The Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) is a nonprofit organization established by fans to serve the interests of fans by providing access to and preserving the history of fanworks and fan culture in its myriad forms.

Founded in 2007, we seek to give fans control and ownership of their own creations and a means to preserve the history of their fanworks and fandoms. You can learn more about the OTW on this website, particularly the pages listed on About the OTW.

The OTW was created in response to a variety of challenges that were occurring in fandom around 2007. You can read about the details on Our History.

In general, the OTW was created to work toward a future in which all fannish works are recognized as legal and transformative, and are accepted as legitimate creative works. We wanted to be proactive and innovative in protecting and defending fannish work from commercial exploitation and legal challenges. Our other main goal was to preserve our fannish economy, values, and way of life by protecting and nurturing our fellow fans, our work, our commentary, our history, and our identity while providing the broadest possible access to fannish activity for all fans.

Read more about our values and goals on What We Believe.

The OTW is an organization created by fans for fans. It’s run by a Board of Directors who are elected by OTW members. You can learn more about how Directors are selected under How are Board Directors chosen?

The experience of OTW volunteers varies by committee and role, which makes it hard to generalize. We recommend that you take a look at our Volunteering FAQ for answers to common questions and read submissions to our Five Things a Volunteer Said series to hear about volunteers’ experiences in their own words. To learn more about the different committees and the roles within those committees, check out the committee pages.

We appreciate your interest! There are many ways that you can support the OTW. If you have time and interest, we encourage you to consider volunteering! The OTW is volunteer-run and organized, and without our volunteers what we do would be impossible.

If you don’t have the ability to volunteer, we also appreciate donations of any value. The OTW is fully supported by donations. All our services are free and we do not have ads. This would not be possible without the support of donors worldwide.

If you’re interested in more information or other ways you can contribute to the OTW, check out How You Can Help.

The OTW Board of Directors, often called the OTW Board or simply Board, is the governing body which is responsible for leading the entire organization. Their role encompasses many tasks, including supporting and overseeing all committees, handling compliance, defining big-picture goals and ensuring that the entire OTW is working toward them, and approving major decisions and changes within the organization. Some specific decisions that they oversee include:

• Expense requests over US$5,000
• Establishing and dissolving committees, subcommittees, and workgroups
• Approval of new committee chairs and subcommittee leads
• Removal of Board Directors, committee chairs, and subcommittee leads, if necessary
• Changes to OTW policies, including the OTW Bylaws
• Formal statements on behalf of the OTW (including authorizing participation in amicus briefs or other governmental filings)

To learn more about the Board, check out their website page.

The OTW Board is made up of seven Board Directors. Usually, two or three Directors finish their terms each year, and the same number get elected. Terms last up to three years, although they may be shorter if someone decides to step down earlier and someone else is elected to serve the remainder of the retiring Director’s term. To learn more about how Board Directors are elected, refer to How are Board Directors chosen?

Within the Board, there are also Board Officers. These can be Directors with special responsibilities in addition to their regular Board duties or appointees of the Board who do not serve as Directors. Currently, the Board has four officer roles:

• Board President: Responsible for making sure the Board itself is functional, efficient, responsive, and making progress towards its own goals
• Board Vice President: Responsible for backing up the President
• Board Secretary: Responsible for scheduling Board meetings, keeping minutes up to date, and compiling and reporting all decisions made between meetings
• Board Treasurer: Responsible for managing the OTW’s finances and serving as a chair of the Finance committee. The Treasurer is appointed by the Board and is not a Director.

Board Directors are elected by OTW members during an annual election in August. Typically, two to three Directors are elected each year. Any OTW volunteer who meets the eligibility requirements, including the requirement to serve under their legal name, can nominate themselves as a candidate.

If you’re interested in voting in an OTW Board election, you need to donate USD$10 to the OTW before June 30 and select “Yes” in response to the question: “Do you want to be an OTW member?” to be eligible to vote in that year’s Board election. For more information about the election process, visit the elections website.

The average day of a Board Director varies depending on the projects the Board is working on and what’s coming up in the near future. If a Director is taking point on a project, they may be researching, talking with stakeholders, or soliciting input from OTW volunteers. If there’s a public Board meeting soon, Directors will be working on asking committees for updates to reply to questions from the public with, preparing reports on Board work to share with attendees, and more.

In contrast to things that change seasonally/depending on workload, there are also some tasks that are constant, such as voting on items sent to Board for approval or responding to emails from people with questions.

To learn more about what it’s like to be a Board member, check out this “Five Things” post from a Board Director: Five Things Anh Phạm Said.

Board meetings are public meetings of the OTW Board of Directors held approximately once every three months. They are intended as an opportunity for OTW members, volunteers, and others to learn more about the latest decisions of the Board, ask questions, and speak directly to the Board about the direction they wish the OTW to move in.

The normal agenda of a Board meeting is:

• The Board shares a list of all the decisions they’ve voted on since the last meeting.
• Then, the Board takes any votes they have scheduled for that meeting (this is uncommon outside of the first meeting following a Board election).
• Next, they provide updates on other topics they’ve scheduled for discussion, such as an update on the progress of a Board or OTW project.
• Finally, they open the floor for questions from the public.

