Consider this post an addendum to Mairelys Lemus-Rojas and Jere D. Odell’s Creating Structured Linked Data to Generate Scholarly Profiles: A Pilot Project using Wikidata and Scholia.

INTRODUCTION Wikidata, a knowledge base for structured linked data, provides an open platform for curating scholarly communication data. Because all elements in a Wikidata entry are linked to defining elements and metadata, other web systems can harvest and display the data in meaningful ways. Thus, Wikidata has the capacity to serve as the data source for faculty profiles. Scholia is an example of how third-party tools can leverage the power of Wikidata to provide faculty profiles and bibliographic, data-driven visualizations. DESCRIPTION OF PROGRAM In this article, we share our methods for contributing to Wikidata and displaying the data with Scholia. We deployed these methods as part of a pilot project in which we contributed data about a small but unique school on the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) campus, the IU Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. NEXT STEPS Following the completion of our pilot project, we aim to find additional methods for contributing large data collections to Wikidata. Specifically, we seek to contribute scholarly communication data that the library already maintains in other systems. We are also facilitating Wikidata edit-a-thons to increase the library’s familiarity with the knowledge base and our capacity to contribute to the site.

Their introduction to the work of academic profile building using Wikidata was written in 2018. Since its 2025, we can do similar work to theirs even more efficiently because we now have the additional benefit of having access to the Zotero ➡️ QuickStatements exporter that was added to Zotero core in June 2021. And, I’m going to add my own shortcut to the mix, with OpenRefine.

Let’s begin.

§1 A Wikidata page for the data behind our academic profile

For this example, I am going to add and associate the publications of Beverly Jacobs, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Windsor to her existing Wikidata profile. Below is her current University of Windsor profile:

Beverly Jacobs already has a profile in four different language Wikipedias:

All four of those Wikipedias link to her Wikidata page: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2900380. As you recall, Wikidata was created to share facts between the various language Wikipedia.

This is Beverly Jacobs’ Wikidata page:

If we searched Wikidata and could not find an existing page for the person whom we would like to add information about to Wikidata, we could create one from scratch using Wikidata’s Create a new item page or we could generate one using the Cradle template for academic researcher.

At the end of this process, we have the Wikidata identifier Q2900380 on hand which is good as we will need this later in this process.

Now to Zotero.

§2 Exporting citations from Zotero for OpenRefine and Wikidata QuickStatements

I have a Zotero folder of a subset of the scholarly work that Beverly Jacobs was written. Of note, two of these entries have Wikidata IDs in the Extra field.

While we are in Zotero, we are going to export these citations in two formats.

First, we are going to export these records as a comma separated field (CSV).

I do this in Zotero by selecting the records and then right clicking so I can find the Export option. I will export the set as a CSV file and then as Wikidata QuickStatements.

Now to OpenRefine.

§3 Using OpenRefine to see what’s already in Wikidata

Now we open the CSV file in OpenRefine.

In my OpenRefine project, there are 20 rows, representing various written work. I am first going to use the Reconcile feature on the Title of the work to see if it can find an existing match on Wikidata.

Of the 20 items, there were 2 that are already in Wikidata.

I then reconcile the entries in the Publication Title column. I do this to find whether the journals that have published these works are already in Wikidata. And thanks to someone named Copystar, many Canadian legal reviews already have Wikidata pages.

Now, we have to see if there any other authors who already have Wikidata entries. We do this by splitting the author field at each semicolon, using the Edit cells > split multi-valued cells > ; We then we trim any white space (Edit cells > Common transformations > Trim leading and trailing white space).

Then we reconcile this column, to find likely matches.

While we could export these records directly from OpenRefine to QuickStatements, I personally found that it much quicker to use the QuickStatement export from Zotero.

We’ll leave this window open for the time being.

§4 Getting our Zotero Wikidata QuickStatements ready for importing

I use SublimeText to edit text files. I’ve opened our Wikidata QuickStatemets export from Zotero for Beverly Jacobs using this software. It looks like this:

Before this file can be uploaded, there are a number of steps that have to undertaken first. From the Wikidata: Zotero page

This what I do to prepare the file pre-upload:

First, I find and replace all the labels reading undefined (und:) with English (en:) or French (fr:), using Control-H.

Next, I replace authors-string fields with known author items on Wikidata. Because Zotero’s QuickStatements tool exports authors as a string, we need to make the connection to the author’s Wikidata item identifier ourselves.

