Navigate the Dashboard
Get to Know Your Dashboard
When you sign in to the OSF, you land on your OSF dashboard. The dashboard is your starting point for core research workflows — it lets you begin a registration, link your research materials, share a preprint, and search across OSF, all from one place. From here you can also find and search your existing projects.
Start a research workflow
The workflow launcher at the top of your Dashboard is your starting point for the primary OSF research workflows. Choose the workflow that matches your research activity and click its button to begin.
| Study Plans | Document your research questions, methods, and analysis plans before you analyze data. This documentation (i.e. preregistration) timestamps your plan and strengthens the credibility of your research. |
| Research Materials | Link datasets, code, materials, and other outputs from your research in a trusted public repository to your study plans and preprints on OSF to connect them together to make visible the lifecycle of your research activity. |
| Preprints | Publish the outcomes of your research with an open access preprint, and connect the preprint to your study plan. |
| Search OSF | Search research published on OSF from others via enhanced metadata and filters. |
Add a Study Plan
This workflow takes you directly to adding a new registration on the OSF
Selecting “Add Study Plan” takes you directly to Creating a Registration
Store Research Materials
Link datasets, code, materials, and other outputs from your research in a trusted public repository to your study plans and preprints on OSF to connect them together to make visible the lifecycle of your research activity.
When you select Store Research Materials from the workflow launcher, you land on a page that helps you choose where to deposit your data, code, and materials
The materials your study produces — datasets, code, protocols, and other outputs — are valuable long after a project ends. Depositing them in a trusted repository, rather than leaving them on a personal drive or a lab server, protects that value and extends the reach of your work. OSF encourages the use of repositories that align with FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable ) standards (read our blog) so that your work is:
- Findable and citable. Each deposit is assigned a persistent identifier, such as a DOI, so your outputs can be cited in their own right and located reliably even if their web address changes. That means you get credit for the materials you produce, not just the paper.
- Preserved for the long term. Trusted repositories are built to keep your outputs accessible for years, reducing the risk of losing work to a failed drive, a departing lab member, or a forgotten folder.
- Reusable by others. Rich metadata and clear licensing help other researchers discover your outputs, understand how they can be reused, and build on your work — which is a core aim of open scholarship.
- Connected to your research. Once your materials have a persistent link, you can tie them back to your study plan and preprint on OSF, so the full arc of your research — plan, materials, and findings — stays linked and discoverable in one place.
Choosing a repository at this stage keeps your outputs findable, citable, and preserved from the start, rather than something you scramble to organize at publication.
Go to your projects
The dashboard displays your 10 most recently updated projects and components. Use the page numbers and arrows to navigate through the list of projects.
Add Preprint
Selecting Add Preprint will take you to to the Add a Preprint workflow. this will start the process of submitting a Preprint to one of OSF's Community Moderated Preprint services.
Go to Search
Selecting Go to Search from the Workflow launcher takes you to OSF Search. For more information on using OSF Search see this guide.
Go to your "My Projects" page
You can navigate directly to your "My Projects" page from this dashboard as well.
From your "My Projects" page you can then easily download content for any project or component, see this guide.
Search and Filter your projects
To search through your projects, type into the textbox at the top of the list.
The results will automatically appear below the textbox.
