Open science website, projects, preregistration, preprints, data, APIs

OSF

OSF, the Open Science Framework, is a research collaboration website from the Center for Open Science for managing projects, sharing files, preregistering studies, hosting preprints, and connecting research materials.

Official site

osf.io is the main public website for OSF, the Open Science Framework.

Operator

OSF is operated by the Center for Open Science, a nonprofit organization focused on openness, integrity, and reproducibility in research.

Main uses

Researchers use OSF for project workspaces, files, wikis, registrations, preregistrations, preprints, metadata, and research sharing.

OSF, the Open Science Framework, is a research collaboration website from the Center for Open Science for managing projects, preregistrations, preprints, files, and linked research materials.View logo on Wikimedia Commons

What OSF is

OSF is a research website at osf.io and stands for Open Science Framework. It is a free, open-source platform from the Center for Open Science for organizing research projects, collaborating with teams, sharing files, preregistering studies, posting preprints, and linking research materials across the research lifecycle.

Projects and components

The basic OSF workspace is a project. A project can include files, contributors, permissions, wikis, storage connections, metadata, and components for different parts of a study. Teams can keep work private while it is in progress or make selected materials public when they are ready to share.

Registrations and preregistration

OSF is widely used for registrations and preregistrations. A registration captures a time-stamped version of a plan, protocol, analysis strategy, or study design. That matters because it helps distinguish planned methods from later exploratory choices and gives readers a clearer record of how a study developed.

Preprints

OSF Preprints hosts a network of community-run preprint services. The OSF help pages describe preprints as working papers, preprints, and published papers that scholars can upload, with options to link data, code, supplemental files, registrations, and publication DOIs. Accepted preprints receive persistent URLs and may receive DOIs depending on the service.

API access

OSF has an official API v2 documentation site for programmatic access. The API documentation describes access across OSF functionality such as project management, file handling, users, registrations, preprints, and metadata operations. This lets institutions, developers, and researchers build workflows around OSF records rather than relying only on the browser interface.

Strengths and limits

OSF is strongest when a research group wants one place to organize work, show provenance, connect outputs, and make materials public when appropriate. Its limits depend on how researchers use it: a public page does not guarantee complete documentation, a preregistration does not guarantee a good study, and shared files still need clear licenses and context.

Why it matters

OSF matters because many problems in research are not only about access to finished papers. Reproducibility also depends on plans, data, code, materials, versions, and decisions that happen before and after publication. A platform that connects those pieces helps make research easier to inspect, cite, and build on.

WHOIS domain data

Data pulled: June 1, 2026View current WHOIS record

Domain: osf.io
IP address: 35.190.84.173
Registrar: NameCheap, Inc.
WHOIS server: whois.namecheap.com
Referral URL: https://www.namecheap.com/
Created: March 25, 2013
Updated: February 24, 2026
Expires: March 25, 2027
Nameservers: ns-cloud-e1.googledomains.com (216.239.32.110); ns-cloud-e2.googledomains.com (216.239.34.110); ns-cloud-e3.googledomains.com (216.239.36.110); ns-cloud-e4.googledomains.com (216.239.38.110)
Domain status: clientTransferProhibited
Contact privacy: Registrant, admin, and technical contact details are redacted by Withheld for Privacy ehf.

Key concepts

ProjectAn OSF workspace for organizing files, contributors, wikis, metadata, and project components.
RegistrationA time-stamped, read-only record of a research plan or project state.
PreregistrationA registration created before data collection or analysis to clarify planned methods and hypotheses.
PreprintA manuscript shared publicly before, during, or after formal journal review.

Common workflows

Create a project workspace for a study, lab, class, or collaboration.
Share data, code, protocols, surveys, and supplemental files with persistent links.
Preregister a study design or analysis plan before running the work.
Post a preprint and connect it to data, code, registrations, contributors, and publication metadata.

Common misconceptions

Using OSF does not automatically make a study reproducible.
A public OSF page may still omit important context, licenses, or files.
A preregistration improves transparency but does not prove that a design is valid.
Preprints are part of scholarly communication, but they may not have completed peer review.

Open questions

How can research platforms make licenses, versions, and dependencies easier to understand?
Which defaults best encourage useful sharing without exposing sensitive or restricted data?
How should journals, funders, and institutions evaluate preregistrations and shared materials without turning them into box-checking exercises?