Aaron Wolen

[osfr](https://github.com/ropensci/osfr) provides a (*hopefully*)
convenient R interface to [OSF](https://osf.io) (Open Science Framework,
<https://www.osf.io>), a free service for managing research developed by
the [Center for Open Science](https://www.cos.io) (COS).

osfr completed its rOpenSci peer-review earlier this year and has been
[available on CRAN](https://cran.r-project.org/package=osfr) since
February. Throughout its development and since its release I've had
numerous conversations with members of the R community about OSF (and
osfr), and through these interactions a couple recurring patterns
emerged. First, it seems that many R users have heard of OSF but
relatively few have first-hand experience with it. Second, I'm often
asked how OSF compares to GitHub and whether it would even be useful for
someone who already uses GitHub to manage their research.

In a future post I'll highlight some features of osfr and demonstrate
how it can help form the basis of efficient and inclusive research
workflows. However, before you can extract any value from osfr, you need
to be an OSF user first. And so, I wanted to take this opportunity to
provide a little background about OSF, what it offers, how it differs
from something like GitHub, and where it might fit into your workflow as
an R/GitHub user.

Before diving in, I want to acknowledge that OSF is a multi-faceted
product, and includes a number of services under its umbrella, including
things like [pre-print
servers](https://www.cos.io/our-products/osf-preprints) and a [research
registration
repository](https://www.cos.io/our-products/osf-registries), which,
while incredibly cool and noteworthy, fall outside the scope of this
post, which focuses on project management.

### Is OSF like GitHub?

It's not a perfect analogy as the two services differ in important ways
that I'll discuss below, but if you're already familiar with GitHub it
certainly provides a useful mental model to get a sense of what OSF
offers. For example, like GitHub, OSF is a hosted project management
service organized around project repositories that can be private,
shared with select collaborators, or made publicly accessible. OSF
projects also include cloud storage for uploading project files,
automatic file versioning, markdown-based wikis for documentation and/or
shared task lists, traffic analytics to assess impact and engagement,
and they can even be "forked" by other users.

### How are they different?

Ultimately, the two services are different because they were designed
for different purposes: facilitating software development vs
facilitating scientific research. And while the line separating these
endeavors is often blurry, there are some fundamental differences. For
example, supporting research requires accommodating files of all shapes
and sizes, whereas software (generally) comes in one flavor: plain text.
Furthermore, GitHub is intended for software developers, an inherently
technical user base, whereas OSF is designed to accommodate users with a
much wider range of computational expertise. And so, while OSF does
share a number of features in common with GitHub, they're often
implemented quite differently to better serve OSF's research-centric
goals and users.

One notable example is how OSF handles file versions. While OSF
automatically stores all previous versions of files as new ones are
uploaded, it's not a true version control system in the sense of
something like `git`, which intelligently stores only the *differences*
between file versions. On OSF, the latest version of a file is simply
the last uploaded version, regardless of how much it actually changed.
However, what OSF's versioning feature lacks in power, it makes up for
in accessibility. Creating a new version on OSF simply requires dragging
and dropping an updated file onto the project's file browser, a much
more manageable procedure for users who may not be familiar with the
command line, let alone `git`.

### Features designed for research

Next, let's look at some of the key features unique to OSF that are
purpose-built for the management and dissemination of research.

#### Integrations

First, I want to point out that adopting OSF does not require upending
your current workflows or abandoning services you're already happy with
because OSF directly integrates with many popular services through its
[add-ons
system](https://help.osf.io/hc/en-us/sections/360003623833-Storage-add-ons).
So although OSF provides its own free cloud storage, if you're already
using Dropbox, Google Drive, S3, GitHub, etc, you can simply add the
relevant folder/bucket/repo from that service to your OSF project. Each
of these linked locations will show up in your OSF project's file
browser right alongside OSF's cloud storage bucket. You can continue
using the services just as you did before (syncing files with Dropbox,
editing docs on Google Drive, etc). Adding these services to OSF
provides the benefit of a unified portal to all of your materials,
allowing you (and any OSF collaborator with proper permissions) to
manage them and track their activity in one place.

#### Storage

OSF provides a generous amount of cloud storage for projects, limiting
only the size of individual files to \< 5Gb. This allows you to store
all of your project materials on OSF, even large data files.
Furthermore, COS takes [data preservation
seriously](https://help.osf.io/hc/en-us/articles/360019737894-FAQs#what-if-you-run-out-of-funding-what-happens-to-my-data),
guaranteeing that, in the unlikely event that COS ceases to exist, your
files will remain accessible for at least another 50 years from the day
it closes its doors.

