Why tag for OATP

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

When you tag for OATP, you contribute to the larger effort to keep people informed about OA and support research into OA. When you tag OA-related resources, you push information to thousands of OATP feed subscribers and store the records in the OATP database for deduping, export, preservation, updating, and search.

What sorts of things does OATP want to tag? Articles, preprints, studies, surveys, reports, announcements, books, dissertations, datasets, calls for papers, funding opportunities, job ads, events, organizations, projects, tools, services, blog posts, slide presentations, videos, podcasts. If it's about OA (and if it's online with a unique URL), then we want to tag it, new or old, in any language, from any country, on any aspect of OA.

No small group can do all of this on its own. That's why we need your help. We welcome taggers of all kinds.

• Some taggers are generalists, and tag anything about OA, or anything they encounter. Some are specialists, and focus on a given niche, even if they also tag outside that niche. For example, they may focus on OA in a given academic field, country, region, language, or subtopic.

• Some tag only what they happen to notice, making it small addition to their ordinary routine. Some search systematically for developments, at least in a given niche. For example, if you are committed to tagging all OA activity in a certain field or country, then you might start with a systematic search for past activity in that field or country. Or if you want to report the news on a certain OA subtopic, like ECR (early career researchers) or OER (open educational resources), then every day or two you might search systematically for recent news and comment on those topics. If you're doing a research project on a some aspect of OA, then you're already doing a systematic search for work already done on that topic, and only need to make sure it's all tagged for OATP.

• Some tag both new and old developments, and some emphasize one or the other. We like to tag new developments to keep our feed subscribers up to date on new developments. Ideally we like to tag them within 12 or 24 developments of their appearance online. We also like to tag older developments to make our tags retroactively comprehensive.

• Some tag regularly, some sporadically.

The more taggers we have, in more niches, the more comprehensively OATP will keep people informed and support research into OA. It doesn't matter what niches you occupy, what subtopics you care about, or how much time you have. You can still help others stay on top of OA news, comment, and history.

We hope you'll give it a try.