Where OneSciencePlace fits

OneSciencePlace (OSP) supports a wide range of scientific, educational, and data-sharing scenarios — from institutional HPC portals and multi-institution science gateways to lab and instructional environments. Each deployment context below describes who it is for, what problem it solves, and how OSP addresses it.

HPC portal

Who it is for
An HPC center or campus cluster operator who wants to extend access beyond users already comfortable on the command line — without dropping support for the power users who are.
The challenge
High-performance computing often comes with a steep learning curve. Researchers spend hours on setup, file management, and remote access hurdles before doing any actual science. For HPC center staff, onboarding new users and supporting diverse workflows consumes significant time that could be directed elsewhere.
How OneSciencePlace helps
  • Deliver the full power of HPC clusters through an intuitive browser interface — no command line required
  • Connect multiple compute systems through a single interface: local clusters, national HPC, cloud instances, and standalone servers — all accessible from one login without switching platforms
  • Stream high-performance GUI tools (MATLAB, ANSYS, RStudio) directly to the browser via secure reverse-proxying
  • Build custom launch interfaces for complex batch jobs using the no-code form builder — no custom development needed
  • Configure the portal in user space — no root privileges required on the connected systems
  • Manage interactive and batch job submission across one or more integrated clusters and clouds
  • Maintain persistent research environments where data, software versions, and job configurations are ready to resume

For a comparison with Open OnDemand and other HPC portal platforms, see the Compare matrix.

Science gateway

Who it is for
A team building a gateway for a research community that spans institutions — needing federated access, multi-system compute, and FAIR publishing without a custom engineering team to stitch it together.
The challenge
Building a science gateway that federates access across institutions, integrates multiple national HPC resources, and supports a broad community of researchers — without requiring a large, dedicated engineering team to build and maintain it.
How OneSciencePlace helps
  • Provide centralized access to domain-relevant applications, data, and reproducible workflows
  • Connect domain researchers to multiple national HPC resources through a single interface — no separate accounts or logins per system
  • Enable community members to contribute and share domain-specific applications directly through the gateway
  • Federate user access across institutions without requiring a shared identity provider
  • Build unified, simplified interfaces for researchers using the no-code form builder
  • Support cross-institutional collaboration with built-in provenance tracking for reproducible research
  • Publish and cite community tools and datasets with FAIR-compliant publishing and persistent identifiers

Quakeworx is OneSciencePlace's flagship science gateway deployment. Read the case study →

Campus or research center portal

Who it is for
Research IT, campus CI teams, institutes, or research centers — where individual labs keep building parallel solutions instead of using a shared foundation, and you want a single managed platform that serves all of them without locking them into a single rigid model.
The challenge
Central IT often supports a flagship cluster, but individual labs are left to build their own solutions for computing and data sharing — leading to fragmented security, duplicated effort, and wasted resources. Bringing everything under one institutional platform typically requires significant custom engineering.
How OneSciencePlace helps
  • Provide a unified institutional portal with institutional branding and federated authentication
  • Deliver a centralized App Catalog of validated computational tools
  • Connect multiple institutional compute resources — local clusters, cloud, and national systems — through a single managed interface
  • Manage access controls across compute and storage resources from one interface
  • Enable cross-lab and cross-college resource sharing without rebuilding infrastructure for each group
  • Give individual departments private, branded workspaces while sharing underlying HPC clusters

Repository and publishing platform

Who it is for
A team responsible for making research outputs citable and compliant with funder mandates — without building a repository from scratch to do it.
The challenge
Funder mandates (NSF, NIH) require data to be FAIR — Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable. Capturing the relationship between a result and the software version used to create it is often a manual, error-prone process. Building a compliant repository from scratch requires specialized development that most research teams cannot sustain.
How OneSciencePlace helps
  • Publish datasets, articles, software, notebooks, and workflows in a customizable FAIR-compliant repository — for a single project or an entire institution
  • Assign DOIs, Handles, or ARKs for permanent citation and reliable referencing
  • Automate metadata capture — every time an app runs via OSP, job parameters, software versions, and input files are logged automatically
  • Support flexible metadata schemas and configurable curation workflows
  • Create verifiable, audit-ready records of the entire research lifecycle, from computation to publication
  • Configure embargo periods and access restrictions to align with funding policies