On average, a typical Board meeting lasts about an hour. Further information about Board meeting structure and rules can be found in the Board Discord server itself.

Yes! Join the Board Discord server and complete the short onboarding process. The Discord is closed for discussion between meetings but if you need tech support, you are welcome to ask questions in the #help channel.

If you have any issues joining, please contact the Board Assistants Team who can assist you.

Subscribe to the Board public meetings calendar to receive notifications when the next meeting is scheduled. Board meetings are generally scheduled and announced approximately two weeks before the meeting date.

Board meetings are also announced on the Board Discord, in a news post, and on all social media sites where we actively post.

Minutes for Board meetings can be found on the Board meeting minutes page on the OTW website. They are normally published several weeks after the meeting and are announced in the OTW Newsletter after they are published.

If you have questions or would like to contact the Board at any time, please feel free to send them an email.

If there’s a Board meeting approaching soon, there will be an opportunity to submit questions a few days in advance asynchronously (via Google Form) or you can attend and ask your question live during the meeting. More information about both of these options can be found in the news post meeting announcements or on the Board Discord.

In a fiscal sense, no one. The OTW is a non-profit organization, so any revenue the organization takes in goes to support the work the organization does. The OTW is entirely run by volunteers and does not currently have any paid staff.

The OTW uses funds to purchase goods and services that cannot be provided by its volunteers, such as expenses related to operations and certain administrative costs. Operational expenses include goods and services needed for our projects to continue operating, for example, the purchase of software and server space to create and maintain AO3. Administrative expenses include a variety of items typical to a non-profit organization, such as insurance, payment processor fees, and tax preparation and auditing services.

For more specific information about how the OTW spends donations, check out our annual budget and budget update posts which cover each year’s financial transactions in more detail.

The Board of Directors is ultimately responsible for the decision of how the OTW spends its money as part of their fiduciary obligation to the organization. The Treasurer is responsible for creating and implementing a budget which outlines how the OTW plans to spend money in a given year. The Board then reviews and votes on approving the budget. For unplanned expenditures that weren’t part of the year’s budget, they are reviewed by the Finance committee and the Treasurer and if they are over a certain monetary threshold, they will be individually voted on by the Board.

The OTW is able to accept donations from all over the world via online donation or by mail. Refer to our donation form or our Donations and Membership FAQ for more information. If you have any questions about donating, contact the Development and Membership committee.

The OTW must collect certain information (such as name, address, etc.) from donors to comply with US financial regulations. Given the prevalence of fans using pseudonyms in their fannish life, this information will be held closely by the OTW and is only available to the OTW’s Treasurer and members of the Development and Membership committee. Completely anonymous donations can only be made in cash.

The OTW is a non-profit organization, subject to laws and regulations dictating its fiduciary responsibilities to conduct activities in a manner that upholds the public trust. The OTW is scrutinized not only by its members and fans outside the organization, but also by the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the State of Delaware, where we are incorporated.

There are a number of additional safeguards in place. Volunteers with financial oversight are required to agree to a Conflict of Interest policy outlining their responsibilities to the OTW’s finances. Misuse of OTW funds would violate this policy and be grounds for removal from the organization as well as potential criminal fraud charges and prosecution.

Distribution of the OTW’s funds follows accepted accounting principles with regard to oversight and authorization of expenditures. The OTW’s financial information is also audited by an independent third party Certified Public Accountant firm every fiscal year. Finally, the OTW is required to file Form 990 with the IRS each year to report the organization’s financial activities.

Annual audit reports and Form 990s are available publicly on the OTW website’s Reports & Governing Documents page.

To make a donation online, use our donation form. Use the donate button located below any thank-you gift to get started. If you’re in the US and would rather donate via check, money order, or cash, refer to How to Donate by Mail.

If you have any questions or issues completing your donation, please contact Development & Membership.

Yes! Our donation form accepts donations from a variety of currencies. When entering a donation amount, select where it says “USD” and choose from a dropdown of currency options.

Yes, in the United States. The OTW is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, and all donations made to us are tax-deductible. Our Employer Identification Number is 38-3765024; it will also be included in your donation receipt for your records.

Please note that if you are located outside the US, your contribution may or may not be tax-deductible. You should consult with a tax adviser and see whether a gift to a US 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization qualifies for a tax deduction under your local laws.

If you wish to become an OTW member, we must be able to link your donation to a specific individual for legal purposes to avoid one person giving multiple times and having the right to several votes. In addition, all donations made by credit card must have a billing address to be processed.

If you wish to donate without providing an address and you live in the United States, you can make a non-membership donation using cash or money order. Please refer to How to Donate by Mail for more information.

Being a member of the OTW means that you have the right to vote in our annual election to elect new members to the OTW Board of Directors. For more information about our elections process, refer to How are Board Directors chosen? and our elections website.

