OpenWetWare is a wiki

Wiki

A wiki is a website that allows the creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor. Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used collaboratively by multiple users. Examples include...

 whose mission is "to support open research, education, publication, and discussion in biological sciences and engineering."

OpenWetWare was created by graduate students at MIT on April 20, 2005. Initially, it served as a private lab wiki for the labs of Drew Endy

Drew Endy

Drew Endy is a synthetic biologist.He was a junior fellow for 3 years and later an assistant professor in the Department of Biological Engineering at MIT. In September 2008, he moved to Palo Alto to become an assistant professor in the Department of Bioengineering at Stanford University...

 and Tom Knight at MIT. The site was opened up to allow any lab to join on June 22, 2005. As of April 6, 2007 the site hosted 100 research laboratories from over 40 institutions, including Boston University

Boston University

Boston University is a private research university located in Boston, Massachusetts. With more than 4,000 faculty members and more than 31,000 students, Boston University is one of the largest private universities in the United States and one of Boston's largest employers...

, Brown University

Brown University

Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...

, Caltech, Cambridge Research Institute, CNRS, Duke University

Duke University

Duke University is a private research university located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco industrialist James B...

, and many others.

In addition to laboratories, a number of scientific communities are based on the site, including synthetic biology

Synthetic biology

Synthetic biology is a new area of biological research that combines science and engineering. It encompasses a variety of different approaches, methodologies, and disciplines with a variety of definitions...

 (home), Mimulus

Mimulus

Mimulus is a diverse plant genus, the monkey-flowers and musk-flowers. The about 150 species are currently placed in the family Phrymaceae. The genus has traditionally been placed in Scrophulariaceae. The removal of Mimulus from that family has been supported by studies of chloroplast DNA first...

 (home), and the BioBricks Foundation (home).

OpenWetWare runs on MediaWiki

MediaWiki

MediaWiki is a popular free web-based wiki software application. Developed by the Wikimedia Foundation, it is used to run all of its projects, including Wikipedia, Wiktionary and Wikinews. Numerous other wikis around the world also use it to power their websites...

 software on Linux

Linux

Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

 servers. All content is available under free content licenses, specifically the GNU free documentation license (GFDL)

GNU Free Documentation License

The GNU Free Documentation License is a copyleft license for free documentation, designed by the Free Software Foundation for the GNU Project. It is similar to the GNU General Public License, giving readers the rights to copy, redistribute, and modify a work and requires all copies and...

 and the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license.

Mentions in publications

• Science 2.0, Scientific American Magazine April, 2008.
• The New Science of Sharing, Business Week March 2, 2007.
• Science in the web age: Joint efforts Nature December 1, 2005.
• Wikis: Lab Partnering Science
  Science (journal)
  Science is the academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is one of the world's top scientific journals....
  
  January 6, 2006 - mentioned on NetWatch page,
• BLOG and WIKI your science Biotechnology Journal December 27, 2005. Includes OpenWetWare in a list of blogs and wikis.

Subscription-only articles

• News feature: WikiMedia (pdf), Nature Medicine March 6, 2007.
• YouTube for test tubes Nature November 23, 2006.
• Online methods share insider tricks Nature June 7, 2006.