OATP FAQ

This list is part of the Open Access Directory.

• This is a section within the larger OA tracking project (OATP).

• This FAQ has been rewritten to reflect the transition of OATP from its old platform, Connotea, to its new platform, TagTeam. But so far it only covers the basics. Bear with us while we enlarge it in the coming weeks and months.

How do I get started?

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

• You can subscribe to the feed in many different formats, including RSS, Atom, JSONP, Twitter, and Email. If you don't want to subscribe to anything, then just bookmark the HTML edition, which is organized like a blog page, and visit periodically to catch up.

To get started as a tagger (someone who helps build the feeds for readers), just start tagging OA-related news and comment.

• If you already tag web pages from a platform such as CiteULike or Delicious, then you may continue to use that platform. Otherwise, you should sign up with one of those platforms, or with our own platform, TagTeam. Although OATP runs on TagTeam, you needn't use TagTeam as your tagging platform. You may use any tagging platform that creates RSS feeds from each tag.
• Once you decide which tagging platform to use, here are instructions for the next steps.
• Familiarize yourself with the most common project tags, as well as the tips and conventions for using these tags.

What's in the primary project feed?

The primary project feed includes all the items tagged with oa.new by participating taggers. It doesn't include all new OA developments, although that's the goal. It only includes those new developments noticed and tagged by project participants.

What's in the secondary project feeds?

The primary feed is for new developments about OA, regardless of their subtopic. The secondary feeds are for OA 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 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.

How do I search the project feeds?

Use the TagTeam search engine for the OATP hub (at the bottom of the left sidebar). You needn't be a registered TagTeam user to do so. The search engine covers all the OATP tag records back to the launch of the project in 2009. For more details, see the section of the TagTeam manual on searching.

Does OATP support user-defined tags?

Yes. See the conventions for 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.

One reason we developed TagTeam was to support a vision of "folksonomy in / ontology out" and get the best of both worlds. TagTeam allows us to convert deprecated tags to approved tags, manually or automatically, and we take advantage of that power. Note that these changes only affect TagTeam's copies of the tag records. Tags made for the OATP hub from another platform, such as CiteULike or Delicious, remain unchanged.

What's the difference between OATP and TagTeam?

OATP is a social-tagging project to create real-time alerts to new OA-related developments and to organize knowledge of the field. TagTeam is the software on which OATP runs.

OATP could be 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 eventually 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.

TagTeam is a general-purpose tool, and not limited to one project (like OATP) or one topic (like open access). It supports social-tagging projects on any topic, and calls them "hubs". OATP is one hub within TagTeam.