OSF Preprints
Verified working Jul 31, 2026
An open hub for posting and finding research before journal review.
OSF Preprints is a discovery and hosting service for scholarly manuscripts shared before formal publication. Researchers can browse preprints across disciplines and communities, while authors can make early versions of their work public with persistent metadata and links to related research materials.
Why it stands out
- Connects preprints with OSF projects, files, and research workflows rather than treating manuscripts as isolated PDFs.
- Covers multiple research communities and subject areas through the broader OSF ecosystem.
- Built around open-science practices such as public metadata, versioning, and links to supporting materials.
- Operated by the nonprofit Center for Open Science, which gives it a research-infrastructure focus rather than a publisher-first model.
Good to know
- Preprints are early research outputs and generally have not gone through journal peer review.
- Coverage and metadata quality can vary by field, provider, and author-supplied information.
- Some submission or moderation policies may differ across OSF-hosted preprint communities.
- Not every preprint will include full supporting data or reproducibility materials, even when hosted on OSF.
Under the radar: When searching broadly, use the provider or subject filters to separate general OSF-hosted preprints from community-specific servers that may have narrower moderation and disciplinary norms.
Photos
Researchers preparing or finding early-stage manuscripts can share and discover citable work before journal review. Post a manuscript publicly to establish priority and invite feedback. Search for recent findings that may not yet appear in indexed journals. Link a preprint to an OSF project, data, or supporting materials. Track versions or updates to a manuscript as it moves through the publication process.
Preprint search and browsing, author submission tools, subject and provider metadata, public preprint pages, file hosting, persistent identifiers, version history, licensing information, and integration with broader OSF project infrastructure.
Technical Notes
- The public OSF API exposes structured OSF records, including preprint-related metadata and linked resources through JSON endpoints.
- Public records can generally be read without authentication, while account actions or private resources require OSF credentials.
Alternative listings
Open access to millions of STEM preprints before journal publication.
Open Data & Research PortalsarXiv is a long-running open archive for scholarly articles, especially preprints, across physics, mathematics, computer science, statistics, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, electrical engineering, systems science, and economics. Users can search or browse by subject area and access papers without a paywall, but arXiv itself does not peer review the material it hosts.
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Open Data & Research PortalsSocArXiv is a preprint service hosted on OSF for sharing working papers and other social science research before formal journal publication. It helps researchers make manuscripts discoverable, citeable, and accessible while keeping them connected to the broader OSF research infrastructure.
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Similar sites elsewhere
- arXiv — arxiv.org
- bioRxiv — biorxiv.org
- medRxiv — medrxiv.org
- SSRN — ssrn.com
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