, members of the Wikimedia community, and external academic and research partners. Wikimedia Research brings together Design Research (formerly part of UX) and Research and Data (formerly part of Analytics).

Top Priorities
These are our current priorities for the 2015-16 fiscal year.

Projects
We're building a comprehensive list of projects driven or supported by Wikimedia Research. Our work is publicly tracked on Phabricator: check out the following boards to see what each team is up to:

Formal Collaborations
Like other researchers, collaboration with researchers inside and outside of the Wikimedia Foundation is what keeps our research environment vibrant. Although we do a lot of such research collaborations, there are times that we see a need for a more formal collaboration process to ensure that the two parties are formally committed and empowered for working on a problem. Below, we explain when we enter formal research collaborations, what they entail, and the process around them.

What is a formal research collaboration?
A formal research collaboration is a collaboration agreement between specific researchers from within and without the Wikimedia Foundation. They involve the commitment of the following resources from the Research team: funds, equipment, hosting, or office space, access to non-public data or special API privileges, or other forms of support under an agreement between researchers and the Research team.

How are formal research collaborations come to life?
Formal research collaborations come to life when one or more member of the WMF Research team works with researchers to identify common areas of interests that align with Research team's strategic direction. If such common areas of interests are identified, the researchers work together to define research problems that aligns the interests of the two parties. From this point the following steps should be followed
 * 1) A research page on research meta is made. The page includes a proposal of the research and the list of researchers who will be participating in the project.
 * 2) A memorandum of understanding (MOU) should be signed by the researcher, the member of the research team involved, and a C-level manager in the Wikimedia Foundation.
 * 3) A non-disclosure agreement (NDA) needs to be signed between the researcher and the Foundation, with an added signature by the point of contact in the Research team.
 * 4) Based on the nature of the request, a volunteer agreement form may need to be signed by the researcher and the C-level manager who signs the MOU and NDA.

As of the time of this writing, all formal collaborations are valid for six months. They can be extended if the two parties see the need and are interested to continue the research.