For more than 13 years, the Open Science Framework (OSF) has served as public-good infrastructure for research. Created in 2012 to advance openness, integrity, and trustworthiness in research, OSF has grown alongside the open science movement and become part of research workflows used by communities around the world. Our commitment to that purpose remains unchanged.
The research system has evolved significantly since OSF launched. Today, more specialized services support different parts of the research lifecycle, while researchers increasingly move among these services to conduct and share their work. At the same time, the funding environment for research and public-good infrastructure has become more uncertain, making it increasingly difficult to sustain broad, general-purpose infrastructure indefinitely.
These changes require us to make deliberate choices about what OSF is best positioned to provide to advance the COS mission and what we can responsibly sustain over the long term. We embrace this as an opportunity to build a more resilient foundation for open research that focuses the OSF capabilities where it can have the greatest impact, partners with complementary infrastructure to connect research records across the lifecycle, and creates a sustainable model that serves researchers over the long term. We took the first step toward this future by making this announcement on Tuesday.
A Clearer Vision for OSF
OSF must evolve alongside the open science system. As policies increasingly encourage and require open research practices, and as specialized infrastructure and services mature to help researchers meet those requirements, OSF has an opportunity to focus on the role it can play best: connecting research across the lifecycle.
OSF supports lifecycle open science by helping researchers document, connect, and share their research throughout the research lifecycle. OSF will focus on the capabilities where it provides distinctive value: helping researchers clearly document what they planned, connect those plans to the outputs they produce, and link those outputs to the outcomes of their research. As part of a broader system of complementary open infrastructure, OSF will make it easier to connect research records across systems rather than requiring researchers to keep everything in one place. This more focused, interoperable model will make research easier to follow, understand, and reuse. Together, this creates a more resilient, sustainable foundation for open research—one built on shared infrastructure and complementary services rather than a single platform trying to provide everything.
This direction is grounded in the broader strategy of the Center for Open Science (COS) and our vision for how OSF can contribute to a more connected, open research system. We are anchoring our mission on lifecycle open science: research with publicly accessible plans, content (data, materials, and code), and outcomes that are linked and findable in a persistent, open location. OSF will help establish those connections while continuing to support a unique workflow for registering study plans before data is collected or analyzed.
Resilience Requires a Portfolio Approach
A more focused OSF also creates an opportunity to build a more resilient operating and funding model.
Maintaining OSF at its current breadth requires approximately $4–5 million each year (about half of COS’s total operating budget), including the rising costs of cloud infrastructure and storage, software development and maintenance, security and compliance, user support, training, and operations. That cost base is still largely supported by public and private grants, with earned revenue currently covering about 10%.
COS has pursued a diversified funding portfolio that includes government grants, private philanthropic support, and earned revenue from services we provide. But diversification does not change the fact that OSF’s current scope remains substantially dependent on grant funding. As a mission-driven organization with significant fundraising needs, we have a responsibility to ensure that the scope and cost of the infrastructure we operate are aligned with the resources we can responsibly sustain over time. Our aim is to better align its scope, recurring costs, funding sources, and role in the broader infrastructure ecosystem.
Four Parts of Our Approach
Our approach to OSF’s long-term resilience has four components.
1. A focused OSF with a lower recurring cost
We are narrowing the scope of OSF so that we can concentrate resources on the functions central to our product vision and mission: supporting study planning and preregistration, connecting related research outputs across the lifecycle, and sharing preprints and papers.
For capabilities that can be provided effectively by specialized infrastructure elsewhere, we will work with and connect to those services rather than duplicating their capabilities.
A more focused OSF allows us to invest more deeply in lifecycle open science while creating a more manageable operating model.
2. Interoperability and shared infrastructure
A strong research infrastructure system does not require one organization to provide every function. Complementary services can work together, allowing each to specialize in what it does best and invest more deeply in the capabilities researchers need.
For researchers, this means access to better services that specialize in meeting their needs and use cases, without having to navigate disconnected systems. Interoperability and open standards to make it easier to move between services, connect research records, and create coherent and transparent workflows across the research lifecycle. This reduces duplication and administrative burden while making research easier to follow and reuse.
Shared infrastructure also creates greater resilience as it reflects the reality of the research lifecycle, which spans many activities, services, and organizations rather than a single platform. When complementary services are connected across the lifecycle, researchers can move more easily from planning to sharing outputs and outcomes while maintaining the relationships among them. This distributed model also creates greater resilience and sustainability where organizations can focus their resources on the capabilities they are best positioned to provide, while the broader system collectively sustains the infrastructure researchers depend on and can adapt as researcher needs evolve.
3. Diversified support
We will continue to build a diversified support model for OSF and COS.
That includes pursuing earned revenue for appropriate value-added services, while continuing to seek government, institutional, and philanthropic support for OSF’s role as public-good infrastructure.
Diversification does not eliminate uncertainty. A balanced funding portfolio instead gives us greater flexibility as individual funding sources and the broader research environment change.
4. Long-term continuity and stewardship
Researchers need confidence that work they share through OSF will remain available and connected over the long term. We remain committed to that continuity and stewardship for publicly shared OSF content. As part of that planning, COS currently has $450,000 committed to a continuity fund to support the ongoing availability of public OSF content, and we intend to expand our partnership with Internet Archive for this purpose.
What Comes Next
Changing the scope of a widely used research infrastructure raises important questions. Over the coming weeks, we will explore each component of this approach in greater detail: lifecycle open science, interoperability and shared infrastructure, diversified funding, and long-term continuity and stewardship.
Together, these changes are intended to create a more focused OSF, with a clearer role in the research system and a stronger foundation for long-term impact.