Compliance and Standards

The Center for Open Science (COS) is committed to operating secure, transparent, and reliable infrastructure for open research. Learn about our organization-wide security and accountability practices, the standards implemented across COS-operated services, and our commitments to responsible stewardship.

Continued Access and Responsible Stewardship

trust transp COS has endorsed the TRUST Principles for Digital Repositories, which emphasize transparency, responsibility, user focus, sustainability, and technology in the stewardship of digital content. While the OSF will no longer function as a general-purpose data repository, these principles remain relevant to COS’s continued stewardship of content already hosted on the OSF.

Public OSF projects, registrations, data, materials, papers, and other public content will remain viewable, findable, and downloadable. Existing links and DOIs will continue to work. Existing projects will move to a read-only state, with access continuing according to each project’s permissions. Learn more about the TRUST Principles and the upcoming changes to OSF Projects.

Preservation Statement

OSF is committed to the persistence of the scholarly record by ensuring that publicly shared research objects and their associated metadata remain persistent, discoverable, and accessible through sustainable strategies and persistent identifiers.

As part of this strategy, OSF backs up preservation copies of public registrations through the Internet Archive and intends to extend comparable practices to public projects and preprints. To support long-term stewardship of the public OSF content, COS maintains a fund to ensure continuity of public content should the organization ever need to close or significantly curtail operations in the future. We currently have committed $450,000 to this fund and evaluate this resource regularly as part of continuity planning.

Is my public content on OSF safe and secure?

Yes. Your content will be archived on OSF as a read-only project on February 19, 2027 and will remain accessible at the same URLs to the users who have access on that date. If your project is affiliated with an institution, that affiliation will be retained.

Why should I entrust my research to COS on OSF?

COS is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to improve the openness, integrity, and trustworthiness of research. OSF is built to support the scholarly record, and COS is committed to the long-term persistence of publicly shared research. We are partnered with Internet Archive to preserve public OSF research objects and associated metadata and are developing a comprehensive preservation and continuity plan to support continued access and discoverability as part of the OSF project transition.

You used to say a number of years and preservation fund, but it is no longer on your websites, why?

COS previously described its preservation funding commitment in terms of a specific number of years if COS needed to curtail or close operations of OSF. We have moved away from that formulation because it relied on estimating costs for a singular solution based on known cost trajectories thereby creating a false sense of precision.

Long-term preservation is not simply a matter of having enough money to maintain public content for a predetermined number of years. COS is working with our preservation partner, Internet Archive, to develop a comprehensive approach for public OSF content. We are committed to preserving public research objects and their associated metadata in the Internet Archive (as we do now for public registrations) so they remain persistent, discoverable, and accessible over the long term. In the event of COS closure or significant curtailing of operations, remaining resources would be prioritized to reviewing and ensuring long-term preservation of any OSF content that is not already backed-up on Internet Archive.

Our commitment is therefore now expressed in terms of ongoing stewardship and continuity planning rather than a set number of years. COS maintains a dedicated preservation fund, currently $450,000, and regularly evaluates that resource and opportunities for further growth as part of its financial planning. This approach gives us more flexibility to adapt our preservation strategy as infrastructure, technology, and best practices evolve, while maintaining our commitment to the persistence of publicly shared research.

Standards and Technical Transparency

COS continually reviews standards relevant to OSF and other COS-operated services. Where appropriate, we implement established identifiers and metadata standards that help research records remain discoverable, citable, and interoperable with other systems. These practices support the goals of the FAIR Guiding Principles by helping make research records more findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable.

Standards supported across OSF services include:

DataCite metadata schema is used with registrations and projects
Crossref’s preprint metadata schema
Community metadata schemas through CEDAR
Research Organization Registry (ROR) identifiers are used to clearly identify research institutions and funders
ORCID iDs to clearly identify researchers
Bepress subject taxonomy
FAIR Signposting

OSF is also an open-source infrastructure. COS makes its source code and technical documentation publicly available so developers and members of the research community can understand, use, and contribute. Learn more:

Accredited in Handling Your Data

Dedication to ensuring our user’s security and confidentiality while utilizing Center for Open Science (COS) services is a top priority. One way we do this is by publishing our practices on the OSF Account and Security Page.

We conduct an annual SOC2 (Service Organization Control Type 2) accreditation audit. By obtaining a favorable SOC2 report from a certified CPA we aim to provide confidence for our users and partners through continued third party auditor attestation.

The SOC2 accreditation program is maintained by the AICPA (American Institute of Certified Public Accountants). Please do reach out to support@cos.io for any questions.

Privacy, Policies, and User Protections

COS publishes policies and frameworks that provide transparency about how we operate, including how we handle personal information and content, govern the use of COS-operated services, approach partnerships, and set expectations for participation in our community and events. Learn more:

Responsible Stewards of Your Support

COS has consistently earned a Guidestar rating of Platinum for its financial transparency, the highest rating available. View the COS profile on Guidestar. You can also view COS’s profile on Charity Navigator to take an in-depth look at our operational transparency and adherence to best practices.

We invite all of our sponsors, partners, and members of the community to learn more about how our organization operates, the impact of our efforts, our financial position, and our nonprofit status.