OpenStreetMap for Academic Research
2026-03-06
OpenStreetMap is one of the most widely cited open sources of geodata in science. According to Google Scholar, more than 2,000 research papers using OSM are published every year. The osm2cdr.ru service makes it easier to obtain OSM data in the formats accepted in academia.
Fields of application
- Urban studies — analysis of urban morphology, building density and accessibility.
- Transport science — modelling road networks and analysing routes.
- Ecology — mapping green areas, water bodies and landscapes.
- Sociology — spatial analysis of the distribution of social facilities.
- Epidemiology — geo-epidemiological maps, analysis of access to healthcare.
- Disasters — rapid mapping of emergency zones (Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team).
Formats for research
- Shapefile — a classic for ArcGIS and QGIS, widely supported by R and Python.
- GeoPackage — a modern SQLite-based format without the limitations of Shapefile.
- GeoJSON — convenient for Python (geopandas), R (sf) and JavaScript.
- CSV — tabular data with coordinates for statistical packages.
- GeoParquet — for processing large datasets in Apache Spark and DuckDB.
Reproducibility
Reproducibility matters in research. Recommendations:
- Record the export date — OSM data is updated daily.
- Save the bbox (bounding box) and the export parameters.
- State the version of the osm2cdr.ru API and the filters you used.
- Publish the source data in a repository (Zenodo, Figshare).
Citing OSM
When using OpenStreetMap data in a publication, cite it as:
OpenStreetMap contributors. (2026). OpenStreetMap [Data set]. Retrieved from https://www.openstreetmap.org. Available under the Open Database License (ODbL).