Wikipedia:British Geological Survey/Open Access text


The British Geological Survey have released selected text content from the Africa Groundwater Atlas under a Creative Commons license compatible with Wikimedia.

Please note that when attributing openly licensed text from the British Geological Survey, that the publisher should be listed as "British Geological Survey" when using the Open License text template (see instructions below).

link How to add open license text to Wikipedia

Converting and adding open license text to Wikipedia

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The process for adding open license text to Wikipedia can be broken down into the following steps:

Copy: Add the text from the open license source into Wikipedia.
Edit: Correct any formatting issues with the text, add headings and subheadings, change any wording not suitable for Wikipedia and add links to other articles.
Adapt the style:You may need to adapt the layout and the style and tone of the writing. The first sentence of an article must be a definition of the subject. The text must also follow Wikipedia's three core content policies of neutral point of view, verifiability and no original research. When integrating other sources, it is very important to distinguish opinions and interpretations made by the original author from verifiable content that has a neutral point of view. To do this, you may have to refocus the text on surveying the topic, remove interpretations and attributing points of view within the work. Attributing points of view can be done b adding citations to either the source text or its references, and by adding in-text attribution of these opinions e.g "According to [ORIGINAL AUTHOR], "[QUOTE]".
Add media: Add graphics from the source if they are available by uploading them to Wikimedia Commons where the license on the graphics allows. You can also add in tables to the article, if the table is in a PDF (Tabula may be helpful for such additions).
Add attribution: Attribute the text using the 'Free-content attribution' template in the 'Sources' section, as explained below.
Cite: Add the original source of the text as a reference at the end of every paragraph or more if required. If the text has references add them as citations in the article. If you are creating a new article add additional references from other reliable sources to establish the notability of the subject.
Link: Create links to the article from other Wikipedia pages in both the main text and in the 'See also' sections, also add hatnotes where needed. Use the find link tool to identify and create links to the article. Add categories and Wikiproject templates to the talk page.
Publish: Save the changes to the existing article or publish the new article. In the edit summary include that you are using open license text and name the source (sometimes open license text can be flagged as a copyright violation, this helps avoid those issues).

Attributing text

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There are two ways to attribute open license text in Wikipedia, either through the Visual editor or the Source editor. Text from multiple pages of the same source can be attributed at the same time using page numbers, when using text from more than one source please attribute separately.

Attributing open license text in Visual editor

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  1. Copy and paste the open license text into a Wikipedia article.
  2. Create a section called Sources above the References section and click Insert on the editing toolbar and select Template.
  3. Paste Free-content attribution into the box, click the first option and then click add template
  4. Add the relevant information into the Title, Author, Publisher, Source, URL, License statement URL (if not stated within the document) fields and License (e.g. CC-BY-SA).
  5. Click Publish changes and add added open license text, see the Sources section for more information to the edit summary.

Attributing open license text in Source Editor

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  • Copy and paste the open license text into a Wikipedia article.
  • Create a Sources section above the References section and paste in:
{{Free-content attribution|
| title = <!-- The title of the work -->
| author = <!-- The author of the work -->
| publisher = <!-- The publisher of the work -->
| source= <!-- The source of the work if not from the publisher or the author -->
| documentURL = <!-- The URL of the work -->
| License statement URL = <!-- The URL of the license statement of the work if not included within the document -->
| license = <!-- The license of the work -->
}}
  • Fill in the relevant fields, the text between the <!-- --> is simply for guidance, it will not appear
  • Add added open license text, see the Sources section for more information to the edit summary and click Publish changes.