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Well-structured and descriptive metadata is essential for maximizing the impact of your research. Using metadata effectively helps your work get discovered, reused, and cited—broadening its reach and long-term accessibility.
This month’s newsletter shares practical tips for describing, connecting, and preserving your research on OSF so others can discover, understand, and build upon it. Whether you’re preparing a dataset, preregistering a study, or sharing your final publication, these best practices will help your work remain discoverable and citable over time.
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Metadata and PID Best Practices
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Effective metadata helps you manage and share your work, while also making it easier for others to find, reuse, and cite. Use the tips below to help ensure that your OSF projects remain discoverable and citable over time.
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- Describe your work clearly: Fill out OSF’s metadata fields with detailed descriptions, relevant tags, and keywords. Use descriptive titles, abstracts, and funder information to ensure that your work is easily discoverable.
A crucial but often overlooked field is the resource type, which classifies the kind of materials in your project. This field is essential for DOI creation and enhanced search visibility.
- Connect your research outputs: Link your datasets, preprints, registrations, and final publications so others can follow the full story of your work.
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Use Persistent Identifiers: Persistent Identifiers (PIDs) are long-lasting, unique identifiers assigned to digital objects like research papers, datasets, or people. They ensure your work remains findable and accessible over time, even if its location or other metadata changes
Include DOIs, ORCID iDs, and award numbers in your OSF project to ensure proper attribution, funder compliance, and long-term discoverability.
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Introducing Linked Services: A Simpler Way to Connect Research Tools to OSF
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Our latest OSF release, Linked Services, introduces a convenient new way to highlight connections between your OSF projects and the other research tools you use.
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Linked Services allows you to connect your project to external research tools, starting with Dataverse. Additionally, you can include metadata to describe how the service relates to your project, helping collaborators and visitors better understand the broader context. More Linked Services will be added in the future, offering even more flexibility in how OSF supports research workflows. Learn more.
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The Data Detectives: A Game of Persistent Identifiers
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Put your metadata skills to the test! OSF Data Detectives is an interactive game where players take on the role of research support experts navigating the OSF to uncover a misplaced, critical piece of research.
As you explore “rooms” themed around real OSF communities, you’ll collect clues in the form of persistent identifiers: ORCID iDs (researchers), DOIs (research outputs), and ROR IDs (institutions). Use the clues to determine what research object went missing, who created it, and where it came from.
Designed to reflect real-world challenges in research discovery and attribution, this game offers a fun, hands-on way to learn how persistent identifiers make research findable, citable, and reusable.
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Q&A: Introducing the Simulation Studies Preregistration Template
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While widely used as a methodological approach, simulation studies have historically lacked strong norms or guidance around preregistration and reproducibility practices.
In response to this gap, a team of researchers has developed a template for preregistering simulation studies. Submitted through COS’s open call for community-designed templates, the Simulation Studies Template is now available on OSF. Read our Q&A.
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OSF Researcher Spotlights
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Q&A with Amélie Godefroidt: Building Trust & Transparency in Complex Research
Amélie Godefroidt is a Postdoctoral Researcher and Lecturer at the KU Leuven Centre for Research on Peace and Development in Belgium. Her research, which focuses on public responses to war and political violence, often engages with ethically and methodologically complex material and highly sensitive data. As she shared in our Q&A, detailed metadata and linked materials help balance discoverability with confidentiality.
"Open science practices can help by bringing more transparency to how we design studies, handle sensitive data, and interpret politically consequential findings," she explained.
In keeping with her open science advocacy, Godefroidt led a summer program at Ghent University called Open Science in the Social Sciences, and has made the course materials publicly available on OSF.
Read more.
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Connecting Large-Scale Research Through Metadata Best Practices
This OSF project by Fiona Kazarovytska and Roland Imhoff examines how people recall "morally problematic" historical events involving their national in-groups. Across five high-powered experiments in the U.S., UK, and Germany, the researchers tested whether memory performance differs when recalling in-group victimization versus perpetration.
The study’s transparent design is reflected in its rigorous methodology and metadata. Preregistrations, data, materials, and code are linked in one OSF project, with persistent identifiers (including a DOI and ORCIDs) supporting attribution and reuse. Descriptive titles and a comprehensive abstract further enhance discoverability.
This project demonstrates how well-structured metadata and connected research components can enhance the impact and visibility of complex, multi-study work.
Explore the project.
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For more useful resources to support the sharing and discovery of your research, check out our upcoming free webinars!
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Collaboration and Stewardship Across the Research Lifecycle at VUA
September 10
9 AM ET
Find out how Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam is collaborating across departments to support open science across the entire research lifecycle. Research support staff including librarians, data stewards, and systems managers will share efforts to meet open science goals with support, services, and infrastructure.
Sign up
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STAPLE: Infrastructure for Open, Transparent, and Collaborative Science
September 17
11 AM ET
This webinar will introduce the vision behind STAPLE (Science Tracking Across the Project Lifespan) and demonstrate how it supports the full research lifecycle. We’ll provide a hands-on walkthrough of how to create a project, assign tasks and roles, and track contributions over time. Key features—including project metadata, template sharing, and platform integrations—will be demonstrated, along with a preview of what’s ahead on the development roadmap. Attendees will leave with a clear understanding of how STAPLE can support their own work.
Sign up
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Libraries and Open Science: Overlaps and Gaps with the Research Community
October 7 at 1 PM ET
This panel discussion will feature representatives from library and research communities, discussing their different perspectives on open science support. This webinar will look at efforts to begin bridging gaps and develop a new shared understanding of open science across campus.
Sign up
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Getting Started on the OSF: A Hands-On Guide
Second Monday of each month
11 AM ET
Join our monthly webinars to explore use cases that highlight how OSF can support your open science practices and solve common problems many researchers face throughout the research lifecycle, along with a guided tour of key workflows and features.
Sign up
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OSF Institutions for Librarians and Research Support Staff
First Thursday of each month
1 PM ET
Register for this monthly webinar to learn more about OSF Institutions, a flexible workspace designed to support librarians, research data managers, and professionals who assist researchers across disciplines and institutions.
Sign up
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We are always looking for volunteers to help give feedback on the newest updates of the OSF. If you are interested in providing feedback in the form of surveys and focus groups, please fill out our contact enrollment form below and we will be in touch with opportunities to get involved!
Sign up form here. |
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OSF is developed and maintained by the Center for Open Science (COS), a nonprofit organization. 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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