Open Context features an innovative folksonomy system that will encourage individual users to add value to the information in Open Context. This powerful social software allows users to add meaningful tags (keywords) to data they discover in their searches.

• Tagging helps guide users to discover interesting facts, images, maps, and other types of content that other users have tagged.
• Tagging also acts as a simple, yet powerful, way to make meaningful links and comparisons of research data compiled from different sources.
• Tagging helps to integrate Open Context’s pooled body of diverse datasets without forcing overly rigid, difficult to apply, predetermined standards on contributors .
• Tag sets can be saved by users to be searched and cited by others and used in future studies or publications.
• Tags can help manage the complexity of querying multiple datasets-- users can build complex searches in a series of simple stages or increments.

 

How to Tag

We are working on ways to make tagging a form of scholarship. Thus, Open Context does not permit anonymous tagging. You must be a registered user in order to tag items in Open Context. Since users may disagree with the tags assigned by others, users have the option to ignore tags assigned by certain authors in searches and queries. However, we recognize that tagging is new to the research community, and we expect the Open Context tagging system to evolve. Please contact us with suggestions on how to better recognize scholarly reputation and best harness the power of tagging for research application!

Tagging Individual Items: To tag an individual item, press the "Tag Item" button, which is found in the item's Detail view. Then, simply type in a tag (a word or short phrase) and add an optional comment. When you're done, press the "Submit" button and the tagging will be privately viewable to yourself.

Tagging Search Selections: Open Context lets you tag many items at once. Once you have used the search tools to select a set of items, you can tag the entire set by pressing the "Tag results" button on the "Selections" tab. Simply type in a tag (a word or short phrase) and add an optional comment in the appropriate text fields. After pressing the submit button, the entire search selection will be given your tag, and this tagging will be only viewable to yourself. Your search history is automatically saved as when your tagging is assigned. This lets you keep track of searches and share your searches with colleagues if you choose to make your tagging public.

 

Managing Tags

You can manage your personal tagging with tools found at the "My Tags" tab. These tools let you edit, delete and modify tagging selections. You can also add additional comments to your tagging selections and make the results of your tagging public.