Center for Open Science

What Center for Open Science does

The Center for Open Science (COS) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit technology and culture change organization founded in 2013 and headquartered in Washington, DC. Its mission is to increase openness, integrity, and reproducibility in scientific research. COS serves academic researchers, scientific journals and publishers, research institutions and universities, and funding agencies across all scientific disciplines. The organization operates the Open Science Framework (OSF), a free, open-source web application used by over 500,000 researchers for project management, collaboration, data and materials sharing, preprint hosting, and study preregistration. Adjacent platform features include OSF Registries (time-stamped research registrations), OSF Collections (curated research outputs), and OSF Preprints. COS also develops and maintains the TOP (Transparency and Openness Promotion) Guidelines, a policy framework adopted by over 5,000 journals and organizations, and promotes the Registered Reports publishing format.

Beyond tools, COS conducts large-scale metascience research to empirically assess research credibility. Key initiatives include the SCORE (Systematizing Confidence in Open Research and Evidence) program, which evaluated 3,900 research claims across 865 collaborators and produced algorithms to predict replicability; the Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology, an 8-year systematic investigation that replicated 193 experiments from 53 high-impact cancer biology papers; the SMART project extending SCORE via machine and human assessments; and the Global Flourishing Study, a $43.4 million, five-year longitudinal partnership with Baylor University, Harvard, and Gallup across 22 countries.

COS operates on a nonprofit funding model with no commercial pricing. All core tools (OSF, preregistration, Registered Reports) are provided free to users. Revenue is derived primarily from grants from government and philanthropic sources (DARPA, Arnold Ventures, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Templeton World Charity Foundation, NIH, NSF, Sloan, Hewlett) and individual donations. Documented grant inflows total approximately $28M+ across 2013-2023, supporting a staff of 11-50 employees. The organization has earned SOC 2 Type 2 accreditation, Charity Navigator's top rating, and Candid Platinum Transparency recognition.

Name

Center for Open Science

Legal name

Center for Open Science

Website

https://cos.io

Company type

Private

Founded year

2013

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

11–50 employees

Short description

The Center for Open Science is a nonprofit that operates the free Open Science Framework for research management, develops the TOP Guidelines policy framework adopted by 5,000+ journals, and conducts metascience research on scientific credibility and reproducibility for academic researchers, publishers, institutions, and funders globally.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Open Science Research Collaboration Platform

NAICS

Scientific Research and Development Services (5417), Research and Development in the Social Sciences and Humanities (54172), Computer Systems Design and Related Services (54151)

SIC

Services-Prepackaged Software (7372), Services-Commercial Physical & Biological Research (8731)

akta.pro primary industry

OER Authoring, Remixing & Publishing Tools/Platforms (EDAGAJAM)

akta.pro secondary industries

OER Quality Review, Alignment & Certification (rubrics/standards) (EDAGAJAN), Knowledge Management & Scientific Collaboration / Literature Intelligence (HLAGAJAN), Open Access Scholarly Journals & Monographs (EDAGAFAJ)

Keywords

• Open science platform
• Research reproducibility tools
• Scholarly communication software
• Scientific publishing infrastructure
• Metascience research services

Headquarters

HQ city

Charlottesville

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Operations, Marketing or Sales, Infrastructure, Others

Revenue model

1. Government and Foundation Grants: Primary funding source from grants including DARPA funding for SCORE (nearly $8 million), Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for SMART project, Arnold Ventures for Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology (~$2 million), and Templeton World Charity Foundation for consciousness research grants ($1.125M total).
2. Donations: The organization accepts tax-deductible donations from individual supporters. Donations page is prominently featured on the website as a way to support the open science movement.

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels4 records

Marketing channels8 records

Core offering

The Center for Open Science operates the Open Science Framework (OSF), a free, open-source web application that gives researchers tools for project management, collaboration, data/materials/code sharing, preprint hosting, and study preregistration. Around the OSF, COS provides policy frameworks (TOP Guidelines), publishing innovations (Registered Reports), transparency services (Preregistration, OSF Registries, OSF Collections, OSF Preprints), and runs large-scale metascience research programs such as SCORE, Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology, SMART, and the Global Flourishing Study to produce empirical evidence on research credibility.

