---
pretty_name: CommonsWire
language:
- en
license: other
license_name: per-row-open-licenses
license_link: https://huggingface.co/datasets/obadakr/commonswire/blob/main/LICENSES.md
tags:
- news
- journalism
- fact-checking
- creative-commons
- communication-research
size_categories:
- 100K<n<1M
configs:
- config_name: by
  data_files:
  - split: train
    path: "data/by/*.parquet"
  default: true
- config_name: by-sa
  data_files:
  - split: train
    path: "data/by-sa/*.parquet"
- config_name: pd
  data_files:
  - split: train
    path: "data/pd/*.parquet"
---

# CommonsWire 0.2.1

CommonsWire is a full-text corpus of news articles whose publishers allow their text to be
shared again. Each row is one article: its body text as published, its metadata, its license,
and the credit line its publisher asks for.

Version 0.2.1 holds 149,152 articles (55.2 million words)
from 7 sources, published from 2004-10-27 to 2026-11-14 and collected
up to 2026-11-15.

- **Curated by:** Obada Kraishan, College of Media and Communication, Texas Tech University.
- **License:** each article keeps its publisher's license (public domain, CC BY or CC BY-SA),
  on its row; see `LICENSES.md`.
- **Contact:** the [issue tracker](https://github.com/obadaKraishan/commonswire/issues).

CommonsWire is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by any of the newsrooms whose
articles it holds.

## What it is, and what it is not
- **It is** each source's own articles, as far as its API or dump gives them, with every
  article's license on its row. More sources join in later versions.
- **It is not every news outlet.** Most newsrooms do not allow their text to be shared again,
  and they are not here. Results from CommonsWire describe these sources, not "the news".
- **It is small going forward.** Over the last 90 days the sources published about 6.2 new
  articles a day: 360info 0.5, The Public Record 0.6, Balkan Diskurs 0.2, Factly 2.3, Alt News
  1.2, Global Voices 1.5. Fact-checks are most of that flow (about 56%).
- **Global Voices is most of it** (101,564 of 149,152 rows, 68%): results over the whole corpus
  mostly describe it.
- **Wikinews is a closed archive.** English Wikinews stopped publishing on 2026-05-04.
- **It is English only.**
- **It has no coded variables yet** (topic, frame, types of sources quoted, tone). They are
  planned for a later version.

## This update
Version 0.2.1 updates 0.2.0 with what the sources published, edited or removed in the 30 days
up to 2026-11-15: 5 new rows, 2 changed, 0 removed at their source, and 0 taken down on
request.

## Changes since 0.1.0
- **A new source: Global Voices** (101,564 rows, CC BY 3.0, 2004 to 2026), an international
  citizen-media newsroom; its writers' names come from its own story listing, which names every
  writer of a story, and its translators apart.
- **A new field, `translators`:** the translators the source names, apart from the writers in
  `authors` (4,963 rows); the credit line names them ("..., by A, translated by B, ...").
- **Rows credited only to an account are held back** (264): an account such as "Guest
  Contributor" names no person.
- **Near-duplicates across sources:** 1 pair in this version.

## The sources
| Source | Kind | License | Rows | Published | Credit line template |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wikinews (English) | news | CC BY 2.5 (18,466); CC BY 4.0 (231); Public domain (1,954) | 20,651 | 2004-11-13 to 2026-05-03 | `{title}, Wikinews ({url}), {license}` |
| 360info | news | CC BY 4.0 | 2,400 | 2021-11-22 to 2026-11-12 | `{title}, written by {authors}. Originally published under Creative Commons by {source} ({url}), {license}` |
| The Public Record | news | CC BY-SA 4.0 | 2,751 | 2013-06-28 to 2026-11-14 | `{title}, by {authors}, {source} ({url}), {license}` |
| Balkan Diskurs | news | CC BY 3.0 | 879 | 2014-06-04 to 2026-11-13 | `{title}, by {authors}, originally published by {source} ({url}), {license}` |
| Factly | fact-check | CC BY 4.0 | 15,103 | 2014-12-14 to 2026-11-13 | `{title}, by {authors}, {source} ({url}), {license}` |
| Alt News | fact-check | CC BY 3.0 | 5,804 | 2016-04-10 to 2026-11-14 | `{title}, by {authors}, {source} ({url}), {license}` |
| Global Voices | news | CC BY 3.0 | 101,564 | 2004-10-27 to 2026-11-14 | `This story by {authors} originally appeared on {source}: {title} ({url}), {license}` |

`{authors}` is the byline as the page gives it; where an article names no person and the
source's own byline is the source itself, the credit line names the source.
When the source names translators (Global Voices, for 4,963 rows), `{authors}` is followed by
", translated by" and their names; the writers stay in `authors`, and the translators are in
`translators`.
275 more rows are held back because the source asks for the author's name: 264 are credited
only to an account such as "Guest Contributor", which names no person; 11 name no author on the
article's page or in the source's story listing.

Every source in the registry (included, pending and excluded), with the pages read and the
words quoted as evidence, is in `sources.csv`.

## Configurations and licenses
Each row carries its own `license`, `license_url` and `credit_line`. The rows are split into
one configuration per license class, so you can load only what your use allows:

| Configuration | Licenses | Rows |
|---|---|---|
| `by` | Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 2.5, 3.0 and 4.0) | 144,447 |
| `by-sa` | Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA 4.0) | 2,751 |
| `pd` | public domain | 1,954 |

```python
from datasets import load_dataset

by = load_dataset("obadakr/commonswire", "by", split="train")  # CC BY
by_sa = load_dataset("obadakr/commonswire", "by-sa", split="train")  # CC BY-SA
pd = load_dataset("obadakr/commonswire", "pd", split="train")  # public domain
```

**What you must do** (this is a summary, not legal advice; `LICENSES.md` has more):
- **CC BY** (`by`): keep each article's `credit_line` with it. It names the creator and the
  source, the title, the link and the license. Say if you changed the text.
- **CC BY-SA** (`by-sa`): the same, and share anything you adapt from these texts (a
  translation, an edited version) under CC BY-SA.
- **Public domain** (`pd`): nothing is required. The credit line is kept as a courtesy.
  Public-domain status under US law may not hold in every country.
- In every case, do not suggest that a newsroom endorses your work, and drop articles that a
  later version marks as removed.

