OSF Preprints

OSF Preprints is the preprint-hosting and discovery service built and operated by the Open Science Framework (OSF), the free, open-source platform run by the Center for Open Science (COS). For a research administrator, the useful distinction is that OSF is not a single, monolithic thing: it is project-management infrastructure (private storage, collaboration, versioning), a registries service for preregistration, and a preprints service, all built on the same underlying software and reachable from the same osf.io domain. OSF Preprints is specifically the last of those — the part that handles publicly posted, citable, DOI-bearing manuscripts.

COS launched OSF Preprints on December 5, 2016, alongside three inaugural branded, discipline-specific services built on the same infrastructure: PsyArXiv (psychology), SocArXiv (social science), and engrXiv (engineering). This branded-server model is the feature that most distinguishes OSF Preprints from a single disciplinary server like arXiv or bioRxiv: rather than posting everything under one generic OSF name, a research community, society, or institution can launch its own named, separately moderated preprint server — with its own branding, editorial scope, and taxonomy — on the shared OSF Preprints backend, without building hosting infrastructure from scratch. COS’s own materials describe a new branded service as able to be indexing preprints within days of setup. Community servers of this kind (in addition to PsyArXiv and SocArXiv) include other discipline- or region-specific archives; each is independently operated and moderated by its own community or steering group even though COS supplies the platform. (Note: EarthArXiv, an early example of this model for earth science, migrated to an independent, California Digital Library-hosted Janeway platform in October 2020 and is no longer part of the OSF federation — see CASRAI’s EarthArXiv guide for the full history.)

Aggregator function

Beyond hosting its own and its branded partners’ content, OSF Preprints also functions as a discovery layer across the wider preprint landscape: it uses the SHARE metadata-harvesting platform to aggregate search results from external preprint providers — arXiv, bioRxiv, PeerJ Preprints, and others — into a single searchable interface at osf.io/preprints. This matters for a research office building a comprehensive preprint inventory or literature landscape: a paper being findable through OSF Preprints’ search does not mean it is hosted on OSF infrastructure or subject to OSF’s own screening; it may simply be indexed metadata pointing back to its actual home server.

Identifiers and metadata

Preprints posted directly to OSF Preprints or a branded community server each receive a persistent identifier and a DOI registered through Crossref, distinct from any DOI the eventual peer-reviewed version of record will carry. This is the detail that matters most for a CRIS or research-information workflow: an OSF Preprints DOI needs to be captured and, once the peer-reviewed article is published, linked forward to the version-of-record DOI rather than left as an orphaned or duplicate record. See CASRAI’s guide on choosing a preprint server for the broader set of criteria (screening process, withdrawal handling, version linking) that apply across preprint servers generally, OSF Preprints included.

Screening and moderation

As with any preprint server, OSF Preprints and its branded partner services perform baseline screening for non-scholarly material rather than peer review — posting does not imply editorial endorsement of a manuscript’s findings. Moderation practices and screening thoroughness vary somewhat by branded server, since each is operated by its own community/steering group rather than centrally by COS.

A note on scope changes

COS periodically adjusts what the generalist OSF Preprints server itself accepts, separately from its branded community servers, which continue operating independently. A research office relying on OSF Preprints for a specific discipline should check the current submission status of the relevant branded server (or the generalist server) directly on osf.io/preprints or the OSF support documentation rather than assuming past availability still holds, since this is exactly the kind of operational detail that changes without necessarily being reflected in older secondary write-ups.

Related terms

• Open Science Framework (OSF) — the broader platform OSF Preprints is one service within.
• Preprint — the general research-output category.
• Pre-registration — OSF’s separate registries service, often confused with preprints because both live on osf.io.

References

• Center for Open Science, “The Center for Open Science Releases a Comprehensive, Open Source Preprints Solution,” cos.io news, December 2016.
• COS, OSF Preprints product page, cos.io/products/osf-preprints.
• OSF Support, “Preprint FAQs,” help.osf.io/article/230-preprint-faqs.