Rutracker and Sci-Hub nominated for Wikimedia's Free Knowledge Award

Alexandra Elbakyan

The Wikimedia community completed the selection of candidates for the Wiki Award in the Free Knowledge nomination. This year the award will be awarded for the third time. It is awarded to "individuals who are not active participants in projects, but have made a significant contribution to achieving the goals of the Wikimedia movement."

Among the nominees there are quite famous projects and activists. First of all, this is the Rutracker torrent tracker, which is nominated for creating and maintaining a unique archive of knowledge in Russian and other languages ​​of the world (so far 1 vote "for", 2 "against") and research assistant Alexander Elbakyan for the Sci-Hub project, who eliminated barriers to access to scientific knowledge, as well as for activities that demonstrate to the world that artificial restrictions on the distribution of scientific articles inhibit the development of science and contradict the interests of their authors (2 votes "for", 1 "against").

In addition to Rutracker and Sci-Hub, the Wikimedia “Free Knowledge” Award has nominated:
')
The Oral History Foundation ( oralhistory.ru ; Moscow State University Scientific Library ) for transferring Wikimedia projects under free licenses followed by systematization of an extensive media material, as well as participation in the WikiGolos and Wiki Resident projects (1 vote "for") .

The Russian State Library is for the National Electronic Library project, which provided access to millions of digitized books and documents via the Internet (2 votes in favor, 1 against).

The Russian State Library for the project “Rules for the Use of the Russian State Library” (November 13, 2015). As a result, readers of the RSL may photocopy any printed editions from the RSL collection for free on cameras without a removable lens, in accordance with clause 3.1.20 of these rules (2 votes in favor).

The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation for the transfer of the exclusive right to the color film “Victory Parade” (property of the Central Order of the Red Banner of the documentary film studio) to an unlimited number of people under the free license CC-BY-SA 4.0. A sample of how to take someone else's and pass it to everyone (1 vote "against", 2 votes "fie").

The project " The History of Information Technologies in the USSR and Russia " for many years of work on the creation of the site "The History of Information Technologies in the USSR and Russia", containing unique information about the history of domestic computer equipment and its creators.

Yuriy Metelkin for creating phonographic archives “ Witness ” and “ Reporting ” containing unique records, many of which were transferred to the public domain (2 votes in favor).

Botanical journal Turczaninowia . The journal was founded in 1998, since 2009 it has been included in the list of scientific publications recommended by the Higher Attestation Commission of the Russian Federation. Journal articles are published using the Attribution-Unported license of Creative Commons and are directly accessible to everyone, based on the principle that free public access to research results contributes to an increase in general knowledge (2 votes in favor, 1 against).

Perhaps at the last moment, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Pridnestrovskaia Moldavskaia Respublika, which since March 2016 made all materials of the official website available for free distribution under a license Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International, will make the list of nominees.

Until April 30, a well-argued discussion of each nominee will continue. Prize winners will be announced at a solemn ceremony on May 15, 2016 in Moscow.