Announcing a new discussion group: OpenAlex Community

[Jason Portenoy]

Dear OpenAlex Community,

Announcing a new place to have community-wide discussions about anything of broad interest related to OpenAlex: The OpenAlex Community Group. Please go there now and join!

https://groups.google.com/g/openalex-community

The OpenAlex Users Group that you all know and love has been suffering from a split identity problem. It is the main channel for the OpenAlex team to send updates and announcements to you, our most active users. But it has also been used as a community discussion forum and a place where users submit questions. As this group has grown, we've had to moderate the posts coming in, so users wouldn't be overwhelmed and become fatigued with updates. This has led to confusion and maybe even some hurt feelings (we hope not! we ❤️ you!). 

We've decided to create the new OpenAlex Community Group to serve as the place for community discussion, reserving the OpenAlex User Group for more one-way communication from OpenAlex to you. We're excited to participate in these discussions! Please keep them polite, civil, and kind.

So, in summary:

• Do you have a question or discussion topic that is broadly relevant to the community? Go to https://groups.google.com/g/openalex-community, join, and start a new thread!
• Do you have a support question, or data curation or feature request, that would be best addressed by the OpenAlex team? Submit a support ticket at https://openalex.org/support, or come to one of our weekly virtual open houses!
• Do you want to make sure to get emails with announcements about updates, new features, metadata changes, etc.? Make sure you are subscribed to the OpenAlex User Group (https://groups.google.com/g/openalex-users)
• Are you still not sure where to go, after reading all of the above? See if you can find the right link in the OpenAlex Help Center. If not, submit a support ticket and we can try to help you out.

We are very grateful to our fantastic community, and we have high hopes for this new community discussion space!

Thank you,

OpenAlex Team