To become a member, you need to donate US$10 to the OTW before June 30 and select “Yes” in response to the question: “Do you want to be an OTW member?” This is a membership donation.

A non-membership donation, while greatly appreciated, does not make you an OTW member and confers no voting benefits. A donation of less than US$10 or one that does not select “Yes” to the question about members is a non-membership donation.

Like many nonprofits, the OTW uses a membership fee as a straightforward and easy-to-check requirement to ensure that each member is a single individual. Otherwise one person could create multiple membership accounts to have multiple votes in our elections.

These fees go to support the OTW—to pay the operating costs for both the organization and all of our projects, so that we do not need to use advertising or charge fees to users. We intend to keep our minimum donation low to ensure that it is not a barrier to entry for anyone who cares about the organization, but we appreciate any members who give more if they can!

To ensure that all voting members of the OTW are in fact real individuals in order to hold fair elections, we do not allow gift memberships. You’re welcome to make donations in honor of others through our form, but these donations will not confer membership upon them.

No. OTW memberships and AO3 accounts are not linked in any way. To get an AO3 account, please join the invitation queue. Donations to the OTW help keep AO3 running, so we welcome your support, but we are committed to offering AO3 as a free service for everyone. There is no connection between individual donations and AO3 accounts.

If you have questions about AO3 invitations, please contact AO3 Support.

No, OTW memberships and AO3 accounts are not linked in any way. The OTW strongly supports the right of fans to separate fannish and non-fannish identities. We will never connect the two, and the databases that contain membership information and AO3 account information are entirely separate.

Our storage and usage of your data is governed by our Terms of Service.

Your membership lasts for one year from your most recent donation. If your donation is received by the “Record Date” for an election or vote, you’ll be eligible to vote in that election, and you’ll receive email notifications with more information about an election or vote when it occurs. The “Record Date” for an election or vote will be 30-60 days before an election ends, and the date(s) of any election period will be publicized at least 14 days before the Record Date.

If you’re not sure when you last donated, please contact Development & Membership.

No. Donations to the OTW cannot be earmarked for a single OTW project or expense. In donating to the OTW, you are donating to the entire organization including both project-specific expenses as well as expenses that are not project-specific and relate to the organization as a whole.

If they were made through Classy/GoFundMe Pro (which we’ve been using since 2023), you can create an account to check your donor portal. To create an account, select “Sign in” on the donation form; this may appear in the sidebar or at the bottom of the page.

To include donations made directly through PayPal, such as from recurring donations set up before 2023, please contact Development & Membership.

Thank-you gifts, also called donation gifts, are optional items that you may choose to receive if you donate over US$45. The list of gifts available changes regularly. Please visit our donation form to view the current selection. For other questions about thank-you gifts, please refer to the FAQ section on our donation page.

With the exception of donations made during our October and April donation drives, thank-you gifts are shipped in monthly batches. (Gifts from November donations are shipped in December, gifts from December donations are shipped in January, etc.) This means that if you donate on the first of the month, your gift will probably not be shipped for five or six weeks.

Depending on what gift you select and what region your gift is shipping to, you may or may not receive a shipping confirmation email.

If you are waiting for a donation gift, please also keep an eye on your email in case we need to reach out to you about your address. We will contact you from [email protected]. Due to a high volume of returns, we are manually double-checking all addresses going to certain regions.

Yes! When you set up your recurring donation you should have selected a thank-you gift that your recurring donation will be adding up to. Once you’ve “saved” enough to get your item, you will get an email from Development & Membership to confirm your shipping address. You must reply to this email. Once you respond to this email, your donation will be sent to you.

If you aren’t sure what gift you selected or want to change what gift you’re saving for, please contact Development & Membership.

When you donate using our donation form, you will have the option to select either “One-time” or “Recurring.” If you select recurring, you will be able to select both a donation frequency and an end date (optionally). By default, it will set up a monthly donation.

To cancel a recurring donation set up through GoFundMe Pro, you can log in to your GoFundMe Pro account. For recurring donations set up before 2023 or via PayPal, you can select your last contribution in PayPal and go to “Manage payments for …,” or go to the Payments tab on your PayPal Settings page. Recurring donations through PayPal cannot be edited. If you wish to change your recurring donation, you must first cancel it and then set up a new one. Setting up a new recurring donation will not affect any thank-you gifts you are saving for.

To change the credit card used in a donation, you will need to alter the PayPal transaction details. Please refer to PayPal help for more information about this, and contact PayPal support for assistance.

If you select “Dedicate my donation in honor or in memory of someone” and include an email in the “Recipient’s email” field, then the email you submit will be notified of your donation. You can also optionally include a message that you’d like to be sent along with the donation notification in the “Your Message to the Recipient” field.

Please contact Development & Membership if you have further questions.

All of the OTW’s volunteers work asynchronously online, so you don’t need to be in any particular location. As long as you have access to an internet connection, you’re in the right place (and you’ll get to work with people from all over the world).

