How can scholarly publications be made more visible, discoverable, and interconnected? This question is the focus of a student practical project conducted as part of the seminar within the module Information Production and Management (BP3) in the summer semester 2025.
In close collaboration with colleagues from the Coordination Office for Scholarly Publishing at the Library as well as a research associate from the “Future of Collections” research area at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin (MfN), the students are working on an exciting task: documenting scholarly journals in Wikidata from the fields of zoology, biodiversity research, and paleontology, including taxonomy and systematics of fossil organisms, enriching them with information, and linking them to each other.
As part of this semester’s “Übung”, students received an introduction to Linked Open Data, with a particular focus on Wikidata. Especially for library applications, Wikidata is an exciting project because authorities, publications, and collections can be linked together, creating new opportunities for discovery, contextualization, and visibility.
The students worked with real datasets on the Museum für Naturkunde’s in-house journals Zoosystematics and Evolution (ZSE), Fossil Record (FR) and Deutsche Entomologische Zeitschrift (DEZ). Among other tasks, their work involved reviewing existing Wikidata entries, adding missing information, and linking relevant metadata (for example ISSNs, publishers, publication periods) with authority records such as the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), the Gemeinsame Normdatei (GND), or the Virtual International Authority File (VIAF).
The module at the Institute for Library and Information Science also included a visit to the Museum für Naturkunde, where students received a tour of the collections. This provided a hands-on introduction to working with real museum objects as part of their data-related assignments.
The edit-a-thon, embedded in a university seminar, demonstrated impressively the potential of structured, machine-readable data for digital science communication. Through the targeted recording and interlinking of publication data in Wikidata, new possibilities emerge for analysis and visualization. Tools like Scholia already offer fascinating insights into topics such as “Top Topics through Time,” author networks, or gender ratios in science.
Examples from Scholia for individual publication periods of the three journals:
ZSE (2008–present): https://scholia.toolforge.org/venue/Q15755646
FR (2008–present): https://scholia.toolforge.org/venue/Q2455930
DEZ (1954–present): https://scholia.toolforge.org/venue/Q4037265
By systematically capturing article data from more than 160 years of publishing activity, a valuable resource is created for future research questions. Scholarly publications serve here as references and as data sources, but also as links to other entities such as groups of organisms, people, places, research expeditions, and collections (von Mering, 2024). The overarching goal is an open knowledge infrastructure for everyone, both researchers and the broader public. The Museum für Naturkunde Berlin will continue along this path with its own digitization initiatives and in collaboration with external partner projects.
Further information: Post about Open Cultural Data in Wikimedia Germany’s blog: Wie das Naturkundemuseum mit Linked Open Data unbekannte Forschende sichtbar macht
Further information about the research group can be found on our official website.
This text – excluding quotes and otherwise labelled parts – is licensed under the CC BY 4.0 DEED.
References
Citation
@online{rothfritz2025,
author = {Rothfritz, Laura and Paß, Stefanie and von Mering, Sabine
and Schindler, Clara and Pampel, Heinz},
title = {Connecting {Knowledge} with {Wikidata:} {A} {Practical}
{Project} with the {Museum} Für {Naturkunde} {Berlin}},
date = {2025-07-16},
url = {https://doi.org/10.59350/hzjde-ss694},
langid = {en}
}