The Center for Open Science (COS) is excited to unveil a new and enhanced OSF add-ons (trusted third-party software that is integrated and/or interoperates with the OSF) interface, designed to make the OSF platform even more effective in managing and sharing research.
The OSF has long served as a hub for collaboration and research management, and the research lifecycle requires the use of multiple tools ideally interoperating to make it easy and efficient. These updates extend the platform's functionality and empower users to integrate their own tools directly into OSF, contributing to an open source community that is a more collaboratively developed, flexible, and interconnected research ecosystem.
The Challenge: A Fragmented Research Workflow
OSF’s add-ons—which include integrations with services like GitHub, Google Drive, and Zotero—are among the platform’s most popular features for researchers. These integrations allow users to connect their OSF projects to the tools they already rely on. Previously, the process of adding new integrations was resource-intensive, requiring direct involvement from COS developers which limited the number of available add-ons and new integrations.
Without an efficient way to integrate new services, management of research data and workflows became fragmented. Institutions, labs, and individual researchers often needed to find workarounds to connect their preferred tools to OSF, adding friction to the open science process and creating barriers to seamless collaboration. These challenges shaped COS’s approach to building a more open and scalable system—one that empowers users to contribute directly to OSF’s evolution and adaptability.
The Solution: Expanded Access to OSF Integrations
With this release, OSF’s add-ons become a standalone service—giving researchers, institutions, and developers the ability to integrate tools into OSF that extends the ecosystem of interoperable open scholarship tools and services. Through this enhancement, communities can incorporate a variety of tool integrations and APIs, expanding OSF’s capabilities without the need for direct integration into its core infrastructure.
This solution enhances integration capabilities and streamlines users' workflows by making it easier to add storage, citation management, cloud computing tools, and any other tools researchers use in their research workflow. It also lowers the technical barriers for integration; developers can work with a dedicated add-on service, making it more feasible for external teams to create and maintain integrations that meet their unique research needs.
What This Means for Researchers, Institutions, and Open Source Developers
For Researchers
- Streamlined workflow: Seamlessly manage data, citations, storage, and cloud computing in one place.
- Enhanced ecosystem: Interoperating tools and services reduce the burden on researchers who rely on a suite of decentralized services for conducting, sharing, and discovery research.
For Institutions
- Easier adoption: Universities and research organizations can integrate their preferred tools to support institutional and researcher needs.
- Greater sustainability: With a broader community contributing, OSF integrations can grow and evolve to support a self-sustaining ecosystem advancing open scholarship.
For Open-Source Developers
- A dedicated service to build on: Developers can contribute add-ons more easily, creating integrations that benefit the entire research community.
- A growing ecosystem: This change invites collaboration, innovation, and a more extensible OSF infrastructure.
Facilitating Open-Source Collaboration
This release marks a major milestone in our commitment to fostering an open-source community where contributors can expand OSF’s capabilities collaboratively, laying the foundation for a more dynamic and expansive platform. This work is supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF)’s Pathways to Enable Open-Source Ecosystems (POSE) program, which awarded a grant for COS initiatives that nurture the development of open-source ecosystems to drive pioneering innovations.
As open-source developers, institutions, and individual researchers contribute integrations tailored to their needs, the broader research community will benefit from increased connectivity and resource management capabilities.
Let’s work together to build a more connected, open, and collaborative research ecosystem. We’re looking to connect with developers and researchers interested in building new integrations. If you have ideas or want to collaborate, please fill out this form—we’d love to hear from you.