Yes! We welcome volunteers from all backgrounds all around the world. We have many users, members, and volunteers whose first language is not English. Many of our committees and projects enjoy having volunteers who can speak more than one language.

English is the main language we use to communicate with each other in the organization, so you will need to be able to work in English, but it doesn’t have to be perfect! If you have questions about applying for an open role, let Volunteers & Recruiting know.

Yes, many OTW volunteers dedicate their time to more than one role. We do ask that you consider the time demands of the roles you’re interested in and how much time you have for the organization. It can be helpful when people volunteer for more than one role, but we also want to make sure our volunteers don’t burn out from too much responsibility. All our position descriptions give an estimated time requirement. Volunteers should also consider discussing taking on extra roles with their committee chair.

This depends on the type of role you’re interested in. Once you press submit, you should see information about what happens next. Then, you’ll receive an automated confirmation message.

Once recruitment ends, Volunteers & Recruiting will send everyone’s applications to the relevant chairs (committee leaders). Chairs will then interview prospective applicants, either over chat or in the form of additional questionnaires, to find volunteers for their current needs. We’ll let everyone know the results of their application as soon as we can.

We’d love to welcome all volunteers looking for new experiences, but some of our roles do need volunteers with certain skills and experience. Training beginners for a role may also depend on how many experienced volunteers can train them. The position’s description shows the experience and time requirements for the position.

Please continue to check the volunteer page for open roles that match your qualifications.

You can also help by adding information to Fanlore, the OTW’s fandom preservation wiki. (Get started at the New User Portal.) If you’d like to contribute to the AO3’s code, you can do this through our GitHub without formally volunteering. Please see this page for more details.

If you have questions about the requirements for a role, feel free to contact Volunteers & Recruiting.

We are currently only accepting applications for the listed roles. Part of our process is to only recruit for roles which are accepting new volunteers and are ready to train and bring them on board. However, we encourage you to keep your eye on the volunteer page and OTW News for the role you are interested in to be available.

You can also help by adding information to Fanlore, the OTW’s fandom preservation wiki. (Get started at the New User Portal.) If you’d like to contribute to the AO3’s code, you can do this through our GitHub without formally volunteering. Please see this page for more details.

If you have more specific questions about roles, you can contact Volunteers & Recruiting.

You are welcome to use whichever name you like when you volunteer, as long as it follows the OTW Name Policy. Some volunteers like to tie their work to their fandom identity and others prefer to use their legal name, especially if they plan to use their volunteer service on their resume or CV. (You don’t have to volunteer using your legal name for this purpose. Volunteers & Recruiting can confirm your work with your employers.) You are welcome to do either or to choose a completely new name to use.

If you become a Tag Wrangling volunteer but do not wish to link your wrangling with your existing account, your chairs can help you set up a separate account. Your existing account does not need to match your OTW name, but your OTW name may be linked with your AO3 name in the course of your wrangling work.

Please note: A limited number of roles do need you to use your legal name, as they involve work with outside organizations. This will always be in the position description or the application.

It is also a legal requirement for the Board of Directors to use their legal names. Candidates for Board of Director must run under their legal names. However, they will only need to change their OTW Names to their legal names after they are elected.

Yes, you can change your name or details after you apply or during the course of your volunteer work. Your new name will need to follow the OTW Name Policy.

If you find that you cannot do your volunteer duties within the time requirements expected of your position, you can ask to take a hiatus from your committee chairs.

If you would like to retire from volunteer work, you may also do so at any time.

Yes! The term listed on the position description is just the minimum requirement. In fact, we have many volunteers that have been with the OTW for more than a decade!

You can apply with any e-mail address you use. Your e-mail address will be visible to some volunteers in charge of processing and reviewing your application, though. If you don’t want to connect your fannish identity with your legal name, don’t use your personal/work/school e-mail addresses.

Please whitelist e-mails from *@transformativeworks.org so that you receive messages from our volunteers.

All applications should receive an auto-reply with the next steps in the process. To make sure you get these e-mails, please whitelist e-mails from *@transformativeworks.org.

If you have not gotten the auto-reply within 48 hours, check your spam filters and then please contact Volunteers & Recruiting. Let us know what position you applied for and the name you used on the application.

If you have received an auto-reply and you are waiting to hear back from the committee you applied to, please note that most volunteer applicants get responses 2-4 weeks after the position has been closed. You can confirm the time estimate for responses on the auto-reply. If it is past that time, please contact Volunteers & Recruiting. Let us know what position you applied for and the name you used on the application to request an update.

You will need stable access to the Internet, as we use web-based software and e-mail to communicate. For data security reasons, volunteers must conduct and manage volunteer work using the OTW’s e-mail service provider. Some roles may also need access to different websites or software. Access to these tools is free or paid for by the OTW.

We only accept volunteers who are 18 years of age or older.

No, volunteers in the Organization for Transformative Works do not get paid for their work.

But the OTW also does not expect volunteers to pay for expenses incurred in the course of their work for the organization. The OTW will pay for access to online tools and software needed to carry out organization work. We will also reimburse pre-approved and necessary expenses.

