# LightTag: Text Annotation Platform

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2109.02320 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.02320/

## Key facts

- Cited by 16 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 2 of its 30 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 6 Sep 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Offensive Language Identification in Greek](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.07459/) (2020)
- [Sensitivity of BLANC to human-scored qualities of text summaries](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.06716/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 16 of 16)

- [AfriSenti: A Twitter Sentiment Analysis Benchmark for African Languages](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.08956/) (2023)
- [NaijaSenti: A Nigerian Twitter Sentiment Corpus for Multilingual Sentiment Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.08277/) (2022)
- [POTATO: The Portable Text Annotation Tool](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.08620/) (2022)
- [ViHOS: Hate Speech Spans Detection for Vietnamese](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.10186/) (2023)
- [DMOps: Data Management Operation and Recipes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.01228/) (2023)
- [Thresh: A Unified, Customizable and Deployable Platform for Fine-Grained Text Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.06953/) (2023)
- [CHIMERA: A Knowledge Base of Scientific Idea Recombinations for Research Analysis and Ideation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.20779/) (2025)
- [COBIAS: Assessing the Contextual Reliability of Bias Benchmarks for Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.14889/) (2024)
- [SOLD: Sinhala Offensive Language Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.00851/) (2022)
- [Optimising Human-Machine Collaboration for Efficient High-Precision Information Extraction from Text Documents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.09324/) (2023)
- [Extracting Space Situational Awareness Events from News Text](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.05721/) (2022)
- [BERT-Assisted Semantic Annotation Correction for Emotion-Related Questions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.00916/) (2022)
- [EduCoder: An Open-Source Annotation System for Education Transcript Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.05385/) (2025)
- [Temporal Simultaneity Predicts Annotation Quality in Sentiment Corpora](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.27239/) (2026)
- [ACAT: A Collaborative Platform for Efficient Aspect-Based Sentiment Dataset Annotation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.04189/) (2026)
- [The Shape of Power: A Multilingual Framework for Social Power Reasoning in Dialogues](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.28144/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Text annotation tools assume that their user's goal is to create a labeled corpus. However, users view annotation as a necessary evil on the way to deliver business value through NLP. Thus an annotation tool should optimize for the throughput of the global NLP process, not only the productivity of individual annotators. LightTag is a text annotation tool designed and built on that principle. This paper shares our design rationale, data modeling choices, and user interface decisions then illustrates how those choices serve the full NLP lifecycle.