1/ I'm doing what I can to track the actions and positions of the new #Trump admin on open and uncensored research. But it's far more than a one-person job. This is a post on what I'm doing โ building up to a call to help find ways to #crowdsource the work.
#Censorship #DefendResearch #OAintheUSA, #OpenAccess #OpenScience #ScholComm #Takedowns #Universities
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2/ I'm doing this work on three platforms โ #Mastodon, the Open Access Tracking Project (#OATP, @oatp), and a wiki at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society (@bkc).
On Mastodon, I have two large and growing threads on these topics:
* One thread focuses on the actions of the Trump admin and pushback against them.
https://fediscience.org/@petersuber/113874200243958520
* The other thread focuses on outside efforts to capture and preserve government science data and web sites that the admin has taken down or might take down.
https://fediscience.org/@petersuber/113929148334504422
Although I have a @bsky.brid.gy bridge account to #Bluesky, I'm sorry to say that it only forwards new Masto posts, not the replies that make up a thread. So even with the bridge, Bluesky users can't easily follow these threads.
I'm starting a #Mastodon thread on the new #Trump administration's actions and positions on #OpenAccess to research. I posted frequently about the actions of his first administration. But I did it on #Twitter / #X, which I no longer use. Also see my separate Mastodon thread on outside efforts to capture and preserve research and data that the admin has taken down or might take down. https://fediscience.org/@petersuber/114359552828366397 Also see this wiki page where I'm collecting my old Twitter posts on his first term and my new Mastodon posts on his second term. https://cyber.harvard.edu/hoap/The_Trump_administrations_on_open_access_to_research For updates, watch this space. #OpenWashing #OSTP #ScholComm #Takedowns #USPol #USPolitics
3/ The Mastodon work is essentially solo. There are no "guest posts" on Mastodon accounts, tho I do boost the posts of others.
By contrast, the OATP work is collaborative and #crowdsourced. Most of the items that we capture on these topics we tag with "oa.trump47". Here's what we've tagged so far:
http://tagteam.harvard.edu/hubs/oatp/tag/oa.trump47
If you want to tag for OATP and help this cause, here's how to get started or see what's involved.
https://bit.ly/oatp-start-tagging
4/ But #OATP can't be the only #crowdsourced component of this project.
First, many people who'd like to contribute would rather post to #SocialMedia or contribute to #Wikipedia than tag for a tagging project.
Second, the scope of OATP has is narrower than many contributors would like.
Third, OATP itself has an uncertain future.
https://bit.ly/TransferOATP
Peter Suber Taking over the Open Access Tracking Project and TagTeam What Iโd like Background What would this entail? If you take over OATP... If you take over TT... If you take over either project or both... How much time would this take? How much would this cost? My role What ...
5/ I collect and reformat many of my project-related Mastodon posts on a #wiki page, for those who don't want to visit Mastodon. (The same wiki page collects my Twitter posts on the first Trump admin.)
https://bit.ly/TrumpOA
But this isn't crowdsourced either. Unlike most other wikis, this one isn't open for public edits and can't be. I launched it at the @bkc it to hold the deliverables for some of my grant-funded #OpenAccess projects.
7/ For example, I see many #SocialMedia posts on these topics but not much convergence in the #hashtags they use. #Trump, #USPol, and #USPolitics are common but they're not specific to these topics. We need to supplement them with tags that are more specific.
#DefendResearch is new with the Feb 13 Declaration to Defend Research. (Disclosure: I'm a co-author.)
https://www.defendresearch.org/
The tag is catching on but not yet widespread. Can we help it spread?
8/ Are there other tags we should foster for this purpose? Ideally they should be specific to these topics, short, and self-explanatory.
To help people monitor what's happening, we should try to get reasonably wide agreement on the best tags to use.
9/ I love #Wikipedia as a reader and served on the @wikimediafoundation Advisory Board for a few years. But my experience as a contributor has been largely negative.
Could we do this monitoring job on Wikipedia without inviting editors to take it down for violating the neutral point of view (#NPOV)?
We should be able to. The actions of the Trump admin, and the actions of those pushing back, are public and could be logged neutrally. But I'm not optimistic that such a list would survive for long. Could any #Wikipedians advise or help with that?