Some roles for the Organization for Transformative Works use tools that may not work well with some assistive technology. Our work is largely text-based, and some roles can be fast-paced, and need immediate online interaction in the form of text-based chat.

If you have questions about tools needed for certain roles, please contact us and we will do our best to help.

Contact Volunteers & Recruiting via the contact form and we’ll be more than happy to answer them for you.

AO3 is unique from other archives for several reasons. First, AO3 is built on supporting a mission of maximum inclusiveness of fanwork content. This means we want to preserve fannish content of all types—even if it is objectionable, abhorrent, bigoted, disgusting, or otherwise offensive to many people. This includes allowing fannish content that includes explicit themes such as rape, underage sexual content, graphic violence, or other mature content unless it violates the AO3 Terms of Service in some other way. You can read more about this in the AO3 Content Policy.

Second, AO3 is a 501(c)(3) non-profit. It is fully donor-funded and will never run advertisements. Accounts are free and will always be free. If you’re accessing AO3 through a browser or app that is charging you for access to AO3 or running ads, please contact us. This is a violation of our Terms of Service.

In addition to the above, AO3 is run on open-source archiving software that is available for use by anyone to customize and deploy as their own archive. Part of the OTW’s mission and goals is to support the development of other fanwork archives and we encourage others to use the otwarchive repository as a base to build other archives.

To create an AO3 account, you need an invitation! For advice on how to get an invitation, refer to How do I get an invitation? in the Archive FAQs.

Invitations are sent out automatically on a regular basis. The waiting period is normally about a week after you request an invitation. Once you receive an invitation email, click the link provided in the email to go to the account creation page.

For more step-by-step instructions, refer to How do I create an account?. If you need help or are having trouble with the signup process, contact AO3 Support.

AO3 does not have an app for a few major reasons. First and foremost, we simply do not have the capacity to develop AO3 and an app simultaneously at this time. Coders who work on AO3 development do so on a volunteer basis, and they’re hard at work keeping AO3 running smoothly and improving the website. Additionally, releasing an app (or rather, several apps for each of the various mobile platforms) would cause similar increases in the number of hours needed to test code for an app, learn about and provide technical support for app-related issues, write and maintain documentation about the app, and more.

Aside from volunteer hours, an app would be subject to the conditions imposed by the app stores, including content restrictions; and those restrictions are subject to change with little notice. One of our goals is maximum inclusiveness of fanwork content which means hosting content which may be morally repugnant or offensive. Having an AO3 app would require limiting this mission to comply with the content policies of the app store(s) where our app is hosted—which we will not do.

You can read more about why there isn’t an AO3 app in our news post on the subject.

Instead of app development, we focused on ensuring that AO3 is fully functional using your mobile device’s browser. If you’d like to be able to access AO3 more easily on mobile, you can add it to your home screen for quick access!

For some general statistics about AO3, you can check out:

• Our past news posts about site stats
• The OTW 16th Anniversary Survey Report which contains data from a survey of AO3 and other OTW project users
• The 2012 OTW Community Survey Report which contains data from a survey of OTW community members conducted

You can also find infographics with stats relating to all our projects in our Annual Reports.

Tag wrangling is the process by which tags on AO3 are connected and made more easily filterable by adding them to the autocompletes for tags when creating works or bookmarks and when searching and filtering for works. When you tag a work with a tag that has never been used before, a tag wrangler must review it and evaluate what to do with it. A tag wrangler will look at the tag and consider if it means the same thing as an existing “canonical,” also called a common tag, and connect the two if so. If the tag does not mean the same thing as an existing canonical tag, they will attach it to the related fandom or to “No Fandom” if it’s not specific to an individual media. Eventually, if multiple users tag the same concept enough times, the tag may be made into a canonical so that it appears in the autocomplete.

Tag wranglers follow agreed-upon Wrangling Guidelines to decide what tags should be made canonicals and how they should be formatted. To learn more about what tag wranglers do, refer to the Work Description. To read about the process of tag wrangling in more detail, check out the life cycle of a tag.

Our goal is to make AO3 available in as many languages as possible, so that non-English speakers can use it just as easily as English speakers. This is something that is actively in progress and we’re working hard to achieve. You can follow along with our progress in the AO3 Release Notes.

However, as all our coders and translators are volunteers, it may take some time before a translated AO3 interface is ready for use. If you’re interested in helping support this work and are familiar with coding, you’re encouraged to contribute to AO3!

Answers to some frequently asked questions about AO3 can be found in the Archive FAQ. If you need technical assistance or have questions about how to use AO3, you can contact Support.

For answers to common questions about the AO3 Terms of Service, check out the Terms of Service FAQ. If you have a question that isn’t answered there or if you’d like to report a violation of the TOS, contact AO3 Policy & Abuse.

If you aren’t sure who to contact, you’re welcome to contact Communications and they’ll forward your message to the correct committee as needed.

