Posted September 4, 2026 by Tiffany Lee
Principal investigators and research personnel should be aware of two external organizations that are either transitioning services or shutting down completely: the Open Science Framework and Amazon Mechanical Turk.
To respond, investigators should review active Institutional Review Board protocols, including for Exempt studies, and update them accordingly.
Repository holdings through Open Science Framework will remain accessible, searchable and downloadable. But for active research content where the framework is being used as a protocol management or protocol sharing tool, researchers must evaluate their options.
Amazon Mechanical Turk, a crowdsourcing marketplace enabling the outsourcing of small, digital tasks, will close permanently Sept. 30. PIs engaged in ongoing research should make plans for seamless transitions as needed.
Per UNL IRB policy #12.001, Request for Change, all modifications to active/approved Expedited or Full Board reviewed human subjects projects must be submitted. For Exempt projects still in active data collection that are impacted by the changes to Open Science Framework and/or Amazon Mechanical Turk, IRB will also require researchers to submit a change request form as these changes would qualify as a “change in scope.” Contact IRB@unl.edu for additional information.
