CZ:Proposals/Standardizing the naming of biomedical articles.

This proposal has not yet been assigned to any decisionmaking group or decisionmaker(s).
The Proposals Manager will do so soon if and when the proposal or issue is "well formed" (including having a driver).
For now, the proposal record can be found in the new proposals queue.

Complete explanation

This proposal concerns helping authors pick the best names for new pages.

Reasoning

The benefits of this are:

1. Reduce the chance of two authors independently writing two articles in parallel on the same content but with different titles (lots of examples of this at WP).
2. Offer standardized definitions of terms that can be used at the beginning of articles (this is facilitated by using template:MeSH)
3. Anticipate common alternative terms that can be set up as redirects when the article is written. This will improve our searchability and intra-cz linking.
4. Facilitate the linking to CZ from other biomedical databases when Web 2 arrives.

Implementation

The first step is getting these instructions in front of authors at the time they are making new pages.

Can we do the following? Currently if you try to start a new page you will see the following text:

There is no page titled "concussion of brain". You can create this page.

Could we append this text with a link labeled:

Are you giving this page the best name?

This link would go to a page where all work groups could put their advice for naming. For example:

Health Sciences Workgroup

(CZ:Health Sciences Workgroup)

• Please check your proposed title at the National Library of Medicine. This can be facilitated by installing a browser search plugins on your computer.
  • Search your term at MeSH. Here is a sample search for concussion of the brain at the National Library of Medicine (NLM) MeSH vocabulary.
  • Note that according to the National Library of Medicine, 'Brain concussion' is a better term and title. An alternative is 'cerebral concussion' which could be used as a redirect page to brain concussion in order to make your article easy to find.
• Consider starting your article by quoting the definition of your term at MeSH. You can use the MeSH template to cite the MeSH definition. For example:

<ref>{{MeSH|Brain concussion}}</ref>

Eventually, this could be expanded other vocabularies (biomedical and otherwise). Other workgroups could put instructions on using their vocabularies here. For example, Botany could link instruct on using names from http://plants.usda.gov/ and Geography could encourage use of http://geonames.usgs.gov/domestic/ (sorry that I only know American examples).

Discussion

Does anyone have suggestions for this proposal?

Proposals System Navigation (advanced users only)

Help/policy New proposals List of all proposals Driverless proposals: proposals that lack a champion Discarded proposals: poorly formed proposals Templates: {{Proposal}} | {{Proposal assignment}} | {{Proposals navigation}}

Proposal lists (some planned pages are still blank): Editorial Council: Active | Finished | Declined Approval and Feedback: Active | Finished | Declined Eduzendium: Active | Finished | Declined Recruitment: Active | Finished | Declined Constabulary: Active | Finished | Declined Executive: Active | Finished | Declined Technical: Active | Finished | Declined PR: Active | Finished | Declined Ad hoc management: Active | Finished | Declined