Systemic Altruism
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Justice & public goodsPreliminary editorial review

Center for Open Science

The US nonprofit combines research infrastructure, community practice and incentive reform. Its current OSF direction emphasizes planning, preregistration, preprints and linked records while phasing out Projects as an active storage workspace.

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Systemic Altruism practice potential: 83–93/100
90% of weighted axes reviewed. A mechanism hypothesis, not proven effectiveness or a donation recommendation.

Who this work enables

Tools & support for charities: Shared planning, preregistration, preprint and research-record infrastructure, paired with training and policy resources, can reduce repeated work by nonprofit research teams.

Open-source evidence · license checked

  • Open Science Framework server — Apache-2.0 license file. Organization’s role: maintainer.
    Inspected the named server repository license and non-archived status. This is not a promise that historical hosted collaboration/storage functions continue; service changes, uploaded content, dependencies, data protection and research validity are separate. License-file snapshot: 4b74aecc744ff1933dc05d97d2908b3eba8314c8.

License checked 2026-10-27. This is not a security audit, proof of current support or effectiveness, or a promise of free hosting. A sponsor or steward is not necessarily the sole developer. Unchecked profiles are not evidence of closed code. No extra score points are added.

Humanity’s Checklist source match

Status · Coordination · Gatekeepers — editorial, partial alignment.

The documented strategy explicitly seeks recognition and rewards for open practices, shared workflows and changes in publisher/funder requirements. This partially connects Status, Coordination and Gatekeepers, without proving that rewards become fair or research becomes trustworthy.

Explicit checklist adoption: not verified. A mechanism match is not an affiliation, endorsement, evidence of effectiveness or a scoring bonus. Read the practice.

Focus classification: 2026-10-27. Based on the organization’s dated official sources below; earlier axis-review dates are unchanged.

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The proposed pathway

Combine shared research tools with norms, incentives and institutional policy change

Six dimensions, with rationale

Structural depth

4 / 4

The documented strategy pairs tools with norms, rewards and institutional requirements, targeting research incentives rather than only offering storage to individuals.

Institutional reach

4 / 4

Shared research practices and infrastructure can enable multiple disciplines, funders and public-interest institutions, without proving beneficial downstream findings.

Durability

2 / 4

Reusable methods and records can persist, but service changes, funding and evolving research norms limit assumed permanence.

Scalability

4 / 4

Common tools and policy frameworks can be reused widely, while community adoption, curation and institutional incentives require complementary work.

Funding additionality

Unreviewed

The current site describes funding and scope adjustments, but a costed marginal funding bottleneck and counterfactual effect of new support were not audited.

Community agency

Unreviewed

Stakeholder engagement, badges and open practices do not establish binding affected-community rights over research agendas, incentives or COS governance.

Evidence and selection

Organization reported; current primary mechanism sources inspected; named repository and license file checked

Illustrative inclusion to examine this mechanism. Inclusion is not an external recommendation or a verified comparative ranking.

A testable next question

Do comparable research communities adopting COS tools together with incentive and policy changes produce more trustworthy, reusable evidence than tool-only or existing practice, without worsening exclusion, performative compliance or service-transition burdens?

Review confidence: Moderate for documented design; low for systemic attribution. Center for Open Science Inc.’s nonprofit research-tools and institutional-change model, with the OSF repository as a scoped example and current service narrowing retained; not every research output or a continuing general-storage guarantee.

What remains uncertain

The financial page identifies COS as a US 501(c)(3); disclosures and historical assurance claims were not independently audited here. The current homepage explicitly says it is phasing out OSF Projects as an active collaboration and storage workspace, so older all-purpose storage descriptions are not treated as current service promises. Apache-2.0 code is distinct from stored content and hosted-service terms. Preregistration, openness or badges do not guarantee true findings, ethical studies, reproducibility or fair research evaluation.

Sources to inspect

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Axis review: 2026-10-27 · weighting method v0.2 (2026-10-26) · Method, conflicts and coverage