Created by the Center for Open Science, the Open Science Framework (OSF) is an invaluable tool in the research transparency movement. It’s a platform for researchers to post their pre-analysis plans, data, code, or other information relevant to past, ongoing, and proposed studies. It’s a great tool for managing, organizing, and documenting all aspects of a project. As of January 2018, there are over 20,000 projects available for the public to see.

The OSF integrates well with a variety of other software, too, including R and Git, so you can edit straight on the platform. It also retains all versions of codes and documents so that you never lose important information. It allows you to collaborate with other researchers on projects and choose to make some or all aspects of a project open to the public so that others can also see how your posted documents have changed over time. OSF also allows you elect to make each component of your projects public or private so you can collaborate with just your team until your ready to make your research materials open.

For this activity, we recommend that you register an account on the OSF. While registering is not absolutely critical to your ability to complete this activity, if you are engaged in scientific research, we highly recommend registering and using the OSF to share your pre-analysis plans, data, materials, code, or working papers, as well as to collaborate with other researchers. You can register by taking the following steps:

1. Visit the OSF at http://osf.io/
2. Click “Sign Up” in the top right corner,
3. Click “Create account” towards the bottom of the page.
4. Enter your information.