I had two articles recently published in BMJ.
- Rasberry, L. (2014). “Wikipedia: what it is and why it matters for healthcare”. BMJ 348 (apr08 3): g2478–g2478. doi:10.1136/bmj.g2478. ISSN 1756-1833.
- Rasberry, L. (2014). “Citing Wikipedia”. BMJ 348 (mar05 4): g1819–g1819. doi:10.1136/bmj.g1819. ISSN 1756-1833.
That first paper is behind a paywall but the second one can be read by anyone. Subscribe to BMJ! For the first paper, I have a preprint for people without a subscription and a PDF copy for my personal colleagues.
I am grateful to the support of people on the Wikimedia Analytics mailing list who commented on my request for feedback on making statements about the popularity of Wikipedia’s health information. Additionally people from Consumer Reports, WikiProject Medicine, and friends in New York and Seattle helped me with these. I had the chance to write these papers because my friend David Menkes whom I met at a health conference in Dartmouth introduced me to BMJ editor Fiona Godlee. I did not think much of the meeting at the time because it was just a curious chat like I have had so many times before, but the resultant request to write a bit about Wikipedia really changed my perspective as I responded with these writings. David was super supportive both during and since that conference.
I actually rewrote both of these articles not fewer than four times each from nothing and put a lot of concentration and thought into each one based on the feedback I got. I know these are just simple articles, but I really put myself into each one and writing them was a new and meaningful experience with me.
About the licensing – as an open access advocate I was faced with publishing in a non-open publication. I am grateful that BMJ was able to make one of my papers free to read, but otherwise, I am not sure of the terms of our copyright agreement. For the other paper it is behind a paywall. Getting published in BMJ gives a lot of credence to my message and I decided that it was best that I do this. I wish that there was a way in which I could secure appropriate funding for BMJ and make my article open access but at this time I do not know how to get them the funding they need in exchange for the license I would prefer.