Why tag for OATP: Difference between revisions

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== Persuaded? ==
== Persuaded? ==


We hope you'll [[Get started as a tagger|give it a try]].
We hope you'll give it a try. See our page on [[Get started as a tagger|getting started as a tagger]].
 
== Background ==
 
* Peter Suber launched OATP in 2009, and initially did most the tagging himself, and then with a small number of volunteers. He received grants in 2011 and 2015 to pay some assistants to join the tagging cadre. But the grants didn't go very far and they didn't last forever.
 
* Starting in 2011 or so, OATP could have been more systematic in recruiting taggers. But the underlying software (first Connotea, then [[TagTeam]]) wasn't ready for that. However, TagTeam is much more mature now than it was in the early days.
 
Today the software is ready to scale up, and the end of the grant-funded era of OATP is coming to an end. The time has come to recruit the crowd to support this crowd-sourced project. Today OATP is the most comprehensive source of OA news anywhere. If it will continue to play that role, and to support research into OA, it will because OA activists have volunteered to tag new developments.

Revision as of 15:00, 14 March 2018

Harvard Open Access Project (HOAP) » Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » Why tag for OATP

Your tagging would help the OA community.

  • 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.
    • As you can see from this list, no small group can do all of this on its own. That's why we need your help.

We welcome taggers of all kinds.

Generalists and specialists

  • Some taggers are wide ranging and don't limit themselves to certain niches or subtopics. They tag anything about OA, or anything they encounter.
  • Some 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.

Gatherers and searchers

  • 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.

News hounds and historians

  • Some focus on new developments, because they're trying to keep up. They use OATP to share what they discover.
  • Some focus on older developments, because they're researching past work on some aspect of OA.
  • We want to cover new developments in order to keep our feed subscribers up to date on new developments. Ideally we like to tag new developments within 12 or 24 developments of their appearance online.

Regulars and irregulars

  • Some help by tagging every day or several days a week.
  • Some tag sporadically. But every little bit helps.

Crowd-sourced projects need all kinds of help.

  • 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.

Persuaded?

We hope you'll give it a try. See our page on getting started as a tagger.

Background

  • Peter Suber launched OATP in 2009, and initially did most the tagging himself, and then with a small number of volunteers. He received grants in 2011 and 2015 to pay some assistants to join the tagging cadre. But the grants didn't go very far and they didn't last forever.
  • Starting in 2011 or so, OATP could have been more systematic in recruiting taggers. But the underlying software (first Connotea, then TagTeam) wasn't ready for that. However, TagTeam is much more mature now than it was in the early days.

Today the software is ready to scale up, and the end of the grant-funded era of OATP is coming to an end. The time has come to recruit the crowd to support this crowd-sourced project. Today OATP is the most comprehensive source of OA news anywhere. If it will continue to play that role, and to support research into OA, it will because OA activists have volunteered to tag new developments.