Create a repository

A new public repository in your own GitHub account: empty or with its first files, or from a template, attached to your paper's DOI. It is yours, on GitHub; OSCR keeps only the link to the paper.

This form needs JavaScript. Without it, GitHub's own page creates a repository, and the link page attaches it to the paper afterwards.

Start from Nothing, or its first filesA README, a .gitignore and a licence, made by GitHub in the first commit; or nothing at all, for an import. A template repositoryIts files, as one first commit of your own (GitHub does not copy a template's history).

Name

Description (optional; shown on GitHub and here)

Website (optional, https: the paper's DOI address, a lab page)

Add a README

A .gitignore template: the files git should leave out (caches, build outputs)

A licence lets others reuse your code, and lets OSCR keep and publish copies of your scripts next to the paper: it publishes a copy only when the repository's own licence file allows redistribution, and GitHub writes that file for you here.

It also makes archiving possible: Software Heritage and Zenodo keep what its licence lets them keep.

Without a licence, nobody may legally reuse the code, and OSCR keeps no copy: its pages link to the code on GitHub.

Choosing one: choosealicense.com.

The first branch's name (optional; GitHub's default is main)

It needs a first file (a README, a .gitignore or a licence): an empty repository's first push names its branch. The default name of every new repository of your account is a setting of your GitHub account (an organization's owners set theirs); a branch is renamed later from the repository's Branches page (changing the default branch).

Mark it as a template: others then start their own repositories from it (template repositories).

Issues Wiki

Papers (DOIs, separated by spaces; optional)

A paper you are a verified author of is linked at once; another is proposed to its authors. Tracing maps between the paper and the code come later, from the repository's page.

Limits, before you push

GitHub warns above 50 MiB and refuses a file over 100 MiB; a push may carry 2 GB at most; a repository stays fast under 1 GB. Small binary files (figures, fonts) go into Git LFS; large data goes to a release asset, Zenodo or a Hugging Face dataset, with a DOI of its own. All the limits ·large files.

After it is created

Its page on OSCR shows how to clone it, or, when it is empty, the quick setup: push an existing repository, start one on the command line, or import code from elsewhere. Git goes straight to GitHub with your GitHub credentials (git with GitHub).

Link a repository you already have instead.
Your repositories.