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As an independent network of nearly 300 historians aiming to build links with policymakers and the media, we have discussed the pros and cons of contributing our expertise to Wikipedia (Editorial, 6 April). We decided to insert links in the references of Wikipedia entries to History & Policy articles, which can be found at www.historyandpolicy.org. The aim was to provide Wikipedia users with high-quality historical research, accessibly written and freely downloadable, and to drive traffic to the H&P website. The result was startling: a few dozen links increased visitors from Wikipedia to H&P significantly, moving the online encyclopedia from below 10th to the third most popular source of traffic to our site. We intend to continue embedding links to our papers in relevant Wikipedia entries.
Virginia Berridge Professor of history, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Alastair Reid Visiting professor of history and policy, King's College London, Simon Szreter Professor of history and public policy, Cambridge
• The UK's leading academic research libraries share the frustrations caused by the expensive "barbed wire" thrown up by journal publishers around scholarly research. Some larger universities now pay over £1m per year to access content from individual publishers, but are limited by restrictive licensing terms in how they can make the content available to the public. Research Libraries UK is looking for the largest publishers to acknowledge falling library budgets by reducing their prices. In the longer term we support a shift in scholarly communication to open-access models so the fruits of publicly funded research are available to all.
David Prosser
Executive director, RLUK
