Moderation Process

OSF Collections

OSF Collections is a pay-for-service tool designed for funders, journals, societies, communities, organizations, and other groups in need of building and searching collections of related OSF projects.

Please see our following help guides on Collection Moderation: 

Moderator Management

There are two roles available for community members that are maintaining the collection's content.

  • Moderator - A moderator has access to the Collection’s moderation dashboard and has the ability to view, accept, reject, and remove associated projects/components. Moderators can only remove themselves from the moderation team.
  • Administrator - Along with the moderator features, Admins can also add or remove new moderators and modify their permissions (moving moderators to admins or vice versa).  The first administrator for a registration service will be added by COS staff.

How to Add a Moderator

1. Click the ‘Moderation’ tab of your dashboard

2. Click the ‘Add Moderator’ button.

3. A popup will appear where you have two options to add a moderator. Then click ‘Add’. 

a. Username: Enter the new moderator’s OSF name. NOTE: The new moderator must have an OSF account. 

b. Email: Invite a moderator by email.  NOTE: A new moderator does not need a pre-existing OSF account to be invited. However, the new moderator will need to register for an account. 

4. Next, select their level of permission: "Moderator" or "Admin".

5. Select “Add.” This will send an email to notify the newly added moderator/admin. 

Accessing Moderator Dashboard

Each registry has a unique URL. Enter the URL to the registry’s discovery page (i.e., https://osf.io/collections/metascience). 

  • Click on the “Moderation” tab to access the dashboard. 
  • The moderator dashboard shows the following:
    • All items - All projects/components that have requested to be added to the collection
    • Settings - Settings related to the frequency of moderator email notifications.
    • Moderators - A list of all moderators and administrators for the service. Only administrators can modify, add, and remove moderators. See the Moderator Management section for more information.

      • Moderator Dashboard Features

      Moderators can follow the status of content associated with the service within each registry’s moderation dashboard.  Each dashboard includes 3 tabs: All Items, Moderators, and Settings. 

      • All Items
      • Moderators
      • Settings
      • Sort


      All Items - All projects or components that have requested to be added to the collection, segmented into four different statuses:

      1. Pending- Items that have been requested to be associated with the collection by contributors, and are awaiting a decision by moderators.
      2. Accepted - Public items that have been added by contributors and accepted for publication by moderators.
      3. Rejected - Items that have been requested to be associated with the collection by contributors and have been rejected by moderators. The rejected project/component remains on the list for moderators and could be resubmitted by the contributor.
      4. Removed - Items that have been removed by contributors (by removing or by making the project/component private) or force removed by moderators

      Moderators- A list of all moderators and administrators for the service. Only administrators can modify, add, and remove moderators.

      Settings-Notification Frequency. You can set the frequency of email notifications you will receive for requested additions and removals. Both include the following options:

      1. Daily - receive an email every day listing all the pending requests and removals
      2. Instant - receive an email as soon as a request for association or a contributor removal has been sent and is in the pending queue 
      3. None - never receive an email

      Sort-You can sort the items within the various categories (Pending, Accepted, Rejected, and Removed) by Title (A-Z or Z-A) and Date (newest first or oldest first).

      Moderation Decisions

      When a contributor has requested the addition of a project/component to a collection, the request is sent into the pending section of the moderator dashboard where the moderator can decide whether to approve or reject it. Approved projects/components are shared immediately on the collection's public page. Rejected projects/components notifications are conveyed to the contributors. It is required that moderators comment on rejected projects/components so that contributors know why the project or component was not accepted and what revisions are needed for a potential resubmission.

      Email Summaries

      Moderators will receive an email from the OSF platform listing their pending additions to the collection site. They will also receive a list of any projects/components that have been removed from the collection site by contributors. The frequency of these email notifications can be changed to "daily", "instant", or "none". See Moderator Dashboard Features for more information. 

      Accepting and Rejecting

      Moderators can view, accept, and reject requested additions of projects or components. 

      1. Open a pending or requested addition item by clicking on its title. This will open the pending project/component in a different tab on your web browser.
      2. Once you have decided, You can go back into the collection moderation interface and click the green “Make Decision” button.
      3. A dropdown will appear, make a decision then click the “Submit” button.
        4. a) "Accept Request" then click the "Submit" button.
        b) "Reject Request" then click the “Submit” button. NOTE: A justification is required to Submit a "Reject" decision. Contributors will receive an email from OSF including moderator comments after the moderator made the decision has been submitted. The email will not include who the moderator(s) is(are) or which moderator made the decision. Comments will not be visible to the public, nor will a rejected status.

        Auto Approval

        This feature enables the ability to automatically approve collection addition requests, known as “Auto Approval”. This feature is useful if your team is working alongside research teams and would like moderators to be able to freely add content to your Collection. This feature will allow those collections to bypass the moderation decision-making process and will automatically accept any request from a project/component Admin as long as they are a Moderator or Moderation Admin for the Collection.

        Forced Removal

        Moderators can forcibly remove a project/component if it does not conform to the community’s service moderation policy. Force removing a project/component however will not remove it from the OSF completely, only the collection.

        Steps to Remove an Item

        To remove an item, select a project or component from the “Accepted” tab on your moderator dashboard.  

    1. Click “Make Decision”
    2. Click on “Remove submission”.NOTE: A justification is required to Submit a "Remove" decision.
    3. Click on “Submit”.