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Wikipedia:WikiProject Molecular Biology/Biophysics/Molecule of the Month

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A hammerhead ribozyme, with the hydroxyl group highlighted in red and the phosphate group in orange and pink. Source: Goodsell, D. S. (2005). "Self-splicing RNA". RCSB Protein Data Bank. doi:10.2210/rcsb_pdb/mom_2005_5.

The Molecule of the Month is a series of short communications about molecules covered by the Protein Data Bank. While their text is not licensed in a way that would allow for reuse on Wikimedia projects, their illustrations are now available under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License, as per their usage policies (WebCite copy).

An infographic about uploading files to Wikimedia Commons.
Illustrating Wikipedia brochure (blog post

To upload illustrations from Molecule of the Month onto Wikimedia Commons, follow these steps:

  1. Navigate to the Molecule of the Month archive.
  2. Click on any of the articles you find therein (not the PDF version).
    1. Select the images you would like to upload to Wikimedia Commons.
    2. Check whether they are already available via Category:Molecule of the Month.
      • If not, then download these images.
        • The files are provided in TIFF format, which is not widely supported in browsers and problematic in terms of thumbnail generation. Wikimedia Commons prefers PNG files instead, which are also more compressed. Both formats are lossless, and if you know how to convert the files losslessly from TIFF to PNG before uploading to Wikimedia Commons, please do.
  3. Keep the Molecule of the Month page(s) open — you will need them later on for providing metadata about the images.
  4. Navigate to the page Special:UploadWizard on Wikimedia Commons.
    1. If you do not have an account on Wikimedia Commons or on another Wikimedia project yet, you will have to create one by following the "Create account" link, which will also bring you back to Special:UploadWizard when you are done.
    2. If you are seeing a large infographic about the upload process now (like the one shown on the right), you are encouraged to spend some time trying to understand it but don't worry too much about the details - since Molecule of the Month illustrations are under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License, they are definitely allowed to be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. The infographic may be useful, though, once you start uploading files from other sources.
    3. Click the "Next" button when you are done.
  5. Click the "Select media files to share", and a new tab or window should open that lets you locate the files on your drive. You can select multiple files at once.
  6. Click "Open" (or whatever the equivalent is on your system).
  7. Wait for the files to be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons servers. Get ready for adding metadata in the next steps.
  8. Click the "Continue" button when it appears.
  9. On the next screen,
    1. Check the "These files are not my own work." radiobutton (which is probably your default anyway).
    2. Fill in the "Source" field.
      Example:
      {{Cite journal | author = Goodsell DS | doi = 10.2210/rcsb_pdb/mom_2013_3 | title = Molecule of the Month: Erythrocruorin | journal = RCSB Protein Data Bank | year = 2013 }}
      which will render as
      Goodsell DS (2013). "Molecule of the Month: Erythrocruorin". RCSB Protein Data Bank. doi:10.2210/rcsb_pdb/mom_2013_3..
    3. Fill in the "Author" field.
      Example:
      David Goodsell
    4. Choose "The copyright holder published these works with the right Creative Commons license",
    5. then choose "Creative Commons Attribution 3.0" License.
    6. Click the "Next" button when you are done.
  10. On the next page, the following steps are necessary for each individual file in your upload batch (example):
    1. Adjust the file name as necessary to make it meaningful (details in Commons:File naming).
    2. Enter a brief description into the "description" field. Keep in mind that the text of Molecule of the Month is not licensed in a way that allows for reuse, so you will have to paraphrase the captions -- check existing ones for ideas.
    3. Enter "Molecule of the Month" into the first "category" field.
    4. Click "Add another category".
    5. Enter the name of the molecule (or a more general term like "ribozymes") into the second "category" field.
    6. Click the "Next" button when you are done.
  11. The files will then be processed, and you will be presented with a list of newly created Wikimedia Commons pages containing both your files and your metadata.
  12. Check whether the information on these pages is correct. If not, try to fix it by editing the respective page(s), ignoring anything in there that appears cryptic to you. If that does not work, help is available via Commons:Upload help.
  13. To use one of your files in a Wikipedia page,
    1. Click on the "Use this file" link next to the Wikipedia icon on your file's page on Wikimedia Commons (there is another "Use this file" link, intended for blogs).
    2. Copy the code you see there into your clipboard.
    3. Navigate to the Wikipedia page you wish to add the file to.
    4. Click "Edit source code" or its equivalent in your language.
    5. Paste the code from your clipboard into that page.
    6. Modify the description of the file (the part before the "]]") as appropriate.
    7. Click "Preview" or its equivalent in your language (you may have to scroll down a bit if the page is long).
    8. Check whether everything looks OK.
      1. If not, scroll down again into the edit window and adjust things as necessary.
    9. Click "Save" or its equivalent in your language.

If anything on this page is not clear or otherwise in need of improvement, feel free to edit it right away.

Thank you for helping to improve Wikimedia content and for expanding the reach of the Molecule of the Month initiative.