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OSF projects provide a flexible environment for researchers and their teams to dynamically collaborate on, organize, contextualize, integrate, store, and share research processes and outputs. Developing your project directory can make your work more accessible, discoverable, and persistent.
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Components are essentially sub-projects within your main OSF project. They can have their own collaborators, files, wiki pages, DOIs, permissions, and even their own child components. This hierarchical structure is incredibly useful for breaking down your project into manageable, organized parts.
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Read on to see how to make the most of it.
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- Segment Your Project by Research Phase or Type
Organize your project into components based on phases of your research (e.g., Literature Review, Methodology, Data Collection, Analysis) or by types of materials (e.g., Datasets, Code, Manuscripts). This segmentation makes it easier for team members to find relevant materials and understand the project's progress.
- Assign Specific Collaborators to Components
If your project involves a team, you can assign collaborators to specific components where their expertise is most needed. This ensures that team members have access to the materials they need without being overwhelmed by irrelevant files, and it helps to safeguard sensitive data. Start with viewing the component you would like to assign a specific contributor and use this help guide.
- Use Components for Pilot Studies or Supplementary Analyses
For projects that include pilot studies or multiple analyses, create separate components for each. This keeps your main project organized and allows for distinct documentation of methodologies and results, which is crucial for transparency and reproducibility.
- Document Your Process in Component Wikis
Each component can have its own wiki. Use this feature to document methodologies, decisions, and changes specific to that component's focus. This can be invaluable for onboarding new team members and providing context for external collaborators or reviewers.
- Leverage Differential Access Settings for Targeted Sharing
Components can be made public or private independently of the main project and each other. Use this to your advantage by keeping preliminary data or sensitive information private while sharing more general research outputs or datasets. This selective sharing is crucial for adhering to ethical guidelines and protecting participant confidentiality. For more information, see Understanding Contributor Permissions.
- Nested Components for Complex Projects
For particularly complex projects, you can create nested components (components within components) to mirror the structure of your research even more closely. This can help in managing large datasets or multifaceted studies where different datasets or analyses are interrelated.
By effectively using components, you not only enhance the organization and navigability of your projects but also bolster collaboration and the transparent sharing of your research process. This approach allows you to manage large, multifaceted research projects with ease while ensuring that all aspects of your work are documented and accessible for future reference, replication, or extension by the research community. If you haven't already, check out our previous tip on creating a project from example templates and increasing discoverability using persistent identifiers.
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Want to learn more about using OSF to support sharing and discovery of your research? Check out our upcoming OSF webinars!
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Getting Started on the OSF: A Hands-on Guide
March 18 at 11 am ET
This webinar explores a variety of use cases highlighting how OSF can support your open science practices and solve common problems many researchers face throughout the research lifecycle, while also providing a guided tour through key workflows and features.
Sign up
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OSF for Institutions: Tools and Insights for Academic Librarians and Research Support Staff
March 27 at 1 pm ET
Discover how OSF Institutions streamlines workflows, enhances collaboration for your research communities, and ensures compliance with institutional policies. Learn to track research activity, improve efficiency, and elevate your institution’s scholarly outputs.
Sign up
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The Community Pulse provides opportunities to participate in OSF feature testing, requests for new features, and engaging directly with exceptional OSF users and use cases. If you would like to participate in a future Community Pulse, please reach out to Daniel ( dan...@cos.io).
We value your input as we continuously strive to enhance our platform to better serve the research community. Please use the form below to submit your ideas and suggestions for new features or improvements to existing ones for OSF Project and Components. Your feedback is invaluable in shaping the future of OSF. Thank you for your contribution! In order to continue improving these services, we would very much appreciate your feedback through this short, 3-minute survey. Be on the lookout In the coming month we will sending out a feedback survey for all of the OSF and would love to hear your feedback! |
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Stay Connected
OSF is developed and maintained by the Center for Open Science (COS), a nonprofit in Charlottesville, Virginia, USA. COS works to transform the culture of scientific research by developing open research technologies, offering training resources, engaging with research communities, conducting metaresearch, and partnering for change with science funders, institutions, and policymakers.
We invite you to learn more about COS’s efforts and to discover how open science is evolving across many different research landscapes by registering for our newsletter. We respect your privacy—and your inbox! We won’t spam you, and we will never sell, rent, or trade your contact information. You may unsubscribe from all COS communications at any time.
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