10/ #Trump is doing damage on many fronts, not just the front of open and uncensored research. Are there projects to #crowdsource info on all of that damage? If so, the project on damage to research could be part of that larger project.
I welcome your thoughts.
11/ A recently added piece of my tracking project is this Google doc of public statements supporting research and higher education against threats from the Trump administration.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Y5_fjGPNh4_1Hgc0Q68Hr2vJhVIOK1Qc-KynfIG6fZI/edit?tab=t.0
It includes a list of other projects tracking Trump admin actions the same topics.
Please suggest any statements or projects that belong in the doc.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeYUnm41fWHH75OQKbvDf7OA-fK3tgZr5h5tnuBKTPZ-CUEWw/viewform
#Academia #Censorship #DefendResearch #Takedowns #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics
@academicchatter
This is a list of public statements supporting research and higher education against threats from the Trump administration. It includes a list of projects that track or monitor Trump administration actions on the same topics. The list is maintained by the people behind the Declaration to #Def...
12/ I'm still tracking news on #Trump admin actions that affect #research, #universities, and #OpenAccess. But on May 7, 2025, I stopped tracking this news in long Mastodon threads and switched to tags instead.
https://fediscience.org/@petersuber/114466875825998888
To follow this news on Mastodon, please follow one or both of these tags: #DefendResearch and #TrumpVResearch.
If you post on these topics yourself, please consider using the same tags, to help crowdsource this project.
#Academia #Censorship #Funding #Takedowns #USPol #USPolitics
@academicchatter
๐จ๐ฝ๐ฑ๐ฎ๐๐ฒ ๐ฎ๐ฏ๐ผ๐๐ ๐๐ต๐ถ๐ ๐๐ต๐ฟ๐ฒ๐ฎ๐ฑ. I've been tracking the impact of #Trump actions on US research, primarily in this Mastodon thread. But the thread is becoming long and unwieldy, and this problem will only get worse. I'll continue to track this news but I want to stop doing it primarily in threads. Once I depend less on threads, I'll depend more on #tags to help readers find the posts in this collection. I already use #DefendResearch and will to continue to do so. It comes from the Declaration To Defend Research Against US Government Censorship. https://www.defendresearch.org/ But I want to supplement it with a more Trump-specific tag. After mulling over a few possibilities โ like TrumpAdminOnResearch and ResearchUnderTrump โ I've decided to go with #TrumpVResearch. Thanks to Alice Meadows and Suze Kundu for the suggestion. https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2025/04/30/trump-v-research-how-we-could-turn-the-threats-into-opportunities/ I won't add this tag retroactively to (many) past posts. But going forward I'll use both #DefendResearch and #TrumpVResearch for posts in this collection. To follow these topics, consider following these tags. I encourage others to use these tags too, in posts on the same topics. It's one way to #crowdsource this tracking project. Here's more on this tracking project and the need to crowdsource it. https://fediscience.org/@petersuber/114031943643988590 #USPol #USPolitics
@petersuber I've had a similar impulse today though for German readership. For English, there seem to be quite a few resources, like Keep Track and others in the replies to my post: https://ohai.social/@sonjdol/114029432393755188
As for hashtags, I use Trump, Uspol, and Musk, sometimes democracy, but these could be more specific.
@[email protected] @[email protected] Ja, genau, es gibt mehrere Tracker, die als Quellen dienen kรถnnen. Das hier ist auch sehr gut: https://www.reddit.com/r/Keep_Track/s/wzp4qdXg10 bzw. hier: https://keeptrack.substack.com/p/project-2025-tracker-is-now-live Wobei: Ich รผberlege gerade, ob man mit "Keep Track" zusammenarbeiten kรถnnte und das einfach ins Deutsche รผbersetzt. Hm..... oder?
@sonjdol
Thx. These are good and I didn't know about them. I just joined the r/Keep_Track subreddit.
I also used @birb to create an RSS feed of the Keep Track Substack account that users can follow it on #Mastodon.
@keeptrack.substack.com.p.project-2025-tracker-is-now-live
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