TagTeam FAQ

Harvard Open Access Project (HOAP) » TagTeam (TT) » FAQ

How do I get started as an OATP reader?

• To get started as a reader, just start reading the primary project feed.

• You can subscribe to the primary feed in many different formats, including RSS, Atom, JSONP, Email, Twitter, Google+, and Pushbullet. If you don't want to subscribe to anything, then just bookmark the HTML edition, which is organized like a blog (most recent items at the top), and visit periodically to catch up.

How do I get started as an OATP tagger?

• See our page on getting started as an OATP tagger. Help build the feeds for readers.

What's in the primary project feed?

• The primary project feed aims to include all new OA developments in all fields and regions. In practice, it includes the new OA developments noticed and tagged by participating taggers.

• We do a pretty good job in meeting our goal. But we could do better if we had more taggers, especially in countries, languages, fields, and niches not already well-covered. If you want to help out, consider becoming a tagger.

What's in the secondary project feeds?

• The secondary feeds include OA developments in certain fields, in certain countries, or on certain subtopics. For example, you can subscribe to a feed of items tagged with oa.biology or oa.brazil or oa.business_models or any other project tag. You can even create a remix feed consisting of any boolean combination of project tags.

The feeds are missing things. How can we make them more comprehensive?

• Become a tagger and tag items yourself. Recruit other taggers.

The feeds are too voluminous. How can we make them less comprehensive?

• Instead of subscribing to the primary feed of all new OA developments, on all OA subtopics, subscribe to just the secondary feeds on the subtopics you care about. You can subscribe to separate secondary feeds separately or braid them together into a single "remix" feed.

How do I search the tagged items?

• Use the TagTeam search engine for the OATP hub (at the bottom of the left sidebar). You needn't have a TagTeam account to do so. The search engine covers all OATP tag records back to the launch of the project in 2009.

• For details on the search features and syntax, see the section of the TagTeam manual on searching. Preview: You can search tags, keywords, or both. You can run phrase searches, wildcard searches, or boolean searches. You can bookmark any search, create a new feed from the results of any search, or add the results of any search to a remix feed combining many different OATP feeds.

• If you use Chrome, you can search OATP directly from the omnibox (the search and URL bar). Go to Chrome Settings, then to Manage search engines. Scroll to the bottom of the page. In the Add a new search engine text field, enter something like "OATP" or "Open Access Tracking Project". In the keyword field, enter "oatp". In the URL field, enter http://tagteam.harvard.edu/hubs/oatp/item_search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=%s&commit=Go. Then click Done. (If this technique is new to you, you'll be happy to know that Chrome can do the same thing with any other site-specific search engines, such as those at Amazon, Netflix, Twitter, and so on.) Once you've set this up and want to search OATP from Chrome, just enter "oatp [search string]" in the omnibox and Chrome will run the OATP search for you. This is fast and elegant. Because Chrome is harnessing the OATP internal search engine, your search string should use the same syntax you'd use with the OATP internal search engine. For example, to search for a tag like oa.policies, search for #oa.policies. You can also use quoted phrases, boolean operators, and so on.

How can I use OATP for research on OA itself?

• See our page on using OATP for research on OA.

Does OATP support user-defined tags?

• Yes. See the OATP tag syntax for details on creating new project tags.

• When OATP launched in 2009, it had only one official tag, oa.new. All the rest were user-defined. Now it has a longer list of official tags, in effect codifying the usage of its users into a standard vocabulary. But it continues to support user-defined tags and always will.

• We developed TagTeam to support a vision of "folksonomy in, ontology out" and get the best of both worlds. As users introduce useful new tags, we can approve and recommend them, and add them to OATP's standard vocabulary. In addition, TagTeam lets us convert deprecated tags to approved tags, automatically, and OATP takes advantage of that power. For more detail on how TagTeam supports the automatic conversion of certain tags to other tags, see the section of the TagTeam manual on tag filters.

How can I tell whether a certain item has already been tagged?

• First, you can search for it in OATP (see the earlier question on search). Second, if you're authorized to tag for OATP, then try to tag the item you're wondering about. If the tag form pops up blank, the item has not yet been tagged. If it pops up pre-populated with tags, then it has already been tagged. In the second case, you could withdraw, knowing that the item has already been tagged, or you could review the tags and add any new ones you think should be added.

How can I tell whether a certain tag is already in use?

• To see whether a given tag is an approved or official project tag, look at the OATP list of approved tags.

• To see whether it's ever been used at all, click on the Tags tab, sort the tags alphabetically, and look for the one you have in mind.

• You could also append the tag to this root URL, http://tagteam.harvard.edu/hubs/oatp/tag/, and look at the results. For example, to see whether oa.policies has ever been used, put this URL in your browser, http://tagteam.harvard.edu/hubs/oatp/tag/oa.policies.

How can I deep-link to the OATP library of all items with a given tag?

• The previous answer showed the way. To link to a given tag library (collection of all the items tagged with a given tag), just append the tag to this root URL, http://tagteam.harvard.edu/hubs/oatp/tag/. For example, to link to the tag library for oa.policies, link to this URL http://tagteam.harvard.edu/hubs/oatp/tag/oa.policies.

How can I deep-link to the OATP library of all items tagged on a given date?

• Just append the date in YYYY/MM/DD format to this root URL, http://tagteam.harvard.edu/hubs/oatp/by_date/. For example, to link to the tag library for December 1, 2016, link to this URL, http://tagteam.harvard.edu/hubs/oatp/by_date/2016/12/01.

What's the difference between OATP and TagTeam?

• OATP is a social-tagging project. Participants use tags for sharing new developments about OA, and organizing knowledge of the field.

• TagTeam is software to support social-tagging projects, and calls these projects hubs. OATP is one hub within TagTeam.

• OATP could run on almost any tagging platform, and when it launched in 2009 it ran on Connotea. However, existing tagging platforms did not have all the features we wanted and we developed our own, TagTeam. For more background on TagTeam itself, and the features we wanted that didn't exist in other tagging platforms, see our Introduction to TagTeam. For more details on these and other features, also see the TagTeam user manual.

Who's behind OATP?

Peter Suber launched OATP in April 2009. Until mid-2011, it was an overload project, like a blog. In mid-2011, it became one of the initiatives overseen by the grant-funded Harvard Open Access Project (HOAP), directed by Suber. Also see the HOAP front page for the HOAP funders, project principals, project coordinators, research assistants, and software developers.