Fanlore is a fandom wiki devoted to preserving the history of transformative fanworks and the fandoms from which they have arisen. It is a living archive of fandom history, created by fans for the benefit of fans. It aims to document fandom history and preserve current discussions and debates by recording events as they happen. Fanlore also provides context for outside media, academics, and newcomers to fandom, presented in a format where fans maintain control over their own representation.

It is open to edits from anyone who makes an account. You’re encouraged to contribute information about your fandoms, fannish experiences, and fandom history to ensure it is preserved for future fans.

For more information, check out the Fanlore About page or the Fanlore FAQs.

Everyone is invited to contribute to Fanlore by creating articles or adding information to existing pages. Anything you can contribute towards the preservation of fannish history is welcome! If you have information to add, just make an account and start editing! You can find helpful information to get you started on the Fanlore Help pages.

We’re always excited to welcome new editors to Fanlore, and we have lots of resources to get you started. Start with our Tips for Browsing Fanlore and the Basic Editing Tutorial, and then make sure to browse our more detailed help pages. You’ll also want to familiarize yourself with our policies.

Once you’ve started editing, the Fanlore Editing Cheatsheet is an invaluable resource as well as this list of templates that are frequently used around the wiki. If you need further assistance, you can always contact our gardeners for editing help.

If you want to contribute but aren’t sure what page to start with, check out our stub pages. Stub pages are short pages that need more information added to them, and they’re a great way to start wiki editing!

Fanlore has an Identity Protection Policy which ensures that fans can keep their pseudonymous fan identities separate from their real names if they wish to. The OTW as a whole is committed to protecting the privacy of fans, whether they are users of our services or not.

If an edit has been made to the wiki which connects your real life and fannish identities without your consent, please contact Fanlore and we will work with you to resolve the issue.

Fandom is international, and we welcome contributions from fans all over the world. At this time, Fanlore is an English-language resource, although editors are absolutely encouraged to document fandoms, fanworks, and fan communities that may have originally been conducted in languages other than English.

If you would like advice on or assistance with documenting aspects of non-English-language fandoms, or are interested in working with Fanlore to improve the international scope of the wiki, please contact us.

Copyright is intended to protect the creator’s right to profit from her work for a period of time to encourage creative endeavor and the widespread sharing of knowledge. But this does not preclude the right of others to respond to the original work, either with critical commentary, parody, or, we believe, transformative works.

In the United States, copyright is limited by the fair use doctrine. Campbell v. Acuff-Rose held that transformative uses receive special consideration in fair use analysis. For those interested in reading in-depth legal analysis, more information can be found on the Fanlore Legal Analysis page.

Fair use is the right to make some use of copyrighted material without getting permission or paying for its use. It is a basic limit on copyright law that protects free expression. Fair use is a United States legal phrase; however, copyright laws worldwide have limits that keep copyright from being used as a form of private censorship.

Fair use favors uses that:

1. are non-commercial and not sold for a profit;
2. are transformative, adding new meaning and messages to the original;
3. are limited, not copying the entirety of the original; and
4. do not substitute for the original work.

None of these factors is absolutely necessary for fair use, but they all help.

There is a definite distinction between plagiarism (the unacknowledged use of someone else’s words claimed as one’s own) and fanfiction (the acknowledged or obvious borrowing of story elements to tell a new story in the fanfiction writer’s words.

By “obvious” we mean that even if a fanwork creator doesn’t include a disclaimer on their work, readers know that they did not invent Wonder Woman or Voldemort, or the phrase “Use the Force, Luke.”

Plagiarism is deceitful and prevents the original author from receiving credit for their own original work. Fanfiction and quotation are important fair uses which acknowledge the original author and their work. The OTW does not support plagiarism; we do support fanfiction and quotation.

To learn about how plagiarism is handled on AO3, refer to our Terms of Service FAQ.

If a plagiarized copy of your fanwork has been uploaded to AO3, please consult the Terms of Service FAQ for advice on what to do.

If a copy of your work has been posted to another site, you will have to contact the other site yourself to request that they remove the unauthorized copy of your work. The OTW does not hold the copyright to your fanworks, so we cannot contact other sites or organizations on your behalf.

Commercial transformative works can definitely be fair use and legitimate; however, this is outside of the OTW’s mission. Our focus is on defending non-commercial works and their creators. We want to support creators who share their fanworks freely as part of the fannish gift economy who are motivated to be part of a community, connected with other fans, celebrating the media they enjoy. This has always been and remains part of our mission statement.

We are against the commercialization of fanworks without their authors’ consent.

By design, the OTW does not track all users or have the ability to create a browsing history for every individual. We believe strongly in internet freedom and collect the minimum amount of information required to run our websites.

Based on assumptions about ordinary use that are reasonable in light of our experience, we have estimated the total number of monthly active European users across all our sites as between 17 and 30 million, but we reserve the right to make different assumptions in the future.

In addition, there is uncertainty about what constitutes a “platform” or “service” under the EU Digital Services Act and whether projects such as the AO3 and Fanlore are distinct “platforms” or “services” from each other. We reserve the right to revisit this question in the future, but for now this estimate covers all our projects.

