The landscape of cloud-based data storage solutions is changing, and many researchers are faced with challenges around how to store, share and promote their data and projects. During this period, members of the CWRU community should remember to take advantage of Case Western Reserve University’s institutional membership with the Open Science Framework (OSF).
OSF is a free, open-source data storage and project management platform designed to support researchers throughout the entire project lifecycle. With OSF, users can create an unlimited number of storage spaces online to keep data accessible, organized and, if desired, discoverable.
All members of the CWRU community can access OSF with their CWRU Single Sign-On credentials and begin uploading files and data associated with their research and projects. Users can assign DOIs (digital object identifiers) to any files or datasets uploaded to OSF to amplify research visibility and connect data to publications. A project on OSF can also be linked to a user’s accounts such as Drive, Box and Github to provide a single platform for sharing and working with data in one place.
OSF users can invite collaborators to their OSF project to provide curated access to research data or files stored on linked platforms, and generate citations for datasets. Users can also choose to affiliate projects or their components with CWRU, giving them a highly visible spot on the university’s institutional OSF landing page. By making a project or its components public and assigning tags to files, data stored on OSF can be more easily discovered by search engines and affiliated with a researcher’s academic profile.
For more information on OSF, visit the associated research guide or contact the Freedman Center for Digital Scholarship at freedmancenter@case.edu with any questions.