In August 2025, the Center for Open Science (COS) announced a suspension of new submissions to the generalist server hosted on OSF Preprints while we evaluated its role within the broader preprints landscape. As part of our review, we collected and assessed feedback from OSF users who previously submitted preprints, as well as from community member engagement through OSF Support and COS social channels. This input helped us understand how the generalist server was being used by researchers, how moderation was functioning, and the broader impact on advancing open scholarship.
After careful consideration of the feedback we received alongside broader trends in the preprint ecosystem, we have decided to continue the suspension of the generalist server indefinitely. This decision does not impact the community-run preprint servers running on OSF Preprints, including SocArXiv, PsyArXiv, MetaArXiv, and others.
Additional Background and Context
Since the generalist server launched, many more disciplinary preprint communities have been created or expanded. Today, a growing number of disciplines are served by domain-specific preprint communities that offer stronger moderation, clearer scope, and greater alignment with community standards.
During our review period, we saw that many submissions to the generalist server were better served by domain-specific communities with clearer scope and moderation standards.
Operating a generalist service without strong disciplinary oversight made it increasingly challenging to ensure research integrity, particularly given rising volumes of generative AI–driven content and paper mill activity. Ultimately, the service duplicated infrastructure without providing a distinctive value or benefit beyond what disciplinary servers already provide.
Existing Preprints and Further Resources
- Existing content: All preprints already posted to the generalist server remain accessible and citable, and authors can continue to upload updated versions.
- Community-run servers: OSF Preprints continues to support 14 community-led preprint servers, including PsyArXiv, SocArXiv, MetaArXiv, and others. These services remain active and open for new submissions.
- Other available services: Beyond OSF, there are many disciplinary and interdisciplinary venues available to researchers, curated through resources such as SPI-Hub (Scholarly Publishing Information Hub) and the ASAPbio Preprint Resource Center.
Looking Ahead
While the generalist server will not resume operating as it has, COS remains committed to strengthening preprint infrastructure. The challenges highlighted during this process—moderation, integrity, and community trust—are shared across the broader scholarly communication ecosystem. COS is actively engaging with other preprint services to discuss strategies for addressing these challenges together.
We are presently focused on supporting existing preprint communities on OSF, guiding researchers to the most suitable venues for their work, and exploring future preprint services that meet emerging researcher needs.
In the coming years, COS’s ongoing development and enhancement of the OSF platform will focus on strengthening support for transparent and connected research across the entire lifecycle—from planning and preregistration through data sharing and publication. Future iterations of preprint services may be designed to better integrate with this lifecycle open science approach, where research plans, materials, data, and outcomes are linked within a unified, discoverable workflow. This vision provides a framework for how preprint sharing on OSF could evolve to better enable research that is open, reliable, and discoverable for researchers, institutions, and funders.
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