Reviews:FAQ

How can I help?
You can make a contribution in many ways. The simplest is just to have a look at reviews you are interested. If you think there are important papers missing either make the suggestion on the discussion page or just add the reference directly. If you are particularly interested in a review why not volunteer to be a Curator? Finally if there aren't Reviews in your area then you can create one. Either by converting an existing review, written by your self or someone else, or by starting from scratch.

What is a curator?

 * see Reviews/Curator

What about copyright issues with converting an existing review?
Everything on OpenWetWare is available under a Creative Commons license. This means it is available for anyone, anywhere, to re-use. If you wish to use an existing published review as a starting point you must check its copyright status. In most cases it will be possible, with the appropriate permissions, to place an existing review on OpenWetWare.

Published articles will generall fall into of three categories.
 * Open Access Journals: A growing number of journals are 'Open Access' which means they allow re-use and replublication of work. These include all Plos and BMC journals as well as others such as Nucleic Acids Research. A list of Open Access reviews that could be placed on OpenWetWare is at Reviews:Community_portal. If you take this route it is polite to provide a link back to the Journal's version of the review and also to make a declaration that the review has been modified. In some cases the Journal may be willing to link forward to the Wikified review.
 * NonJopen Access journals: Traditionally journals hold the copyright of papers that they publish. In this case any re-use will require the permission of the Journal. In many cases the Journal may permit re-use but will quite possibly charge for the priviledge. Many non-open access Journals allow the publication and re-use of 'pre-prints' or the final submitted version of the paper. In this case you will usually have to ask the permission of the authors for re-use. The key thing is to check. Again if you get permission it is polite to link back to the original version online and note that modifications have been made.
 * In between journals: Some journals, the Nature journals being the most obvious example, do not aqcuire the copright from the authors when they publish a paper. In this case you may request permission direct from the authors. However it is important that you check that any agreement with the publisher does not preclude re-use. In some cases the journal may require that the material is not republished in any other form for six months from their publication date.