Media Contact: pr@cos.io
Charlottesville, VA — The Center for Open Science (COS) has issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) inviting open-source development teams and independent developers to collaboratively enhance the Open Science Framework (OSF) as part of the National Science Foundation's Pathways to Enable Open-Source Ecosystems (POSE) program.
The initiative supports the expansion of open-source ecosystems by fostering community-driven development that improves the functionality and interoperability of the OSF. Built and maintained by COS, the OSF is a free, open-source project management and collaboration platform that supports researchers throughout the entire research lifecycle—from study design and data collection to publication, archiving, and reuse of research outputs.
Funded by the NSF, the POSE program supports sustainable open-source communities in research and technology. Selected development partners will work closely with COS and its open-source community to implement improvements that align with community-identified priorities and OSF’s long-term roadmap.
"Through this initiative, COS is fostering an engaged developer community to contribute to OSF, ensuring the platform remains a valuable resource for open scholarship,” said Nici Pfeiffer, Chief Product Officer. "This collaborative, community-driven approach strengthens the infrastructure supporting open science practices across disciplines, ensuring OSF evolves to meet researchers’ diverse needs while sustaining a resilient open-source ecosystem."
With support from the NSF, the initiative will drive development in two key areas:
- Connecting digital repositories, tools, and services across the research lifecycle through the OSF platform
- Improving workflows that enable open scholarship across diverse research methodologies, processes, and outputs
Development work will include creating integrations and new features, code testing and debugging, and ensuring compatibility with existing systems while adhering to best practices in coding, security, and documentation.
As part of the award, funded teams will also participate in an in-person Hackathon with OSF team members, with travel expenses covered by the grant.
Proposals are due by May 14, 2025. Full details on the RFP, including submission guidelines and technical requirements, are available at www.cos.io/pose.
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About COS
Founded in 2013, COS is a nonprofit culture change organization with a mission to increase openness, integrity, and reproducibility of scientific research. COS pursues this mission by building communities around open science practices, supporting metascience research, and developing and maintaining free, open source software tools, including the Open Science Framework (OSF).
