Re-SearchTerms compares definitions of terms related to research and open scholarship across the FORRT Glossary, Wiktionary, and academic publications — in English, German, and Chinese. Contribute definitions, annotate existing ones, and help build a living multilingual dataset.
✦ Join as a contributor — submit source-based definitions in English, German, or Chinese; translate definitions from existing sources; or annotate and verify existing entries. All contributors are publicly recognised.
Explore word-frequency and word co-occurrence patterns across definitions of a selected term. This static version uses precomputed cleaned tokens from the original Shiny dataset and renders everything directly in the browser.
Explore relationships between definitions of the same term. Definitions are connected by precomputed SBERT sentence-embedding cosine similarity edges. Live multilingual definitions are also connected using SBERT cosine similarity in real time. Node border colour reflects the term-level cluster the term belongs to, consistent with the Word-Level and Term-Level views.
Explore relationships between terms using three static browser-based modes converted from the Shiny app: word co-occurrence, clustering, and types–tokens–TTR.
A live overview of contributor activity, submitted definitions, annotations, multilingual coverage, and public contributor profiles.
How to use: Search or filter terms using the controls below. Click any term card to open a panel showing all available definitions across sources — including FORRT, Wiktionary, and community contributions. Use + Contribute to submit a new definition for that term.
Learn how to explore the Re-SearchTerms database, compare definitions, contribute new definitions, annotate existing entries, and participate in the community project.
New to the project? Start with this introductory video before exploring the dataset and contributing definitions.
Re-SearchTerms is an interactive platform designed for exploring how research terms in open scholarship, metascience, and research practice are defined across different sources.
The platform enables you to compare definitions, examine relationships between terms and definitions, and analyse patterns in the language used to describe core concepts in research.
Re-SearchTerms was originally developed as part of the doctoral dissertation of Anna Yi Leung, which examined conceptual variability and terminological ambiguity in open scholarship and psychological science.
The current version represents an expanded and evolving platform that builds on this initial work. It integrates a set of larger, more diverse, and multilingual definitions. It also introduces new analytical features (e.g., word-level, definition-level, and embedding-based analyses), and improves the interactivity and accessibility of the original application.
Rather than a static resource, Re-SearchTerms is being developed as a living and expanding terminology platform that encourages the community to contribute to data curation and feature design that benefits open education. The project goal is to support continuous reflection, discussion, and refinement of how key research concepts are defined and used across disciplines.
Re-SearchTerms is currently developed in collaboration with the Framework for Open and Reproducible Research Training (FORRT).
This app incorporates terminology curated by FORRT (the FORRT Glossary) alongside other sources (e.g., Wiktionary and academic publications), enabling users to explore how definitions vary across communities and contexts.
Ongoing development aims to further expand the dataset, introduce new features, and support community contributions, making the platform a shared resource for researchers, educators, and practitioners. We are currently recruiting community contributors to submit new definitions to expand our dataset, as well as to annotate existing definitions to provide further contextual information for research, teaching, and learning. We are also recruiting pedagogical evaluators to provide feedback on the platform's features for facilitating its pedagogical utility. We welcome researchers and students of all levels across the globe to join our Slack channel on FORRT (#re-searchterms) to get our project's latest news, and sign up as a contributor!
The conceptualisation and development of the initial form of Re-SearchTerms has been reported and published in Meta-Psychology If you use Re-SearchTerms in any form, please cite our paper:
Our project is open to collaboration, and additional contributors may be acknowledged as the platform evolves. If you have any project ideas, or if we could support your current projects in any way, please feel free to reach out to us.
The initial development of Re-SearchTerms was supported by the META-REP Priority Programme and the German Research Foundation (DFG). We thank Dr. Xenia Schmalz for her contributions to the initial version of the app. The current version represents an independent, expanded development. We thank Dr. Flavio Azevedo (Director of FORRT) and Dr. Lukas Wallrich (Co-Chair of FORRT) for their technical feedback and for supporting the integration of the project within FORRT.
Log in to contribute definitions and annotate terms.
Submit a definition from a verifiable source. Please preserve the source wording and include citations that appear inside the definition.
Use this to capture jingle-jangle cases: the source may define the same or a closely related concept using a different label.
Please DO NOT provide a self-synthesised or paraphrased definition. If you translate it yourself, please also provide the original source wording below.
This is not the source type. It tells validators where inside the source the definition appears.
Journal articles usually have a DOI. Books usually have an ISBN. Slides may only have presenter, institution, year, and slide number.
Preferred format: Surname, Initials.; separate multiple authors with semicolons. If unsure, paste the author list as shown by the source.
Please refer to our contributor handbook for explanations for these categories.
Accepted formats: JPG, PNG, GIF, WebP, PDF. Max 5 MB. The screenshot will be stored securely and only visible to project reviewers.
Welcome to Re-SearchTerms! Please set a password to activate your account.