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WL-Letters (About)[edit | edit source]

WikiLetters (WL-Letters) is an independent platform supported by WikiLetters. It allows scientists and researchers to anonymously provide a lengthy letter of caveats or limitations that they have identified in published scientific articles. Writing a WL-Letter is quite similar to writing a comment to any scientific journal. However, here you are not required to provide your personal details, and here your submitted letter becomes available online instantaneously so others can benefit from your comments.

If you wish to write one single small piece of critique related to a potential misconduct, such as manipulation of data and results, then WL strongly suggests you to consider PubPeer, because PubPeer is a recognized platform for properly handling properly such matters. However, if you want to offer a comment not related to misconduct, a caveat that could even be appended with other caveats about this same publication, then WL-Letters is very likely to suit your needs. This process of appending and improving information is very similar to the building and growth of any Wikipedia article, and it can support better science for future generations to inherit.

WL-Letters welcomes authors aiming to bring light to caveats affecting their own articles, as well as other commenters. Please keep a civil tone, because we all are humans in the end. Traditional peer-review is a good first step in the quality assurance process, but continued discussion and refinement move things further. Some limitations can pass through initial peer review without being noticed. Consequently, WL-Letters provides an unique opportunity to level up the quality of any scientific article by making explicit the caveats or limitations about an article.

Scrutiny in science sometimes happens in the scientific literature, but there are many good reasons for one scientist not to assess the ideas of other scientists, because some scientists may not well accept critiques or pointed caveats upon their work. This fear of critiques by scientists is also explained by science (READ). However, the suppression of critiques of scientific articles prompts reduction in quality, integrity, transparency and a number of other attributes which should be intrinsic to science.

WL-Letters (Caveats)[edit | edit source]

Caveats, or limitations, is something very common and intrinsic to any scientific article. During the peer-review process of most scientific publications, it is very common for authors of an article to include some degree of awareness and indicate a few limitations about an article under review. The insertion of such information motivates editors and reviewers to feel more confident that the article is ready of almost ready to be accepted. An editor handling a publication definitely feels more confident about accepting an article in which authors placed efforts towards discussing about (1) what could be missing?, (2) what could be further improved, (3) what we could not cover?, and a few other questions not listed here.

After an article is published, you may eventually notice some caveats that were not displayed in your article, and mostly because you are gaining knowledge through your life experience. However, you believe displaying these caveats could benefit others making use of your article, or maybe another article you are currently reading. These kind of caveats are currently hidden in the present system of science, because so far no other platform, not to our current knowledge, has ever provided an opportunity to researchers to demonstrate higher level of awareness with others.

Our goals it to have most of the content sourced from the actual authors of an article. However, you are more than welcome to provide caveats towards someone else's article as long as you are mindfull about language to be considered, that means the famous "tone down some words". Because in the end, this platform is from humans to humans.

WL-Letters (Content contribution)[edit | edit source]

To contribute to WL-Letters is fairly simple, and quite similar to creating a Wikipedia article.

A similar written explanation for consideration:

, and a few tutorials for consideration:

You need to initially search for the DOI (Digital Object Identifier) of an article (e.g. doi.org/0123/456/789abcd) inside WikiLetters to confirm it's non-existence. The confirmation of non-existence would provide you a result displaying the sentence:

Create the page "Doi.org/0123/456/789abcd" on this wiki!

From this point, you are welcome to click over the title in red to create this new information.

Note: please just remember to search for a DOI including only the prefix "doi.org/" which will be automatically converted to "Doi.org/" for the page creation. Therefore, do not include any "http://" or "https://" as a prefix to a DOI.

WL-Letter template
Figure 1: Suggested template displaying minimum sections expected in a WL-Letter.

WL-Letters (Letter structure)[edit | edit source]

It is suggested a letter structure that contains some very basic headings, which may be found in

Note: Please consider the very basic headings displayed in Figure-1. However, if you are welcome to include additional headings and sub-headings whenever needed.

WL-Letters (Fair language expectations)[edit | edit source]

WL-Letters is meant to be a platform just for science and free from discrimination, dishonesty, impartiality and other attributes drifting away from the goal of making science even better.

WikiLetters.org (About)[edit | edit source]

WikiLetters.org is a dynamic-database highlighting and integrating what seems to genuinely support science (directly/indirectly). WikiLetters also supports the advancement of the following services for #BuildingBetterScience:

WL-Letters[edit | edit source]

A database providing Letters of caveats about papers.

WikiComments[edit | edit source]

A database providing peer-reviewed Comments about papers.

WikiCitingRetracted[edit | edit source]

A database displaying articles that cited retractions.

WikiRetracted[edit | edit source]

A database displaying articles retracted from the scientific system.

WikiErratum[edit | edit source]

A database displaying minor corrections about papers in the level of Erratum / Corrigendum / Improper-Citation.

WikiLivingReviews[edit | edit source]

A database to support Living Reviews based upon a Wiki-ecosystem.

WL-Systematic Review SR[edit | edit source]

A dynamic-method for Systematic Reviews.

WikiJournal of Science[edit | edit source]

A scientific journal free and transparent in all levels.

WikiData[edit | edit source]

A system connecting information and data to humans and machines under the wiki-ecosystem.

Scholia[edit | edit source]

A bridge between Wikidata and Science.

WikiCite[edit | edit source]

A system processing citations to strengthen Wikipedia articles.

Wikiversity [edit | edit source]

A bridge between Universities and the Wiki-ecosystem.

Additional relevant databases[edit | edit source]

* RetractionWatch (news about retractions)
* PubPeer (notes)

Comments[edit | edit source]

Here you have the freedom to append new information at any time, and to comment in this section using this space below.