The Wiki Science Competition (WSC) is an international photo contest for the sciences. It is organized by Wikimedia, that is the movement behind Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia – a global collaboration authored by volunteers.
The WSC was brought to life to encourage the creation and, especially, the free sharing of all sorts of imagery about the sciences. It takes place once in two years in November.
The WSC happens at two levels: national and international. It means that in many countries there will be a national contest with its own jury and prizes (more from here). Winning pictures will advance to the international final, and will be judged by the international jury to chose the overall winners. For countries where there is no national organizing team, a second international jury will take their place and chose the national candidates for the international final: the goal is that all the photographers in the world have the possibility to participate in the competition.
Any support is welcome: from uploading a single image, or spreading the word about the contest, to becoming a partner or sponsor. This November, cultural heritage will be in the spotlight on Wikipedia! Check the rules and access the upload forms from here.
The competition has five image categories: People in Science, Microscopy images, Non-photographic media, Image sets, and General category.
The competition was first organized in Estonia, and it expanded to all of Europe in 2015. European Science Photo Competition resulted in the addition of 9793 freely licensed images by over 2200 participants to Wikimedia Commons that can now be used in Wikipedia and by anybody for any purpose.
2017 was the first time the competition was organized all around the world.
All countries’ competitions start at midnight local time on November 1st and end at the end of December 15th (midnight local time), unless stated otherwise.
Featured Image: Photo by Mati Kose. Estonian Science Photo Competition 2013. CC BY-SA 3.0.
Location:
OnlineBenefits
The awards for the 2017 edition of the Wiki Science Competition are yet to be announced.
Eligibilities
- The Wiki Science Competition 2017 will be held from November 1st to December 15th. Only the images uploaded during this period will be eligible for the competition, except when a local competition is held in a different time-frame. Times for the local competitions are listed here.
- Everyone is allowed to add images, except the members of the jury. There’s no limit to the number of images a participant can upload.
- The uploader must be the author of the photo, or in the case of institutional uploads, the representative of the organization. You can only participate with your own images, or with images of which you are one of the authors (i.e. you must own the copyright). In the latter case, all the co-authors’ names must be provided.
- For the photo to be considered scientific, it needs to have a good description. Every photo must have an English language description, but descriptions in other languages are also welcomed. The description should provide information about what is on the image, how and where; it was made, and what is important to notice.
- The images must be published under a free use license or as public domain. The possible licenses are CC-BY-SA 4.0, CC-BY 4.0, CC0 1.0, and similar.
- As this is a photo competition, we expect images of good quality and size. The image size should be at least 2 megapixels unless the technology used doesn’t allow it. The bigger the file, the better.
- Files will first compete at the country level and up to five finalists in each of the competition categories per country may advance to the international final.
Application Process
Apply online through the given link.
Application Deadline: November 15, 2018
Application ClosedOfficial link
