Closing the computational biology ‘knowledge gap’: Spanish Wikipedia as a case study

Abstract

Motivation Wikipedia is a vital open educational resource in computational biology. The quality of computational biology coverage in English-language Wikipedia has improved steadily in recent years. However, there is an increasingly large ‘knowledge gap’ between computational biology resources in English-language Wikipedia, and Wikipedias in non-English languages. Reducing this knowledge gap by providing educational resources in non-English languages would reduce language barriers which disadvantage non-native English speaking learners across multiple dimensions in computational biology. Results Here, we provide a comprehensive assessment of computational biology coverage in Spanish-language Wikipedia, the second most accessed Wikipedia worldwide. Using Spanish-language Wikipedia as a case study, we generate quantitative and qualitative data before and after a targeted educational event, specifically, a Spanish-focused student editing competition. Our data demonstrates how such events and activities can narrow the knowledge gap between English and non-English educational resources, by improving existing articles and creating new articles. Finally, based on our analysis, we suggest ways to prioritize future initiatives to improve open educational resources in other languages. Availability and Implementation Scripts for data analysis are available at: https://github.com/ISCBWikiTeam/spanish.