#### Citations

OSF projects are designed to be easily citable. Every OSF project is
assigned a conveniently short URL that comprises a globally unique
identifier (GUID); for example, the Psychology Reproducibility Project's
OSF page is reachable at <https://osf.io/ezcuj>, where `ezcuj` is its
GUID. The GUIDs are immutable and permanent, so you can feel confident
sharing an OSF URL, or even including it in a publication, knowing that,
as long the project exists and is publicly accessible, it won't become
another tragic dead link. You can also [generate a
DOI](https://help.osf.io/hc/en-us/articles/360019931013-Create-DOIs) for
any public project---no third-party service needed. OSF also strives to
make it as convenient as possible for others to cite your work by
prominently placing a citation widget on every project page that
auto-generates citations in any CSL-supported format.

#### Archives

OSF also provides a registration service to create snapshots of a
project's current state. From [OSF's
docs](https://help.osf.io/hc/en-us/articles/360019930893-Register-Your-Project):

> A registration is a frozen, time-stamped copy of an OSF project.
> Registrations cannot be edited or deleted.

This way, if you decide to include an OSF project in a publication to
share materials and/or data, using the registered project's URL ensures
the link always points to the exact set of files exactly as they were at
the time of publication.

#### Accessibility

Perhaps OSF's greatest super-power is that all of its functionality is
available through a user-friendly point and click interface with a
relatively shallow learning curve. As mentioned earlier, OSF is designed
for a much wider audience of users that aren't necessarily
computationally expert. By significantly lowering the barrier to entry,
OSF makes it possible for researchers of all technical abilities to
improve their research workflows and follow best practices for
reproducibility.

### How does this help you?

As someone who uses R (and possibly GitHub), chances are you already
have efficient workflows in place for common tasks like sharing and
versioning files. But even the best workflows are only as efficient as
your least compliant collaborator. As much as we'd all love to write our
manuscripts in version controlled RMarkdown documents and receive edits
from collaborators via pull requests, the reality is, in a world still
dominated by email and Microsoft Office, that's rarely a realistic
option.

Fortunately, it's in *exactly* these types of collaborations that OSF
really shines, as a compromise between pure `git`-managed-plain-text
Nirvana and whatever the opposite of that might be (I'm picturing a
swirling vortex of Word documents with tweetstorm-length filenames). In
my experience, after providing short 10--15 minute tutorials, colleagues
have been very willing to adopt OSF as a project hub. And if you do run
into holdouts, short emails along the lines of

> I posted the latest results on OSF. You can see them here:
> `https://osf.io/...`.

go a long way towards gently nudging them in the right direction.
Generally, I've found that they really appreciate the peace of mind that
comes with knowing their data is in a safe place and the convenience of
a one-stop-shop for all project-related content. As for me, I appreciate
being able to simply `osfr::osf_download()` the latest version of a
dataset rather than digging through my email---it's almost like having
an API for your collaborators 🙃.

### Where to start

If your interest is piqued and you'd like to try out OSF yourself, the
first thing to do is [sign-up for an account](https://osf.io/register).
From there, you may want to look over a few of [OSF's
guides](https://help.osf.io), especially the [project
management](https://help.osf.io/hc/en-us/categories/360001495973-Creating-and-Managing-Projects)
section for help getting started. I also recommend Ian Sullivan's [OSF
101 video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLEIhJESIQA), which provides
a comprehensive, step-by-step tutorial for getting up and running.
Finally, if you'd like to checkout a few OSF projects to get a sense of
some real world applications, I've put together a short list of nice
examples that represent a few different use cases:

- [CT Scans - `#ScanAllFish`](https://osf.io/ecmz4/) uses OSF as an open
  access data archive that provides a large collection of high-quality
  3D CT scans for a wide range of ~~fish~~ ~~fishes(?)~~ water animals
- [Reproducibility Project: Psychology](https://osf.io/ezcuj/) this
  high-profile metascience study conducted by COS was published in
  Science ([2015](https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aac4716)) and nicely
  demonstrates how OSF projects can scale to manage even large-scale
  multi-year/multi-institute projects
- [VCU ReproducibiliTea Journal Club](https://osf.io/g56qp/) VCU's Data
  Science Lab uses OSF to coordinate their local
  [ReproducibiliTea](https://reproducibilitea.org) chapter

### Acknowledgments

I'd like to thank Tim York, Tim Errington, Claire Riss, and Bernice
Wolen for their helpful comments and suggestions to improve this post,
Stefanie Butland for providing the opportunity, and Steffi LaZerte for
her thorough review and helpful feedback.


osfr provides a (
<em>
 hopefully
</em>
) convenient R interface to OSF (Open Science Framework, https://www.osf.io), a free service for managing research developed by the Center for Open Science (COS). osfr completed its rOpenSci peer-review earlier this year and has been available on CRAN since February.

Rogue Scholar Posts

OSF: A Project Management Service Built for Research