What is OSF?
Open Science Framework (OSF) is a free and open-source project management tool that makes it easy to collaborate throughout a project's lifecycle.
With OSF you can manage, store, and share documents, datasets, and other information. You can also publish your work to share it with a wider audience.
Getting Started
- Harvard affiliates can sign into OSF with HarvardKey credentials.
- Choose “Sign Up,” then “Sign up through institution,” and select Harvard University from the drop down menu.
- When prompted, enter your HarvardKey credentials.
- If you are new to OSF, a new account will be created for you.
- If you already have an OSF account and wish to affiliate your research with Harvard, please read this help guide to merge your accounts. Or add an alternate email address to your existing account.
- Use the OSF for Harvard Portal to affiliate your public projects with Harvard, view public projects with which others at Harvard are involved, and make serendipitous connections for future collaborations.
Things to Know
- Built-in project management tools support all stages of coursework, research, and other scholarly projects.
- You can upload anything — datasets, documents, slides, readings, syllabi, datasets, codebases — and create unique identifiers for each.
- Easy-to-use dashboard allows you to manage settings like version control, public/private sharing, and 3rd party integrations.
- Collaborate with colleagues around the world, whether or not they are at Harvard, and access your research after you leave.
- OSF is recognized by major funding bodies (e.g., NIH, NSF, etc.) as a data repository for DMS Plans (data management and sharing plans).
Example Projects
- Demographic Variation in Religious/Spiritual Connection Across 22 Countries: A Cross-National Analysis: Preregistration for a five‑year longitudinal project aiming to identify predictors of human flourishing.
- Research, Teaching, and Learning GIS Collections: Geospatial datasets and associated project data from the Harvard Map Collection.
- Research Data Management Training: Presentation slides and materials from the The Harvard Library Research Data Management Seminar Series.
- Psychology Reproducibility Project: Multi-institution research collaboration, including Harvard faculty members.
- Ventral Striatum is Preferentially Correlated with the Salience Network Including Regions in Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex: Data and code supporting a related article.
Explore all Harvard-affiliated research, preprints, and registrations on the OSF for Harvard Portal.
Need Help?
Check out the OSF Support page for questions about getting started, account and security, add-ons and API integrations, FAQs, and more.