The OTW wants to help support fans around the world and we are absolutely willing to help if we can find someone with the necessary legal knowledge.

Most countries around the world have some form of legal protection for parody, satire, and pastiche, and many have some protections for non-commercial uses, but the exact protections vary country to country. We have on multiple occasions responded to or commented on laws from other countries outside of the U.S. in support of the rights of fanworks and fanwork creators.

For legal challenges to fans outside the United States, the OTW leans on legal allies like the Electronic Frontier Foundation who has actively developed global legal expertise that we can call on. In any situation, US or non-US, we’ll see what we can do based on the facts and our resources.

No. Profit and the degree of transformative quality matters: telling stories around a campfire, freely sharing non-profit fanfiction, summarizing plot in a book review, or making a documentary film about fans are not the same as a major commercial enterprise making a TV series out of a novel.

Essentially, this is a personal decision. If it will upset you to read, view, or watch fanworks based on your works, then we recommend you don’t.

Creators are sometimes advised to avoid viewing or acknowledging fanfiction based on their own work, as it is in theory possible that an author could read a story, go on to write something similar, and face a claim by the fan that they copied the fan’s work. However, there are many reasons to discount this risk, the least of which is that U.S. case law is all in the original author’s favor. No court is going to be receptive to a claim that a later work by the first author in the same universe infringes on the fanwork. When people begin with similar premises, it isn’t surprising that they will end up with similar ideas, but U.S. copyright law protects the specific expression of an idea, not ideas. Even if a fanwork is similar to a later work in the same universe, similarity of ideas isn’t sufficient for a copyright claim.

However, not being able to win doesn’t erase the possibility that someone could threaten to sue. If an author reads fan mail or online reviews, they might encounter a fan’s ideas about what should happen with the characters; if they read other books, they might encounter a storyline or character similar to a storyline or character they might later use. In fact, the typical author-versus-author infringement case involves claims that one work copied another, apparently unrelated work.

The OTW’s mission includes explaining the difference between ideas and expression. A lot of people may have the same idea about what should happen on the next season of a television series; but if they each write different stories expressing the idea differently, then those stories don’t infringe on each other.

The OTW and our Legal committee continue to watch for issues that would affect us or our projects. In the event we are threatened, we will inform users and respond with the appropriate steps.

In general, there are a variety of actions you can take in these cases:

1. Do research. The most important thing you can do is remain vigilant about what’s going on in your community. Paying attention and engaging with the process will make you better prepared to respond to changes and to help your fellow fans.
2. If it’s appropriate to the situation, contact those proposing the legislation or your representatives who will be voting on it and ensure your voice is heard. Many laws have opportunities for the public to comment on them either directly as part of a feedback period or indirectly through your legislator and this is a good opportunity to ensure your voice is heard.
3. Tell our Legal Advocacy team! We want to know about issues that could threaten the AO3, the OTW, or fandom spaces more broadly. Depending on the situation, we may simply choose to monitor it and see how it develops, we may respond with a Policy Comment or Letter, or we may publish an informational news post about it to signal boost the relevant information.

Open Doors is dedicated to preserving fanworks for the future by offering shelter to at-risk fannish projects and archives. Through several subprojects, they preserve different kinds of fanworks and artifacts of fan culture. Our goal in particular is to preserve those fannish projects that might otherwise be lost due to lack of time, interest, or resources on the part of the current maintainer.

You can read more about them on the Open Doors website, including their FAQ. You can find a list of Open Doors’ previous imports on Fanlore.

It is extremely important to the OTW and AO3 that the original creators of any fanwork are fully credited and have as much control over their work as possible. Open Doors has designed their tools and procedures to ensure that all reasonable efforts to contact creators are made before and after their works are imported to AO3, all creators are fully credited, and creators always have the opportunity to claim/delete/orphan/change their works as desired. We want to ensure that as many creators as possible are aware of what is happening, and have the opportunity to get in touch with us if necessary.

In order to ensure that all reasonable efforts to complete these goals are made, we require that the import/backup process go through Open Doors.

Anyone can suggest an archive, zine, or other fan project for preservation, including archivists, moderators, publishers, creators, and readers. If you are aware of an archive/zine that has closed or gone offline, or has an uncertain future, let us know using our contact form.

Even if you did not write all the stories; if you’re the moderator of an archive or the publisher of a zine, you’ve accepted responsibility for making its content accessible. We believe that transferring an archive onto AO3 is along the same lines as changing a web host or ISP or installing an updated software package for the archive; it’s like a librarian moving a collection. It falls under your responsibility and duties as a caretaker for that archive/zine.

Additionally, we can also organize imports so that they require each creator’s explicit permission before we import their works. This is most common with mailing lists and some zines.

Preserving fannish history is a central part of Open Door’s mission—we love the plurality of fandom and want there to be many individual archives, and we want to ensure that if someone can no longer maintain an archive, this bit of fandom isn’t lost.

