A system to signal whether references cited on Wikipedia are free to reuse

Cited sources form an integral part of both scholarly communication and Wikipedia. They are meant to support statements made in the citing articles and invite readers to dive deeper into the subject at hand.

Enhancing the accessibility of cited sources thus contributes to the educational mission of the Wikimedia community. Many sources, however, are not accessible to the average Wikipedia reader due to paywalls in front of them, and many of those that are free to read can not be freely reused.

For scholarly articles, a system that provides article­level licensing information is currently being developed by DOAJ and CrossRef. This resource could be tapped for signalling the openness of references cited on Wikipedia.

It is the aim of this project to provide the technical infrastructure that would enable that, and to engage the Wikimedia and Open Access communities towards implementing it.