We build in the open

COS builds open source infrastructure to support our mission of transparency, openness and reproducibility.

The OSF code is open source, and fully visible to the community to view its continual development, contribute code and ideas to enhance functionality, and have peace of mind and security in knowing they will never be locked-in. See our development in action.

The transparency a researcher can demonstrate by using OSF to collaborate, manage and share their research is one facet; using open source infrastructure to provide security to the researcher and consumers is another. Open source code often has added benefits by its very nature which make it more reliable and secure due to the increased review. The long term viability of open source tools is also higher because of the supportive community and the ability to meet demands for transparency giving freedom from proprietary solutions and vendor rights to research data and outcomes.

Themes and Projects

User Experience Design

Continue making design improvements to streamline the research lifecycle activities on OSF through heuristic design evaluation and user testing.

Community Tools

Launch new interfaces to support communities and stakeholders with promoting and demonstrating openness, transparency, and rigor.

An Open Lifecycle

New integrations and developments for the OSF product suite that support open science practices at every stage of the research lifecycle.

Latest Features

Community research collections

Now any research stakeholder can use OSF Collections to create a customizable repository of open scholarship according to their discipline, chosen taxonomy, or research type to improve the visibility and discoverability of open outputs in any given research area. Researchers can discover work or contribute through an easy-to-use submission interface.

Branded registries and moderation

Branded Registries on the OSF Registries infrastructure is a new mechanism for research stakeholders seeking to improve transparency in their research area while empowering their community members with rigorous methods. Every branded registry supports community-developed preregistration templates, moderation workflows, and an intuitive interface for registering or discovering research.

Enhanced registration overview page

Users can enjoy a facelift to their registration’s overview page, with easier navigability to supplemental materials and project information.

New registration submission workflow and editable metadata

Creating a registration on OSF is easier and more intuitive than ever thanks to a reengineered submission workflow. Newly editable metadata fields also allow users to update key information in their registrations at any time.

OSF Files page redesign

Project admins and visitors alike can now access a Files page redesign that facilitates easier organization and viewing, FAIR data sharing, and quicker load times. Visitors can more quickly identify file information through an improved hierarchical structure and individual file metadata.

Coming soon:
Outcome reporting tools

OSF will soon offer templates and workflows for reporting the outcomes of preregistered studies. Preregistration defines study designs and analysis plans to make clear what was planned in advance to allow for more serendipitous findings and to reduce selective reporting. The new reporting workflow will allow researchers to share the outcomes of their planned research along with final data, analysis scripts, and supplemental materials.