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Open science works best when your research outputs are connected. OSF helps you create a central hub that links datasets, study plans, analysis scripts, preprints, and publications—making it easier for collaborators to follow your process and for others to understand and reuse your work.
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Why Connecting Outputs Matters
The research lifecycle encompasses all stages of a project, from initial idea to final reporting, publication, and data sharing. Linking outputs across these stages makes research more transparent and trustworthy, helps collaborators stay aligned, and ensures materials aren’t siloed or lost.
This month’s newsletter highlights practical ways to use OSF to enhance transparency, collaboration, and long-term impact across the entire research lifecycle.
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Tips for Building a Connected and Accessible OSF Project
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- Create a project structure: Use components to group related materials by stage—e.g., design, data collection, analysis, and writing. This makes your project easier to navigate and manage for both you and your collaborators. To get started quickly, you can use a public project as a template by duplicating its structure—check out examples on OSF.
- Document and share your plans: Preregister your research plan to clearly distinguish between planned and exploratory analyses. Preregistration can strengthen the credibility and transparency of findings, reduce bias, and help readers increase the credibility of your results. OSF makes it easy to locate preregistrations alongside related datasets and preprints, helping others follow your workflow from start to finish.
- Make outputs discoverable and citable: When you publicly upload data, code, or materials, generate DOIs so that others can cite and reuse them. Add clear, descriptive metadata so your outputs can be found in searches and understood in context. If you’re using external tools (e.g., Dataverse), connect them through OSF’s Linked Services.
- Link research outputs: Connect datasets, preregistrations, preprints, and publications across your OSF content.
- Align registrations and projects: Link your preregistration or registration to your OSF project so your plans sit alongside data, code, and materials.
- Link outputs to registrations: Attach datasets, code, and study materials directly to your registration or preregistration to show how plans connect to results.
- Connect preprints and publications: Add your project or registration to your preprint, and link peer-reviewed articles with DOIs so readers can follow your research from planning through publication.
- Sync with ORCID: Automatically update your ORCID record through OSF so all contributions are correctly attributed and discoverable.
- Collaborate across the lifecycle: OSF supports flexible contributor permissions, allowing you to add and adjust collaborator access as your project moves through different stages of research.
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Share Your Research Journey with Lifecycle Journal
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Lifecycle Journal offers a new and innovative publication model that promotes sharing research outputs at every stage—from planning and data collection to analysis and dissemination—while supporting open, community-led evaluations.
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By giving a complete view of the research process and inviting feedback, Lifecycle Journal aims to transform the vision and value of a journal as an effective facilitator of knowledge production and self-correction.
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Researcher Q&A: Don Moore, PhD
Don Moore, PhD, a professor at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, uses OSF to share preregistrations, data, materials, and code—making his research on overconfidence more transparent, reproducible, and discoverable. By connecting all aspects of his projects in OSF, Moore demonstrates how lifecycle open science can improve collaboration and ensure that research outputs are accessible for future reuse.
In our Q&A, Moore discusses how OSF supports his work, shares new approaches for preregistering analyses on rich field datasets, and offers advice to researchers just starting out in open science.
Read more.
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JMU Libraries: Open Science Best Practices on OSF
James Madison University (JMU), an OSF Institutions member, promotes open science practices across all stages of research by offering comprehensive OSF guidance and training to its research community.
JMU Libraries offer resources, templates, and librarian expertise to help researchers prepare their projects for public sharing and long-term transparency, including a Data Management Toolkit hosted on OSF.
JMU also highlights projects from its community on its OSF Institutions hub, helping others discover materials and findings across the research lifecycle.
Read more.
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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
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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It Takes a Campus: Building Cross-Campus Collaborations to Support Research Computing and Data Needs
November 20
3 PM ET
This panel brings together four institutions that developed cross-campus models to meet changing research and computing data needs, creating services that leverage a range of skills to help researchers navigate increasingly complicated landscapes. Panelists will share their experiences with service development, challenges, opportunities, and lessons learned.
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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