Work with OHTL

Call for collaborators

Help shape an open, shared way of describing and connecting taxonomies of online harm.

OHTL is moving from exploring sources to designing its schema (see the Roadmap). The decisions made now will shape how taxonomies of online harm can be linked, compared and reused for years. We want the people who will use the Library, and the people who know the domain best, to help make them.

Who we are looking for

  • Domain expertsPeople working in trust and safety, content moderation, child protection, online safety regulation and law, and victim support, who know how harm categories are used in practice.
  • ResearchersAcademics and independent researchers in online harms, platform governance, information science and knowledge organisation, and the evaluation of safety classifiers.
  • Knowledge graph specialistsPeople with experience of knowledge graphs, SKOS, OWL, SHACL, vocabulary design and reuse, and publishing linked open data.
  • Tool buildersDevelopers building compliance tools, safety products and AI assistants, who can tell us what they need from the data.
  • OrganisationsRegulators, platforms, safety technology vendors, civil society groups, helplines, standards bodies and research institutions that publish, use or need to map between taxonomies of online harm.

Ways to take part

  • Help design the schema Join the schema working group as it forms in phase 2. Review proposals, bring use cases and help decide how the schema models categories, definitions, examples and legal references.
  • Test the drafts Try the draft schema against your own taxonomy or policy categories, review our crosswalks between sources, and tell us what breaks.
  • Test AI answers Help test whether grounding AI tools in OHTL data makes their answers to real compliance questions more accurate and easier to check.
  • Tell us about sources Point us to taxonomies, typologies and classification systems we have missed, and to new editions of ones we already have.
  • Shape governance Help write the principles and procedures for how schema decisions are made, and how OHTL stays open, balanced and accountable as it grows. See Governance.
  • Join the project As the work grows we will need editors, reviewers and maintainers. If you would like a regular role, tell us what you could bring.
  • Partner as an organisation Share your taxonomy or internal categories, pilot a crosswalk, contribute staff time, or host a workshop or review session.

What you can expect

We work in the open. Proposals, decisions and the reasons for them will be recorded publicly, and contributors will be credited for their work.

Taking part does not mean endorsing any taxonomy in the Library, and OHTL does not endorse any contributor's products or positions.

We will ask participants, especially organisations, to declare relevant interests, so that decisions about the schema stay balanced and trusted.

Get in touch

Email contact@ohtl.org with a line about who you are, what interests you and any relevant experience or use case. Using one of these subject lines helps us route your message: