OSF Changes | Center for Open Science

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What’s changing, what’s continuing, and where to find guidance

The Center for Open Science (COS) has a mission to increase openness, integrity, and trustworthiness of research. The Open Science Framework (OSF) opened in 2012, before COS’s incorporation as a charity in 2013, and is an instrumental part of advancing that mission.

We are preparing substantial changes to OSF that will reduce its functionality, focus OSF on its unique strengths, and move toward an integrated model with complementary services like Zenodo, a repository for researchers to share data, materials, and code hosted by CERN, for researchers to do open science. As part of that shift, the OSF Projects workflow – the part of the OSF used for project collaboration, file management, and storage – is being phased out as an active workspace. This change does not affect persistence and accessibility of existing public projects. We are very sorry for the disruption that this will cause for OSF users.

These changes are necessary because of a challenging funding environment for open research infrastructure. Important background about why we are making this change is available in a separate post. Our priorities are to support the long-term discovery and access of content publicly shared on OSF so it remains persistent, discoverable, and accessible, and to ease the transition for users to continue doing open science. Below, we provide an overview of the changes and link to support materials for users to prepare. For detailed guidance, including what to do based on how you use OSF Projects, visit our help guides.

Key Information:

Starting November 16, 2026 , no new projects or child components of existing projects can be created on OSF.

After February 19, 2027 , all public and private OSF projects will become read-only. You will continue to have the same access, and all links and DOI identifiers will continue to resolve indefinitely.

We anticipate removing private projects in the future, and we intend to provide 12 months advance notice of that decision.

How these changes affect common OSF uses

OSF use<br>What to know

My public OSF Project is complete and does not need updates.<br>No action is needed. Public projects will remain indefinitely on OSF as a read-only public record that is findable, viewable, and downloadable.

I use OSF Projects for work that still needs updates.<br>Move ongoing work to another appropriate repository, storage location, or workflow tool.

My OSF Project is private.<br>Review whether the content can be made public to remain on OSF or move it to another appropriate storage location.

I use OSF for preregistration and study planning, or sharing preprints.<br>No change. Continue using OSF Registries and community-run OSF Preprints workflows.

I need a place for future data, materials, code, or other outputs.<br>Use an appropriate repository or storage service, then link those outputs to OSF registrations or preprints where relevant.

For guidance and recommendations based on the situations above, visit the OSF Projects transition help guides. The guides will help you understand what applies to your OSF content, what actions may be needed, and where to find more detailed instructions, including guidance on choosing an appropriate repository.

If you use the OSF to help students learn about open science practices, you can continue to do so, though you may need to adjust how OSF fits into your course. We’ve developed some guidance to support instructors through those adjustments.

Why are these changes happening?

Continuing with the current flexible, expansive OSF would require raising $4-5M per year for the next several years. In the present funding environment, we cannot expect that level of annual support (please see this post for more details about why these changes are necessary).

It is our responsibility to proactively support the persistence of the public scholarly record. This means we need to be honest about our limitations and constraints.

We hope this move will allow COS to focus on the areas where it can provide the strongest service, while working alongside other specialized open infrastructures to strengthen a more sustainable system.

What will OSF be like after these changes?

As outlined in the product roadmap, OSF will focus on enabling researchers to prepare study plans and...