OSF APIv2

✓ Official Vendor SpecProductivityCollaborationnone172 EndpointsREST

For Agents

Manage research projects, preprints, registrations, files, and collaborators on OSF. Agents can publish datasets, fetch project metadata, and submit preregistrations programmatically.

Quickstart

Get started with OSF APIv2 in minutes using your preferred integration method.

# Add to your MCP client config (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf)
{
  "jentic": {
    "url": "https://api.jentic.com/mcp",
    "auth": "oauth"
  }
}

# Then ask your agent:
"create a research project on OSF"

# → Jentic returns the GET /events tool with parameter schema, agent executes.

Capabilities

What an agent can do with OSF APIv2 API.

Create projects, components, and registrations with collaborators and storage providers

Upload, version, and retrieve research files via OSF Storage and connected providers

Submit and search preprints across OSF's preprint services

Manage citation styles, contributors, and licence metadata on a project

GET STARTED

Start building with OSF APIv2 API

Explore with Jentic

View OpenAPI Document

The Open Science Framework (OSF) APIv2 is the programmatic interface to OSF, the open-source platform for managing research projects, preregistrations, datasets, and collaborator workflows. With 172 endpoints, the API covers projects, components, files, registrations, preprints, wikis, citations, and institutional integrations. It is JSON:API conformant and supports filtering, sparse fieldsets, and embedding, making it well-suited for research data pipelines, registry tooling, and reproducibility audits.

Use Cases

Patterns agents use OSF APIv2 API for, with concrete tasks.

★ Reproducibility-Ready Project Setup

Research labs use OSF as the canonical home for project metadata, materials, and analysis code. The API creates a project, attaches contributors, links a registration template, and uploads files in a single scripted flow. Teams that publish dozens of studies a year save hours per project by automating this setup instead of clicking through the OSF UI.

Create an OSF project titled 'Replication of Smith 2024' by POSTing to /nodes/, then add a contributor and a registration template via the project's relationships endpoints.

Preprint Submission Pipeline

Authors who publish to PsyArXiv, SocArXiv, EngrXiv, and other OSF preprint services can automate submission. The API accepts manuscript metadata, uploads the PDF, attaches supplemental files, and posts the preprint to a chosen provider. Reviewers and admins use the same endpoints to list submissions in a moderation queue and act on them.

Submit a preprint to PsyArXiv by POSTing manuscript metadata to /preprints/, uploading the PDF to the returned files endpoint, and confirming the submission status.

Open Dataset Distribution

Open data initiatives use OSF as a discovery surface for downloadable datasets. The /files and /nodes/{id}/files endpoints expose research files with versioning, download counts, and licence metadata. Pairing OSF with a citation generator lets agents return both the dataset URL and a properly formatted citation for any project.

List all files in project 'abc12' by calling GET /nodes/abc12/files/ and return the download URLs along with the project's APA citation from /nodes/abc12/citation/apa/.

AI Agent Research Workflow via Jentic

Research-assistant agents that gather literature, organise project files, and draft preregistrations need a programmable OSF layer. Through Jentic, an agent searches for 'create a research project', loads the POST /nodes/ schema, and executes it with the project's metadata. This avoids the need to bake an OSF SDK into every agent loop and lets the agent move fluidly between projects, files, and preprints.

Use Jentic to search 'create a research project on OSF', load the POST /nodes/ schema, and execute it with the project title and category drawn from the agent's draft.

Key Endpoints

172 endpoints — the open science framework (osf) apiv2 is the programmatic interface to osf, the open-source platform for managing research projects, preregistrations, datasets, and collaborator workflows.

METHOD

PATH

DESCRIPTION

GET

Root API description and links

GET

/addons/

List available storage and citation addons

GET

/citations/styles/

List supported citation styles

GET

/citations/styles/{style_id}/

Get details for a specific citation style

POST

/collection_submission_actions/

Submit an action against a collection submission

GET

/actions/

List recent actions across the API

GET

Root API description and links

GET

/addons/

List available storage and citation addons

GET

/citations/styles/

List supported citation styles

GET

/citations/styles/{style_id}/

Get details for a specific citation style

POST

/collection_submission_actions/

Submit an action against a collection submission

Why though Jentic?

Three things that make agents converge on Jentic-routed access.

Credential isolation

OSF personal access tokens are stored encrypted in the Jentic vault. Agents receive scoped access tokens — the raw Bearer token never enters the agent's context.

Intent-based discovery

Agents search by intent (e.g. 'create a research project') and Jentic returns the matching OSF JSON:API operation with its input schema, so the agent picks the right /nodes, /preprints, or /registrations endpoint without walking the 172-endpoint spec.

Time to first call

Direct OSF integration: 2-4 days to wire up auth, file uploads, and JSON:API filter handling. Through Jentic: under 1 hour — search, load schema, execute.

Related APIs

Alternatives and complements available in the Jentic catalogue.

Alternative

Figshare API

Figshare publishes citable research datasets with DOIs; OSF emphasises full project workflows and preregistration.

Choose Figshare when the need is publishing a single citable dataset; choose OSF when the agent is managing the whole research project lifecycle.

Complementary

Crossref API

Crossref provides DOIs and citation metadata for the publications and preprints that reference OSF projects.

Use Crossref when looking up citation metadata for a published article; use OSF when accessing the underlying project, files, and preregistration.

Complementary

Orthanc API

Orthanc handles DICOM imaging that often underpins research projects then catalogued and shared on OSF.

Use Orthanc to extract and anonymise DICOM imaging data; use OSF to publish the derived dataset alongside the analysis code.

FAQs

Specific to using OSF APIv2 API through Jentic.

What authentication does the OSF API use?

OSF supports OAuth 2.0 personal access tokens for authenticated calls; the published OpenAPI does not declare a security scheme because many endpoints are readable without authentication. Authenticated requests pass the token as Authorization: Bearer. Through Jentic the personal access token is stored encrypted in the vault and injected at call time.

Can I create a project on OSF through the API?

Yes. POST /nodes/ creates a new project with the supplied title, category, and description. After creation you add contributors, attach storage addons, and upload files using the project-scoped relationships endpoints exposed in the API.

What are the rate limits for the OSF API?

OSF applies per-IP and per-token throttling that is documented at developer.osf.io rather than in the OpenAPI spec. The API returns 429 Too Many Requests with a Retry-After header once a client exceeds the limit; bulk operations should back off rather than retry immediately.

How do I retrieve a project's citation through Jentic?

Through Jentic, search for 'get OSF project citation', load the schema for the project's citation endpoint (e.g. /nodes/{id}/citation/apa/), and execute it with the project ID. The API returns the formatted citation string in the requested style.

Does the OSF API support filtering and embedding?

Yes. OSF is JSON:API conformant, so list endpoints accept filter[field], sort, page, page[size], and fields[type] query parameters. The embed parameter inlines related resources, which is useful for fetching a project plus its contributors and files in a single call.

Is the OSF API free to use?

Yes. OSF is free for researchers and the API is free to call within the documented rate limits. The Center for Open Science, which operates OSF, funds the platform through grants and institutional partnerships.