After receiving input from journalists and making some technical adjustments, the Public Journalism Club is set to launch the Open Source Platform (OSP) officially. At osp.am, investigative journalists, fact-checkers, and data journalists can quickly access information from Armenian open sources.

Access to essential Armenian open sources is provided by this platform, which is critical for the creation of accurate and high-quality media content.

Alexander Martirosyan, the program coordinator at the Public Journalism Club, stated that they conducted a needs assessment in the field of journalism before creating and launching the website. They consulted with both experienced fact-checking journalists and novice journalists to discuss the challenges they face in their daily work.

“Journalists often struggled to find factual information on various topics scattered across different platforms. We solved this issue by creating a single platform that brings together all the sources,” says Alexander.

Ani Grigoryan, the editor of CivilNet’s fact-checking section #CivilNetCheck, discussed the problems and difficulties in the field during the expert discussions in the initial stage of the initiative. Ani is happy with the final result and believes the platform will play an essential role in developing factual journalism.

“In many cases, journalists have difficulties finding a reliable source to get or verify the information they need; this platform solves that problem. In addition, the search engines do not provide targeted results. However, this platform effectively solves this issue by offering targeted sources of information,” tells Ani.

The Public Journalism Club spent significant time bringing the project to life. PJC’s administrative assistant, Seda Arakelayan, explains that a search filter is available on OSP to facilitate journalists’ work. The site offers multiple ways of searching for necessary information, including keywords, spheres, categories, persons, and tags. Additionally, accessible guidelines for using the platform and databases have been compiled.

According to Seda, the comprehensive step-by-step guidelines have been specifically designed to assist journalists working with data to locate information on the website efficiently.

Having familiarized himself with the platform, Sevada Ghazaryan, a journalist on the fact-checking platform, is convinced it will be particularly beneficial for novice fact-checking journalists. It will significantly facilitate and coordinate their work.

“I found the platform to be highly useful. It includes all the sources I use and some more specific sector databases that I haven’t used yet. Before discovering the platform, I spent a long time searching for information and sometimes had to make phone calls. Now, the platform saves me time and provides me with the necessary information,” says Sevada.

In the educational section of OSP.am a highly informative video is featured that provides a detailed explanation of how to search for and find information.

The website also offers a “Share Your Database” feature for journalists to share their developed databases previously used in their work.

Marianna Danielyan