Product overview

The Center for Open Science offers a comprehensive ecosystem of products and initiatives focused on increasing openness, integrity, and reproducibility of research. At its core is the Open Science Framework (OSF), a free web application for research project management, collaboration, and open sharing. Surrounding the OSF are policy frameworks (TOP Guidelines), publishing innovations (Registered Reports), and transparency services (Preregistration, OSF Collections, OSF Registries, OSF Preprints). COS also conducts large-scale metascience research through programs like SCORE, Reproducibility Projects (Cancer Biology and Psychology), and the Global Flourishing Study. Emerging AI-driven initiatives include the Predicting Replicability Challenge and SMART Prototyping for automated credibility assessment.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• Open Science Framework (OSF): Web application for managing and sharing research materials, data, and code
• TOP Guidelines
• SCORE
• Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology
• SMART

Quantifiable outcome

• Journals with TOP data sharing policies had higher reproducibility rates
• +4 more outcomes

Named customers5 records

Segments5 records

Ideal customer profiles4 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

Yes

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

AI capability2 records

Feature4 records

Partnerships

Nine partnerships are on record, tiered core and minor.

• University of MelbournecoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2022University of Melbourne researchers (RepliCATS team) partner with COS on the SMART project, conducting structured human expert elicitation assessments of research credibility following the IDEA protocol.
• Pennsylvania State UniversitycoreTechnology or Integration · 1 January 2022Penn State researchers serve as the AI assessment team for the SMART project, implementing and testing machine learning algorithms for predicting research replicability.
• eLifecoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 7 December 2021eLife published all outputs from the Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology, including Registered Reports, Replication Studies, and capstone summary papers. eLife provided peer review for replication protocols before experiments were conducted and committed to publishing findings regardless of outcome.
• Baylor UniversitycoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2021Baylor University's Institute for Studies of Religion is a key partner in the Global Flourishing Study, a $43.4 million, 5-year longitudinal research effort spanning 22 countries.
• Harvard UniversitycoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2021Harvard University's Human Flourishing Program partners with COS on the Global Flourishing Study, contributing research leadership for the $43.4 million multi-country initiative.
• GallupcoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2021Gallup partners on the Global Flourishing Study, providing global survey expertise and data collection infrastructure across 22 countries for the 200,000+ participant study.
• Clarivate/Web of SciencecoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 5 May 2020COS collaborated with Clarivate's Web of Science Group to incorporate TOP Factor scores in the Master Journal List, helping researchers identify journals with transparent and open practices.
• Science ExchangecoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2013Science Exchange, the world's first online R&D marketplace, partnered with COS on the Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology. Science Exchange sourced laboratories through its marketplace to conduct replication experiments. This collaboration enabled systematic replication studies across high-impact cancer biology papers.
• Reagent Donors (ATCC, ABM, BioLegend, CST, Charles River, Corning, etc.)minorOthers · 1 January 2013Multiple life science reagent companies donated materials for the Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology, including ATCC, Applied Biological Materials, BioLegend, Cell Signaling Technology, Charles River Laboratories, Corning, DDC Medical, Envigo, LI-COR Biosciences, Millipore Sigma, Mirus Bio, Novus Biologicals, and System Biosciences.

Scale indicators8 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Direct peers

• Dryad: Curated open data repository partnered with journals to publish underlying datasets. Directly comparable to OSF's data-sharing and OSF Collections functions for archiving research outputs.
• ResearchGate: Researcher social/collaboration platform with preprint and data-sharing affordances. Targets the same academic-researcher persona as OSF Preprints and OSF collaboration tools.
• eLife: Open-access journal that partnered with COS to publish all Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology outputs. Both organizations pursue open science and operate Registered Reports, making eLife the closest publishing-stage peer to COS.
• PLOS: Open-access publisher with TOP Guidelines-aligned policies across its journal portfolio. PLOS operates in the same open-science scholarly publishing ecosystem that COS enables through tools and policy frameworks.
• Research Square: Preprint and preprint-review platform used by researchers alongside OSF Preprints. Direct functional overlap in accelerating scholarly communication and offers a researcher workflow adjacent to OSF.
• figshare: General-purpose research data, code, and preprint repository with adoption among institutions and funders. Overlaps directly with OSF's data/materials sharing and preprint hosting use cases.
• Dataverse: Open-source research data repository software used widely by institutions. Closely mirrors OSF's project-management + data-archive combination and serves overlapping institutional customers.
• F1000 / Taylor & Francis Open Research: Open peer-review publishing platform using registered-report-style workflows. Operates in the same post-publication and open-review space as COS Registered Reports.
• Zenodo: CERN-hosted open repository for research outputs across disciplines. Competes for the same researcher workflow that OSF serves: file storage, DOI minting, and version-controlled sharing of data/code/preprints.

Emerging players

• Hypothesis: Open annotation layer for the scholarly web. Adjacent and enabling — partially overlapping with COS's open-peer-review and collaborative research goals while specializing in annotation rather than lifecycle management.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses4 records

Competitive moat5 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/OSFramework
• YouTubeyoutube.com/@CenterforOpenScience
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/3187955
• Facebookfacebook.com/OpenScienceFramework

Compliance3 records

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles3 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds21 records

Investors7 records

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M&A

Investments

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Frequently asked questions about Center for Open Science