How Sustainable Open Infrastructure Is Transforming the Future of Open Research
By Terry Foor
Editor’s Note: Today’s guest blog post was written by Terry Foor, Director of Development at the Center for Open Science (COS).
The future of research depends not just on the breakthroughs scientists achieve, but also the systems that make those breakthroughs possible. Every discovery rests on a network of tools and infrastructure—yet too often, these are locked behind paywalls, tied to proprietary restrictions, or designed without long-term sustainability. The result? Research becomes fragmented, inaccessible, and constrained by the very barriers that open science aims to eliminate.
Science flourishes through transparency, reproducibility, and collaboration—principles that have always underpinned credible, trustworthy knowledge. But the technologies researchers depend on can sometimes hold them back rather than propel them forward. While proprietary platforms can be useful, they often limit access, hinder collaboration, and raise unnecessary barriers to participation.
This is where open research infrastructure comes in. Open research infrastructure refers to the foundational tools, platforms, and services that support the research lifecycle—from planning and data collection to analysis, publication, and preservation. These tools are developed, governed, and maintained in ways that are open, transparent, and community-driven. They ensure that the pipelines of knowledge creation are not owned or controlled by any one company but remain community assets that evolve with the needs of researchers.
Examples include widely used platforms such as the Open Science Framework (OSF), which supports open practices throughout the entire research process in one place; arXiv and bioRxiv, which enable free and early dissemination of research; Zenodo, a CERN-based repository for sharing datasets and publications; ORCID, a persistent researcher identifier that integrates globally; Dataverse Project, an open-source data repository platform; and Crossref, which maintains open metadata and DOIs to ensure research outputs remain discoverable and citable.
More than a technical preference, open research infrastructure is a commitment to accountability and a safeguard for scientific integrity. By opening the systems themselves, we enable research practices that are sustainable and aligned with the long-term interests of the global research community.
A True Public Good for Research
Among the many examples of open research infrastructure, one platform stands out for its breadth, impact, and vision. The Open Science Framework (OSF) brings the ideals of openness and community-driven development into practice by providing researchers with a single, integrated hub for managing the entire research lifecycle.
The Open Science Framework (OSF) embodies this vision of open infrastructure. OSF is a free-to-use, open-source platform that connects the entire research lifecycle. With OSF, researchers can plan projects, preregister studies, collaborate with teams, share datasets, manage workflows, and publish outputs—all in one place.
OSF is used by a wide spectrum of the research community: from early-career students learning open research practices, to large labs coordinating international collaborations, to universities and funders building infrastructure for reproducibility. Today, more than 900,000 users worldwide rely on OSF to make their work more transparent, rigorous, and collaborative.
To sustain the foundations and expand the capabilities of OSF, the Center for Open Science (COS) is excited to launch our new initiative, the OSF Open Source Ecosystem. While OSF has always been open source, this program is a concerted effort to engage research communities who use OSF and co-develop integration solutions that meet their needs. By facilitating community-driven development, the OSF Open Source Ecosystem will empower researchers, developers, and institutions to shape the future of open research infrastructure together.
OSF’s Distinct Approach to Open Source
Unlike many open-source projects focused on computational analysis—such as statistical packages or machine learning libraries—OSF is not simply a tool for analyzing data. It is infrastructure for managing the research process itself. That distinction matters.
OSF can help researchers integrate and share every aspect of how research is designed, executed, and evaluated. The codebase underpins workflows for preregistration, version control, data sharing, and integration with a wide range of services (GitHub, Dropbox, ORCID, and more). By opening this infrastructure to a wider developer community through this new Open Source Ecosystem program, COS is aiming to ensure that research workflows can evolve in step with the needs of researchers across dozens of fields and scholarly disciplines.
Making the Impossible Possible
The new program will expand participation by open-source software engineers in continued development of OSF, making it easier for researchers and institutions to contribute features, integrations, and improvements. The OSF Open Source Ecosystem will enable enhancements like:
- Streamlining preregistration workflows, reducing administrative burdens and helping researchers commit to study designs with confidence.
- Customizing integrations with institutional repositories so that universities can seamlessly connect their local systems to global research infrastructure.
- Improving data sharing tools to make it easier to publish large datasets with proper metadata, licensing, and discoverability.
- Enhancing collaboration features to support multi-team projects across borders and disciplines, lowering barriers to open science worldwide.
Learn more about what our first cohort of project teams has already accomplished!
Taking OSF to the Next Level: Recording Now Available
COS hosted a webinar-style virtual event on Friday, October 3, 2025 at 12 PM ET, showcasing the new OSF Open Source Ecosystem. The virtual event allowed viewers to hear from OSF user-researchers, our partner developers, and COS staff about what types of open research techniques will become easier for users to implement, examples of collaborative projects already underway, and how you can help us fuel more open science innovation.
Watch the full recording here.
The event was intended primarily for those who wish to support program financial resourcing, but anyone interested in learning more about the program is welcome to watch.
By creating a vibrant, sustainable ecosystem around OSF’s open-source code, we are building more than software—we are creating the infrastructure for the next generation of open, transparent, and trustworthy science.
Discover open access articles about open source frameworks on the AGOSR database:
FLR: an open-source framework for the evaluation and development of management strategies
An open-source machine learning framework for global analyses of parton distributions
Open Source in Web-Based Applications
Cloud Management with Open Source Tools
