Case Study: Center for Open Science achieves 5x faster search and better user experience with Elastic Elasticsearch

Center for Open Science Improving worldwide scientific research and collaboration

The Center for Open Science, a nonprofit focused on improving scientific research and collaboration through the Open Science Framework (OSF), needed a faster, simpler search solution for its growing library of research materials. Its previous search engine, Solr, added complexity and slowed development, making it harder to prototype new features and deliver a better experience for the 6,000 scientists using OSF.

Elastic implemented Elasticsearch as the primary search engine for OSF, replacing Solr and enabling faster, more flexible search across 215,000 documents. The result was a 5x improvement in query response time, from about 250 milliseconds to 50 milliseconds, along with easier scaling and quicker feature development—new search capabilities could be added in minutes, and one prototype integrated search in under an hour.

Center for Open Science

Fabian von Feilitzsch

Summer Intern