## Fields
| Field | Meaning |
|---|---|
| `id` | `cw_` and 16 hex digits of the SHA-256 of the canonical URL; stable across versions |
| `source_id`, `kind` | the source, as in `sources.csv`, and its kind (`news`, `fact-check`) |
| `title` | the headline as published |
| `authors` | the bylines as published (empty when the article names no person) |
| `translators` | the translators the source names, apart from the writers (empty when it names none) |
| `published_at`, `updated_at` | UTC, as the source gives them |
| `retrieved_at` | UTC, when CommonsWire fetched the article |
| `language` | `en` |
| `section` | the source's own section or category, if any |
| `url` | the article at its source |
| `license`, `license_url` | the article's license and a link to its legal text |
| `credit_line` | the attribution to keep with the text |
| `text` | the body text, words unchanged; paragraphs separated by a blank line |
| `content_hash` | SHA-256 of `text`, to spot changed articles between versions |
| `status` | `live`, or `changed` if the source edited the text after it was first collected |
| `near_duplicates` | ids of very similar articles in other sources (5-gram Jaccard 0.6 or more) |

`index.csv` lists every row's id, source, configuration, URL, license, content hash and
publication time, without text. `manifest.json` gives the row counts and the size and SHA-256 of
every file.

## How it was collected
- **Rights first.** A source enters only when its own pages give a license or public-domain
  statement that allows sharing the full text unchanged, do not forbid bulk or automatic
  reuse, and do not forbid automated collection, and when its own articles can be told apart
  from material it republishes. The evidence (page, date, exact words) is in `sources.csv`.
- **Third-party material is left out.** Wire copy, partner stories, syndicated pieces and posts
  under someone else's rights are dropped; 2,476 were dropped in this version.
- **Text unchanged.** The body text comes from each source's API (Wikinews: from the
  Wikimedia dump, with the wiki markup removed by rule). Only whitespace inside paragraphs is
  normalized. Photos, captions, video, audio and embedded posts are not collected; they are
  often separate works the source does not license.
- **Bylines.** From the source's API; where the API gives none and the source asks for the
  author's name, from the byline on the article's own page or in the source's own story listing
  (Global Voices), never from the body text.
- **Duplicates.** Exact duplicates (the same URL or the same text) are dropped:
  107 in this version. Near-duplicates across sources are flagged in
  `near_duplicates`, not dropped: 1 pair in this version.
- **Politely.** One request at a time, at least 2 seconds apart, robots.txt and crawl-delays
  honored, and a user agent that names the project. Blocks are never worked around.

## Removals and corrections
- **At the source.** Each update asks every source that still publishes for the articles it
  published or edited in the last 30 days. An article edited at its source, however old, gets
  its new text and status `changed` in the next version; an article of the last 30 days that
  was removed at its source is dropped from the next version. Removals of older articles are
  not checked yet.
- **On request.** Publishers, writers and people named in an article can ask for a removal or a
  correction with the [takedown and correction form](https://github.com/obadaKraishan/commonswire/issues/new?template=takedown.yml). Requests are answered
  within 14 days. An article taken down goes on a list of ids (`data/takedowns.csv` in the
  code repository, with no URL or name) and is left out of every later version.
- **Your copy.** If you keep a copy of CommonsWire, please apply removals to it too:
  `index.csv` of the latest version lists every article still in it.

## Limitations
- The sources are a small, uneven set: an international citizen-media newsroom, two
  fact-checking sites in India, a closed citizen-journalism wiki, a local newsroom in Hamilton
  (Canada), an open-access research newswire, and an outlet in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Their
  mix of countries and topics is not that of mainstream news.
- 33% of the Global Voices rows (33,123) have fewer than 200 characters of text: short posts of
  a sentence or two, most of them with a link, from its first years (99% of them published
  before 2013). The median Global Voices row has 50 words. Filter by length if you need full
  stories.
- Wikinews text is converted from wiki markup by rule; a few articles keep a stray bar,
  bracket or brace where the wikitext itself has a slip.
- Fact-check articles and Global Voices stories quote and describe posts from social media and
  blogs. The embedded posts are removed, but the quoted words stay in the text.
- `authors` is filled for 128,367 of 149,152 rows. Wikinews articles
  carry no bylines, and some articles are credited to the source itself.
- News articles name people. CommonsWire adds nothing to what was published, infers nothing
  about anyone (no gender, ethnicity or other attribute), and offers no search by person.

## Contact
Questions and errors: the [issue tracker](https://github.com/obadaKraishan/commonswire/issues). Removals and corrections: the
[takedown and correction form](https://github.com/obadaKraishan/commonswire/issues/new?template=takedown.yml).

## Citation
Please cite the version you used, and credit the newsrooms as each row's credit line asks.

```bibtex
@misc{commonswire_0_2_1,
  author = {Kraishan, Obada},
  title = {CommonsWire: a full-text corpus of openly licensed news},
  version = {0.2.1},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {Hugging Face},
  url = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/obadakr/commonswire}
}
```

The code and the source registry (no article text) are archived on Zenodo:
<https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.24231835> (all versions).

Version 0.2.1, collected up to 2026-11-15. Code: https://github.com/obadaKraishan/commonswire (Apache-2.0).