About GWOSC

Gravitational Wave Open Science Center

The Gravitational Wave Open Science Center (GWOSC), formerly known as the LIGO Open Science Center, was created to provide public access to gravitational-wave data products. The collaborations running LIGO, Virgo, GEO600, and KAGRA have all agreed to use GWOSC services as the primary access points for public data products. This collaborative approach benefits users by creating a uniform interface to access data from multiple observatories, and provides cost savings to the various observatories by sharing the tools, services, and human resources.

Instruments and Collaborations

LIGO, Virgo, GEO600, and KAGRA are large-scale physics experiments designed and constructed to observe gravitational waves. Each of these projects is supported by an active and diverse scientific collaboration, all of whom work in partnership to pursue a scientific program centered on gravitational wave detectors, analysis, and astrophysics. Collaboration members include the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, the Virgo Collaboration, and the KAGRA Collaboration.

Public Data Policy

Data from the above projects are made available to the public via the Gravitational Wave Open Science Center (GWOSC), as described in the LIGO Data Management Plan. All public data releases are managed by the LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA collaborations, and GWOSC is jointly operated by these same organizations.

Funding

Funding sources are as described in the acknowledgement guidelines.