In a change that will affect many VCU researchers, Open Science Framework (OSF)--a service provided through the Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation and supported by VCU Libraries – will sunset its “Projects” research workflow management functionality and data archiving. 

Previously published OSF Projects and archived data will transition to read-only, while OSF Registries and OSF Preprints will not be affected by the change in services.

More specifically:

• Starting November 16, 2026, no new projects or child components of existing projects can be created.
• After February 19, 2027, all projects will be read-only. After that date, users will no longer be able to add, edit or update project content. 

VCU Libraries recommended and supported data archiving in OSF for more than ten years. A key reason for that support is that OSF offered a robust preservation plan for archival open sharing of data. OSF is activating their preservation plan, which ensures that existing publicly shared data will continue to be available. However, because OSF will stop accepting new data for sharing and preservation, VCU Libraries will no longer recommend it as a repository to use in researchers’ Data Management and Sharing Plans (DMSPs or DMPs) in research grants. 

Because of the critical importance of discipline-neutral data repositories, VCU Libraries is developing recommendations and resources for researchers to transition to another funder-friendly option. Support materials for DMSP authoring and data compliance will be posted to the OSF guide and funder-specific research guides in early November. 

To respond to immediate research needs VCU Libraries has identified three alternative, established, free data repositories.These recommended choices will take small- or midsized data files in any format or discipline. Faculty should consider these NIH- and NSF-compliant options for proposed Data Management and Sharing Plans or for use in grants’ annual reports: 

• Dataverse at Harvard 
• Figshare
• Zenodo 

The VCU Libraries data services team is working to formalize a long-term response to this change in OSF’s focus, including support and advice for alternative solutions. “We will communicate the results of that process to the VCU research community as soon as possible and we will post updates to this online OSF guide,” said Research Data Librarian Nina Exner, Ph.D.

The Center for Open Science, which operates OSF, is still committed to the persistence of the scholarly record. Publicly shared data, materials, code and other files stored in public OSF Projects will remain viewable and downloadable. As part of this transition, the Center is working to maintain links, GUIDs, and DOI identifiers for public project records and to support continued discoverability through OSF Search.

OSF-based preprints, preregistrations, and registrations on OSF will be unaffected. As the Center for Open Science stated in their Project Transition Overview: “Rather than serving as the place where all research materials are stored, OSF will focus on helping researchers connect study plans to related data, materials, code and other outputs that may live in specialized repositories or other systems.”  

Researchers who need support with data archiving or updating a data management plan, please email libdatahelp@vcu.edu or contact Research Data Librarian Nina Exner, Ph.D., at nexner@vcu.edu.