Education and training portal

Who it is for
An instructor teaching a course or running a workshop where students need access to computational tools — and would rather spend time on the material than on setting up and troubleshooting each student's environment.
The challenge
Delivering a consistent, reproducible computing environment to a classroom or workshop is technically demanding. Students spend time on setup rather than learning, environments differ across machines, and managing access for a large group is cumbersome.
How OneSciencePlace helps
  • Deliver curriculum-integrated applications (Jupyter, RStudio, Linux Desktop, and others) with persistent workspaces
  • Simplify student onboarding through federated identity — students sign in with institutional credentials
  • Support virtually any browser-deliverable Linux application, not just notebooks
  • Integrate campus HPC and cloud resources under a single class allocation
  • Scale seamlessly from a small workshop to a large course without additional configuration

Lab and project portal

Who it is for
A faculty PI or staff supporting a lab who has accumulated a mix of applications, datasets, and outputs that need a shared home — but doesn't have dedicated IT support to build, maintain, and operate one.
The challenge
Research teams accumulate applications, datasets, and outputs spread across personal computers, shared drives, and institutional storage. There's no single place to manage, share, or publish lab work, and setting one up typically requires more web development expertise than a research team has available.
How OneSciencePlace helps
  • Host lab members, applications, publications, and private datasets in a single branded environment
  • Publish research outputs, protocols, and applications as shareable, citable objects with DOIs
  • Manage the lab environment through a streamlined interface — no dedicated IT support required
  • Start small and expand as the lab grows: add users, applications, and storage over time
Across all scales

Moving beyond your current gateway, portal, or Jupyter setup

OneSciencePlace gives research communities a modern platform to grow beyond their current environment — whether migrating from a legacy gateway or expanding from a Jupyter-based setup, offering a sustainable, managed foundation without rebuilding infrastructure from scratch.

Many OneSciencePlace deployments start as consolidations or extensions of tools teams are already running. Each of these tools works well within its scope — research workflows simply tend to expand beyond what any single tool was built for. OneSciencePlace is composable, so most deployments adopt only the capabilities they need today and grow from there. You don't need to use every OSP capability, and you don't need to replace your existing tooling all at once.

Coming from
What OneSciencePlace adds
JupyterHub
  • One platform serves multiple groups — no separate JupyterHub instances per lab or community to set up and maintain.
  • Application types beyond notebooks: batch executables, VNC graphical apps, scripts.
  • A no-code form builder for app UIs.
  • App curation, job tracking, and FAIR publishing built in.
  • A full Drupal CMS for documentation, news, and community pages — no separate site needed.
Open OnDemand
  • Works entirely in user space — no root access or per-cluster installation required on the connected systems.
  • Multi-system federation — span local clusters, national HPC, cloud, and standalone servers from one tenant.
  • Granular per-tenant access controls across users, groups, and apps.
  • Users can contribute their own apps where institutional policy allows — no waiting on systems staff for every new tool.
  • A no-code form builder for batch app UIs.
  • Integrated FAIR publishing and a full Drupal CMS — your portal is also your community website, no separate site needed.
Custom portals
  • A configurable foundation with app curation, job tracking, sharing, and publishing already built in.
  • Replace bespoke per-app code with reusable configuration — keep what's working, retire the maintenance burden.
Shared servers / SSH
  • A web interface, per-user workspaces, job tracking, and access control — without requiring command-line access to the underlying systems.

For a complete platform comparison across these and others, see the Compare matrix.

Find the fit for your project

Talk with us about your scenario, or try the platform yourself in the pilot environment.

Request a demo Explore the pilot How deployment works