Open Science Framework (OSF)

The video below is a general introduction to OSF and its potential applications throughout the research lifecycle.  More webinars and tutorials can be found on the Center for Open Science's Events and Webinars page.

With OSF, you can create project pages to store your data, collaborate with peers, and keep track of all your materials. There is no limit to the number of projects or components you can create.

• Create a new project- create a project for an experiment, lab group, paper, or presentation. A project can be anything with files, collaborators, documentation, or data.
• Add Contributors- add collaborators, peers, or reviewers to your project. You can customize the permissions for each contributor for each project or component.
• Licensing- add a license for your project or data by selecting one of the commonly used licenses or upload your own. A license informs others of how they can copy, distribute, or reuse parts of your project.
• Creating a project from a template- by using a template, you can copy the structure of another project. This can be one of your projects or a project of another OSF user. The template will copy the structure but not the content.

OSF can connect to 11 cloud storage services like Google Drive, GitHub, Dropbox and more. By connecting to these outside services, users can access files that are housed in these services via OSF. Each add-on has a different level of interaction that can be done through OSF and will have different sets of permissions. Some services have read-only access and need to be edited through the storage service, while others allow you to edit the files through OSF and automatically update in the service. Each add-on service also has a different file size limit.

OSF can also connect to Citation Management Tools like Mendeley and Zotero. These allow you to keep track of the references used in your project and will appear on the project overview page.

There are several ways to publicly share your OSF project:

• Making the project public- Projects and components are private by default, but you can make the whole or just part of the project public.
• Creating a DOI- After making the project public, you can generate a DOI. Each OSF project and component also comes with a unique persistent URL.
• Registering the project- by registering your project, you create a frozen, time-stamped copy. Registrations can be made public immediately or embargoed for up to 4 years.

OSF is not HIPAA compliant but OSF may be able to link to a storage add-on that meets your HIPAA requirements.  The OSF account security FAQ has more information on this and other security concerns.