How can I research with OSM?

Research is a welcome part of the OSM community. From Kathmandu to Berlin, there is a rich history of research about OSM – the community, the project, and the data. Before starting out, we encourage you to get in touch with the local OSM community and review the background on OSM research.

There is an email list for research, research-announce@lists.openstreetmap.org.

Suggestions for how to conduct your research and cite OpenStreetMap are here.

You can find details on Google Scholar or other web sources that include articles, but here are some examples to help you get started.

Could OSM provide a letter of support for our research project?

As OSM is a distributed, global community with diverse expertise, OSM does not provide an exclusive letter of support for any given topic. We encourage researchers to connect with their local OSM community and/or chapter. The benefit of researchers working within the community is that they can seek guidance and context about the work which will add value to the end product.

For these reasons, the OSMF Board does not formally give letters of support for research. We do, however, recommend that you contact previous researchers to build on their work. During your research journey, we do encourage you to connect with the community, join the events and share your research. Many researchers have presented at the various State of the Map events around the world. Their perspectives are very welcome and contribute to the corpus of OSM knowledge.

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