Wikidata: A platform for data integration and dissemination for the life sciences and beyond

Wikidata is an open, Semantic Web-compatible database that anyone can edit. This ‘data commons’ provides structured data for Wikipedia articles and other applications. Every article on Wikipedia has a hyperlink to an editable item in this database. This unique connection to the world’s largest community of volunteer knowledge editors could help make Wikidata a key hub within the greater Semantic Web. The life sciences, as ever, faces crucial challenges in disseminating and integrating knowledge. Our group is addressing these issues by populating Wikidata with the seeds of a foundational semantic network linking genes, drugs and diseases. Using this content, we are enhancing Wikipedia articles to both increase their quality and recruit human editors to expand and improve the underlying data. We encourage the community to join us as we collaboratively create what can become the most used and most central semantic data resource for the life sciences and beyond.