OSF Data Availability Statement

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OSF data is generated by OSF users doing actions in their public projects, components, registrations, and preprints. All OSF users agree to the Terms of Use, and Privacy Policy.


The dataset, comprised of all public scholarship contributed by authors to OSF,  can be found on OSF, a free and open-source research collaboration and management platform that launched in 2012.


The public OSF dataset can be accessed through the OSF JSON API, which can be found here, which uses the JSON API v1 specification and is licensed Apache 2.0. With documentation for use found here.


OSF leverages key metadata to describe public scholarship and utilizes a unique metadata model that facilitates FAIRness (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) as well as enabling connections across the research lifecycle. The OSF Metadata Profile, which uses many common metadata standards, describes the community vocabularies and persistent identifiers that the OSF uses, the relationships available between metadata fields, the metatags used to enable enhanced web discovery, and an overall map of the metadata implementation. 


All public OSF data will be shared and preserved, and is necessary to meet OSF’s commitments to the availability and persistence of the data on OSF. This public data is necessary to provide the activity logs in the OSF user interface. Data made public on OSF is supported by the COS preservation policy:


COS established a $400,000 preservation fund for hosted data in the event that COS had to close. If activated, the preservation fund will preserve and maintain read access to hosted public data. This fund is sufficient for many years of read access hosting at present costs beyond the current COS hosting. COS will incorporate the growth of the preservation fund as part of its funding model as data storage scales. Public link to the COS preservation policy: https://help.osf.io/article/546-getting-started-faq-s


If you have questions regarding data availability or are seeking help to make your own data available on OSF, reach out to the OSF Support Team at support@osf.io.


For guidance on how to incorporate OSF into your data management and sharing plans (DMSP), visit the Data Management and Sharing Plans and OSF support page.


This document is also available at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/CNWJ3.

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