While we’d love to be able to preserve the archives themselves, the resources required are too big. Each archive would need its own server space, a team of coders able to update and/or rewrite the code behind it, dedicated moderators, etc. By importing archives onto AO3 but making them into distinct collections, we are able to save the fannish creativity and a little of that individual identity, while ensuring we only have to maintain one set of code, servers, and support team.

The Fan Culture Preservation Project (FCPP) is the cooperative program that the OTW, through Open Doors, has with the Special Collections department at the University of Iowa and other partner institutions to archive and preserve fanzines and other non-digital forms of fan culture. It is dedicated to preserving fan artifacts such as letterzines, fanzines, and other non-digital fanworks and memorabilia at partner libraries and other institutions.

AO3 Memorial Archives are collections of fanworks imported by Open Doors for creators who have passed away. These archives are primarily created by AO3 in collaboration with the deceased creator’s next of kin or designated Fannish Next-of-Kin. These collections are meant to preserve the legacy of creators after their passing, ensuring their works remain available—please contact the Open Doors committee if you want to honor a deceased creator by creating a memorial archive collection on AO3.

Yes. Open Doors is in the process of developing a formal Fannish Estate Plan for fans wishing to donate their collections after they pass, but in the meantime, we can help you with appropriate wording for a bequest. Please contact the Open Doors committee for assistance or further questions.

For questions about preserving your AO3 account in the event of your death or permanent incapacitation, check out the Fannish Next-of-Kin FAQ on AO3.

Please contact the Open Doors committee.

Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC) provides a space for academic analysis of individual transformative works and the larger culture of fandom from which they come, helping to demonstrate the social, educational, and aesthetic value of fandom and fannish works.

TWC values helping fans who are interested in engaging in fandom from theoretical and academic perspectives share their scholarship more widely. This improves communication between fans and academia, and provides a theoretical background for OTW’s mission to promote scholarship on fanworks and fan practices. In addition to publishing scholarship on transformative works and the fan community, TWC strives to explain the context of particular works and help establish fanworks as creative art forms in their own right.

TWC comes out at least twice a year, on March 15 and September 15. Some years, a special issue is released on June 15.

Detailed submission guidelines are available on the TWC website.

We welcome submissions from everyone as long as they comply with TWC’s focus and scope, as well as all items on the submission preparation checklist.

TWC prints peer-reviewed academic articles about transformation, broadly conceived, about fan engagement with various sorts of texts, and about fan communities; editorially reviewed meta articles and personal essays; book reviews; and interviews.

You can find out more about what topics we’re currently seeking articles for on the TWC website homepage.

Beginning with TWC No. 25, essays are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Refer to TWC’s September 15, 2017 editorial, Copyright and Open Access for an explanation of why this license was chosen.

This license permits both noncommercial and commercial use with attribution. For that reason, entities, such as presses, who wish to reprint articles (even for commercial purposes) do not need to obtain copyright release paperwork.

TWC Nos. 1 through 24 are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License. For Nos. 1 through 24, TWC, not the author, retains copyright. Anyone seeking to reproduce content for profit, including authors, must obtain permission from TWC. Such permission is routinely granted for free.

TWC is a multimedia journal whose articles may include screenshots, video embeds, and hyperlinks; as such, the journal must appear online. PDFs are unable to duplicate the interactive experience of the online journal.

Additionally, TWC intentionally wishes to buck the importance that academia places on print media. If we created official PDFs, these documents, not the online versions, would be treated as authoritative merely because of the privilege print is provided in the academic publishing industry—and yet the PDF will always be a second-rate static snapshot of an interactive document.

However, we know that fans may wish to make TWC more widely available by creating PDFs of its content. TWC encourages such transformative fan activity – this is part of why the journal is copyrighted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. As long as the document provides the URLs of the original source, and as long as the poster does not charge money, this activity is perfectly acceptable under the terms of the CC license.

A transformative work takes something extant and turns it into something with a new purpose, sensibility, or mode of expression. Based on precedent set in the United States Supreme Court, the OTW defines “transformative use” as adding something new, with a further purpose or different character, altering the source with new expression, meaning, or message.

Transformative works include, but are not limited, to fanfiction, real person fiction, fan vids, and fan art. The OTW is interested in all kinds of transformative works, but our priority is to support and defend the types of works hosted in our archive, and the fans who create them.

The term “transformative” was specifically chosen for the nonprofit organization’s name to highlight one of the key legal defenses for fanworks of all kinds (including real person fiction): that they are transformative of original source materials.

Anyone. We welcome everyone who wishes to discuss sources (shows, bands, sports players, anime, etc.) and fandom. We welcome everyone who creates or enjoys fanfiction, vids, fanart, and other kinds of transformative works.

We hope that our projects and committees can be a place where fans can gather, and we hope for it to be a space where everyone feels welcome. For more specific information about who can volunteer, refer to our Volunteering FAQ.

Refer to the Contact page for advice on common committees to contact. If you need more information to determine which committee you’d like to contact, a complete list of OTW committees is available on the Committees page. If you aren’t sure who to contact, select Communications and they’ll forward your message to the correct committee as needed.