OATP tags by field

Harvard Open Access Project (HOAP) » Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » OATP tags » tags by field

• This page is temporarily closed to public edits while the project (1) works out methods for communal governance and (2) builds software to deal with approved and deprecated tags. To suggest edits to this page, contact Peter Suber.

• Also see our pages on OATP tags and OATP tagging conventions.

General tips on using field tags

• In the war between lumpers and splitters, OATP is on the lumper side. The official or project-approved tags for academic fields tend to be few in number and broad in scope.
  • For example, we have oa.mathematics but we don't have official tags for all the different branches of mathematics. We have oa.medicine but not official tags for all the different branches of medicine.
  • But OATP supports splitters by supporting user-defined tags. If you want to use a tag for a sub-field of medicine, such as oa.dermatology, oa.obstetrics, or oa.surgery, please do. But when you do, please also use oa.medicine. That will help people searching for all OA developments in the field of medicine.

• Don't hesitate to use more than one field tag per item. This is especially useful for interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary work.
  • If you use an interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary tag like oa.biochemistry, it's a good idea to use oa.biology and oa.chemistry as well. That will help people searching for all OA developments in the field or biology or chemistry.

• If you're unsure what tag to use for a certain field, then feel free to invent a tag with the name you use for that field, oa.FIELDNAME.
  • If you want, you could check to see whether or how often the tag you have in mind has already been used by OATP taggers. Just go to this URL http://tagteam.harvard.edu/hubs/oatp/tag/oa.FIELDNAME in your browser.

• If you tag an item with a field tag from the social sciences (such as oa.anthropology), then you should also tag the same item with oa.ssh (our tag for "social sciences and humanities"). Likewise, if you tag an item with a field tag from the humanities (such as oa.philosophy), then you should also tag the same item with oa.humanities and oa.ssh. That will help people searching for all OA developments in the social sciences and humanities.
• Originally we used oa.stem for the STEM fields, just as we use oa.ssh for the social sciences and humanities. But while oa.stem is not officially deprecated, few taggers still use it, since it would apply to the majority of OATP items. When items in the STEM fields are not tagged with oa.stem, you can usually find them by running a search for a given STEM field (such as oa.physics or oa.medicine). You can also run boolean search for items without the oa.ssh tag, that is, a search for NOT #oa.ssh.

Obvious field tags

• We don't maintain a complete list of the tags for fields or disciplines. The main reason is that so many are obvious, like oa.anthropology, oa.biology, and oa.chemistry.

Non-obvious field tags

Here are the field tags that may not be obvious, that use abbreviations, that need annotation, or that OATP has approved in lieu of related, deprecated tags.

• oa.biomedicine = for biomedicine
  • The project also uses oa.biology and oa.medicine. Hence it can be difficult to decide when to use both these broader tags, without oa.biomedicine or when to use all three. To help those who may search on any one of these tags, it's safest to use all three. But one day we may deprecate oa.biomedicine in favor of one or both of the broader tags. This is what we've done with oa.biochemistry.

• oa.business = for business
  • We don't use oa.administration or oa.management for this field.
  • For items about OA research used or performed by businesses, we use oa.industry.

• oa.climate for climate research

• oa.cs = for computer science
  • For "citizen science" we use oa.citizen_science.

• oa.communication = for communication
  • Deprecated: oa.communications
  • Note: oa.communication is not for items about OA-related communication (which would apply to nearly every item about OA). It's only for items about OA research in the academic field of communication.

• oa.environment = for all fields related to the environment, such as ecology, environmental chemistry, environmental engineering, environmental science, and so on.
  • Related: oa.geo
  • Note that we also use oa.climate even if most people would think it already covered by oa.environment.

• oa.geo = for all the "geo" fields, such as geoarchaeology, geochemistry, geochronology, geodetics, geography, geology, geophysics, and so on, including those that don't use the "geo" root, such as Earth science, meteorology, mineralogy, plate tectonics, sedimentology, seismology, and so on.
  • Related: oa.environment

• oa.lis = for library and information science

• oa.literature = for literary studies in any language, including comparative literature
  • Deprecated for this purpose: oa.english and similar tags for literary studies in specific single languages. The project needs these tags for OA-related works in those languages.

• oa.neuro = for all the "neuro" fields, such as neuro-kinetics, neuro-oncology, neuro-ophthalmology, neuro-psychopharmacology, neurophysiology, neuroscience, and neuro-semantics, and so on.

• oa.political_science = for political science
  • Deprecated: oa.polisci, oa.poli_sci

• oa.religion = for the field of religion or religious studies
  • Deprecated: oa.theology