Addendum. I’ve since learned that its good to retain the original name during this process, so for those authors that have who have existing Wikidata entries, it is better practice to include a P50 and a P1922 connection.
e.g. LAST P50 Q2900380 P1545 “1” P1932 “Beverly K. Jacobs”

From:

LAST P2093 "Beverly K. Jacobs" P1545 "1"

To:
LAST P50 Q2900380 P1545 "1" P1932 "Beverly K. Jacobs"
LAST P50 Q113502245 P1545 "6" 

At this point, I refer back to my open OpenRefine window and I add the other authors who also have Wikidata item identifiers.

CREATE
LAST P31 Q1980247
LAST Den "book section published in 2022"
LAST P953 "https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/bookseries/25427946/4"
LAST P50 Q84766122 P1545 "1"
LAST P50 Q2900380 P1545 "2"
LAST P50 Q115973981 P1545 "3"
LAST P2093 "Sarah Duignan" P1545 "4"
LAST P2093 "Rohini Patel" P1545 "5"
LAST P50 Q113502245 P1545 "6"
LAST P577 +2022-00-00T00:00:00Z/9
LAST Len "Haudenosaunee women's water law: reclaiming the sacred"
LAST P1476 en:"Haudenosaunee women's water law: reclaiming the sacred"

This part of the process can take some time because you need to make sure that you are associating the work with the right person. Author disambiguation is one of the reasons why we have linked data sources like VIAF, ORCiD, and Wikidata. It is one of the reasons why I’m doing this work.

Now, we could take a break and create profiles for all the authors who don’t have Wikidata pages, but that will take some time. So, instead, we’re going to leave their names as ‘author strings’ and return to updating these citations later.

The next step is to add “published in” (P1433) statements for our journal articles. We’re going to get the necessary Wikidata item numbers from our OpenRefine window.

CREATE
LAST P31 Q13442814
LAST Den "journal article from 'Canadian Woman Studies' published in 2008"
LAST P953 "https://www.proquest.com/docview/217446062/abstract/C8DDE8313F044C8FPQ/1"
LAST P478 "26"
LAST P433 "3/4"
LAST P304 "223-225,14"
LAST P50 Q2900380 P1545 "1"
LAST P577 +2008-00-00T00:00:00Z/9
LAST Len "Response to Canada's Apology to Residential School Survivors"
LAST P1476 en:"Response to Canada's Apology to Residential School Survivors"
LAST	P1433	Q131754107

Then we look over the text to see if there’s anything that might trip up the ingestion, like roman numerals in the pages field of a book entry.

Now we are ready to go to https://quickstatements.toolforge.org/

§5 From QuickStatements to Wikidata with Wikidata QuickStatements

At this stage, we are ready to copy the text in our text editor and paste it into Wikidata QuickStatements so they can be imported as a single batch.

Each line of text is a command. To activate the commands, we select the ‘Import V1 commands’ button. It transforms our screen into this:

The commands can now be run by hitting the run button, which is located at the bottom of the page. Then we wait to see how the ingest goes… and…

Success! 18 our of 18 records are created in mere moments.

At this point, I like to add the newly created Wikidata items IDs back into the Extra field in my Zotero library. This way, if I ever export another batch of citations, they will be automatically ignored.

Now its time to admire our work in Scholia

§6 Scholia

Scholia is a service that creates visual scholarly profiles for topics, people, organizations, species, chemicals, etc using bibliographic and other information in Wikidata.

Beverly Jacobs Wikidata Scholia (https://scholia.toolforge.org/author/Q2900380) page currently looks like this:

And the works that we’ve just uploaded are here:

That’s not particularly impressive since we started with a list of citations. But, as these works have been uploaded into a Linked Data structure, we can extract and display visualizations already pre-made by Scholia.

I particularly like the co-author graph:

And as I add the works of the Faculty of Windsor Law, I am also building the Scholia page for the Faculty of Law at the University of Windsor.

What I particularly like about the Scholia project, is that it allows visualizations and lists to demonstrate the true depth and breadth of work that happens in the faculty, regardless of whether they decide to publish in a journal that is indexed in Scopus. As Lemus-Rojas, M. & Odell, say in their journal article:

As universities make purchasing decisions about research information systems and academic analytics tools, Wikidata and Scholia have the capacity to provide a subscription-free, community-owned, open-source alternative. IUPUI is a public university campus, largely supported by student tuition, state and federal taxes, grants, and philanthropic gifts. With this in mind, our pilot project demonstrates the ability to give a portion of the data back to the communities that funded it to begin with.

§7 Um, you sort of lost me back there.

Fair enough. Luckily there are resources to help you learn more about Wikidata and what it possibilities it contains.

In fact, on August 5th there’s a session on user scripts and tools presented by the Wikidata: WikiProject LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group.

Maybe I’ll see you there!