Get started as a tagger

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Harvard Open Access Project (HOAP) » Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » Get started as a tagger

  • This is how to get started as a tagger for the Open Access Tracking Project (OATP). If you want to start tagging for another TagTeam hub (project), the method is essentially the same; you'll just have to ask permission from a different hub owner (Step 2) and learn the tagging guidelines for that hub (Step 4).


Thanks for your willingness to help out. Quick summary:
  1. Get a TagTeam account.
  2. Get permission to tag for the OATP hub within TagTeam.
  3. Install the tagging bookmarklet on your browser.
  4. Learn the basics of OATP tagging.


Getting a TagTeam account

  1. Go to the Harvard instance of TagTeam.
  2. Click the "Sign in" link in the upper right corner.
  3. If you sign up using an email address with an *.edu domain, you'll be approved automatically. If you use an email address from a different domain, your request will be passed to a human for approval.
    • One rationale is to limit the load on the server. Another is that Harvard instance of TagTeam is limited to academic or research projects. If your request is bumped to a human, you may be asked to say something about the project you plan to launch.
    • Of course the TagTeam code is open and you're free to host an instance elsewhere.
    • We reserve the right to remove non-academic projects from the Harvard instance of TagTeam, even if created by users from *.edu domains. If we do that, we'll give you good time to export your data from this instance for import into another instance.
    • When you get this far, you'll have an account in TagTeam. That allows you create new hubs (projects), tag for those hubs, and authorize others to tag for them as well.
    • To tag for an existing hub, like OATP, you'll need the permission of the hub owner, which you can request through the "Contact" tab on that hub. (See next.)

Getting permission to tag for OATP

You may already have a kind of permission to tag for OATP, for example, because someone from OATP invited you to tag. But TagTeam has to know about this permission, and we can't tell TagTeam about it until you have a TagTeam account. That's why this step is necessary even when you've got "human-level" clearance to go.

  1. Log in to TagTeam, and go to the OATP hub.
  2. Click on the "Contact" tab in the left sidebar. Fill in the form, for example, by asking for permission to tag for OATP. Click "Submit".
  3. The OATP hub owner will receive the message and approve you when it arrives.
    • When you get this far, you'll be authorized to tag for OATP. The next few sections are about how to do that.

Adding and using the tagging bookmarklet

  1. Log in to TagTeam, and go to the OATP hub.
  2. Click on the "Bookmarks" tab in the left sidebar.
  3. Drag the "Add to TagTeam" link to your browser's bookmarks toolbar. (You'll only see this link if you're logged in and authorized to tag for OATP.)
  4. When you're viewing a page you want to tag, click on the bookmarklet and fill in the pop-up form.

Learning about OATP tags

Important
Recommended
Less important

Revising your work

After you've tagged an item for OATP, you may want to add new tags, or modify or remove existing tags. Here's how.

  1. Log in to TagTeam, and go to the OATP hub.
  2. Go to the tag record for the item you want to update.
    • For example, run a search or scroll through the list of items until you find the one you want to update. Then click on the link in the item's title. That takes you to the tag record for that item.
  3. Click on the Filters tab in the left sidebar.
  4. Chose one of the three options (add, remove, modify a tag), and fill in the form.
  5. Another way to add new tags (but not to remove or modify them) is to return to the original page on the web, and click on the bookmarklet. The tagging form will pop up prepopulated, and you can add new tags directly through the form.

Tips and suggestions

  • You might want to create a personal hub on TagTeam just to play with the software, or to track (academic or research) items unrelated to OA or OATP. If you do, then you'll have tagging permission in more than one hub — OATP plus your own hubs. When you tag a new item, the bookmarklet lets you choose which hub it will go to (in a pull-down menu in the upper left corner). The default is that the new item goes to the hub for which you most recently tagged.
  • If you click on the TagTeam bookmarklet, and the form pops up already filled in, that means that the page you're viewing has already been tagged for OATP. You could back out and move on, relieved that someone has saved you time. Or you could review the tags already applied to that page and apply some new ones omitted by the previous tagger(s).
  • Conversely, to see whether an item has already been tagged, just try to tag it. If the form pops up pre-populated, the answer is yes.
  • The OATP tagging guidelines and list of approved tags are both fairly long and might be intimidating. But don't be intimidated. There's a learning curve, but it's not that steep. Once you start tagging for OATP, we may send you feedback on your tagging.
  • If there's a subtopic on which you'd like to find and tag all new items, let Peter Suber know. OATP is trying to recruit taggers to take responsibility —alone or jointly— for certain OA subtopics, for example, items in a certain field, in a certain country, in a certain region, or in a certain language. This is optional, but keep the possibility in mind.
  • If you want, Peter Suber can send you some older items not previously tagged. Tagging them retroactively is useful to the project, but doesn't put them in the current feed received by subscribers. Hence, it makes a good "sandbox" for learning how to tag. Just drop Peter a line if you'd like to give this a try.
  • When you tag OA-related events, please also add them to the "Events" section of the Open Access Directory wiki. To prevent spam, OAD contributions are limited to registered users, but registration is free and easy.
  • Consider bookmarking Google Translate, if you haven't already. Even though all OATP entries are in English, OATP tries to tag new OA developments in all languages.
  • Consider subscribing to the OATP primary feed as a reader. This will show you what your tagging work (and that of your peers) looks like to our subscribers. Most users who subscribe to the OATP primary feed seem to prefer the email version, though the feed comes in many other formats. You might also want to subscribe to one or more secondary OATP feeds.
  • Please only tag items that are on-topic. This is true for all TagTeam hubs. If you tag too many items unrelated to the hub topic, the hub owner may rescind your permission to tag for the hub. TagTeam wants to help researchers who create hubs to publish carefully curated feeds relevant to their topics.
  • Note that when you tag for a TagTeam hub, the hub owner and designated other users may change your tags. This is a feature, not a bug. In fact, it's the one feature that most inspired the the creation of TagTeam, given that many platforms already existed to support basic tagging. This feature enables TagTeam projects to manage the evolution of a folksonomy to an ontology, or to convert uncoordinated user-defined tags to a standard vocabulary of project-approved tags.