The Center for Open Science Releases Another Branded Preprint Service With BITSS

Mar. 7, 2017

Charlottesville, VA

The Center for Open Science (COS) is pleased to announce that it has added another branded service to its open source preprints service, OSF Preprints. The new service, launched with the Berkeley Initiative for Transparency in the Social Sciences (BITSS) provides an interdisciplinary archive of articles focused on improving research transparency and reproducibility. A more formal blog post about the new service can be found on the BITSS site.

The new BITSS Preprints is built on COS’s flagship platform, the Open Science Framework, which helps researchers design and manage their project workflow, data storage, DOIs, and collaboration. COS has leveraged that platform to help those researchers discover new research as it happens and to receive quick feedback on their own research prior to publication.

The branded preprints platform from COS provides organizations that want to launch their own preprints service an easy, robust, and stable solution. The platform can be configured to match their brand, editorial focus, licensing requirements, and taxonomy. Once configured, a new service can be up and indexing new preprints in a matter of days. COS has already created branded services in agriculture, psychology, sociology, and engineering.

Over 2 million preprints have been already indexed from a variety of sources and can be accessed by selecting a subject of interest, entering specific search terms, or browsing the preprints most recently added to the service. Preprint contributors are also encouraged to include links to their research, if available. If the preprint is associated with an existing OSF project, that project can also be easily accessed and explored. OSF Preprints uses SHARE to aggregate search results from a variety of other preprint providers like arXiv, bioRXiv, PeerJ, CogPrints and others into its archive.

"We're genuinely excited to partner with COS on launching this interdisciplinary archive for exciting research on new methods, tools, and best practices to make social science more open and credible," said Edward Miguel, Professor of Economics at UC Berkeley and Faculty Director of CEGA and BITSS.

“Science and research are evolving towards improved transparency and reproducibility of results across many disciplines,” said Sara Bowman, COS’s Product Manager. “BITSS’s commitment to launching their own open preprints service confirms and encourages this trend.”

 

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About Center for Open Science

The Center for Open Science (COS) is a non-profit technology startup founded in 2013 with a mission to increase openness, integrity, and reproducibility of scientific research. COS pursues this mission by building communities around open science practices, supporting metascience research, and developing and maintaining free, open source software tools. The Open Science Framework (OSF), COS’s flagship product, is a web application that connects and supports the research workflow, enabling scientists to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of their research. Researchers use the OSF to collaborate, document, archive, share, and register research projects, materials, and data. Learn more at cos.io and osf.io.

 

About BITSS

Established by the Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA) in 2012, the Berkeley Initiative for Transparency in the Social Sciences (BITSS) promotes openness and integrity in the social sciences through its consensus-building, education and training, and research activities. Its long-term goal is to improve the quality and credibility of social science research and strengthen the scientific base that drives public policy.

 

Contacts for the Center for Open Science

Media: Rusty Speidel: rusty@cos.io | 434-284-3403

Starting a Branded Preprint Service: Matt Spitzer: matt.spitzer@cos.io

Web: https://cos.io/preprints

 

Contact for BITSS

Media: Jennifer Sturdy, Director: jennifer.sturdy@berkeley.edu | 510.642.4361

Web: http://www.bitss.org/ | https://osf.io/preprints/bitss

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