Figshare’s repository solutions help researchers and organizations manage their research outputs in a discoverable, citable, reportable and transparent way. It is a place to share, showcase and manage your research outputs. You can upload all of your research outputs to Figshare. When you make your research outputs publicly available, you can choose the type of research that you are sharing. This includes, but is not limited to, tabular data, images, video, presentations, posters, code, book chapters, and more. When you publish on Figshare your data is given a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) to help you track the attention, reuse, and potential impact of your research.

Effective use of Figshare relies on comprehensive metadata. Figshare metadata is based on the DataCite schema. In order to meet with DataCite metadata requirements, Figshare requires users to add the following information before making files public and citable: Title, author list (ordered), categories (set ontology), tags (free text) and a description with as much context as needed to interpret the files. The more information you include in your metadata, the more likely it is your research will be found by others and the more likely it is that they will be able to reuse and cite your work. Metadata for an Item, Collection, or Project is available in JSON format from the API.

Following best practices enhances the visibility and reusability of your work. Sharing research data on Figshare can help promote your research and raise your profile as a researcher. It has also been reported that, ‘sharing detailed research data is associated with increased citation rate’ for published articles. Make your research outputs FAIR. Research outputs that are FAIR are Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable. It is important to check that you have the right to publish your data openly. Ensure that any and all sensitive or private information has been anonymized / de-identified.

A key best practice is to include thorough documentation. Include a README file in your upload that contains all the necessary information to enable somebody else to understand your outputs, re-create your results, and/or reuse it ethically. Ensure that your outputs include all files, code, and anything else that is necessary in order for another person to recreate your analysis, or validate your results. Use a consistent and descriptive file naming convention.

For datasets exceeding standard limits, Figshare offers a specialized service. Figshare Plus was created specifically to support larger datasets (over the 20GB figshare.com limit, up to many TBs) and larger file sizes together with more metadata, license options, and expert support and review. It can help you meet research funder or publisher requirements for data sharing so that you can include dataset DOIs in articles and data availability statements.

To use Figshare Plus, researchers must meet specific criteria. For your order request form to be approved, your planned data deposit must support ONE specific scholarly publication or a specific research project, be your own scholarly research output, and be submitted for review and publication within 12 months of your order request. An ORCiD is required for the submitting author to publish on Figshare Plus.

Figshare is designed to handle a wide variety of research outputs. File Size Limit: System-wide limit of 5TB per file. Dataset Size Limit: 20GB of private data files. All file types are accepted. Some file types are rendered in the browser page. figshare offers preservation backed by CLOCKSS, a highly trusted, community-governed archive used by repositories around the world.

The platform integrates with publishers and editorial workflows. Figshare integrates with major editorial systems, enabling you to offer seamless open data and supplemental materials sharing as part of your submissions process. Publishers who have integrated their editorial workflow with figshare may have additional user access controls enabled to allow the journal’s editors and reviewers to have anonymous and secure access to files before they are made public.

A major benefit of Figshare is increasing the discoverability of research. Figshare strives to have all content of type journal contribution, conference contribution, chapter, report, monograph, thesis, book, and preprint indexed by Google Scholar. This required implementing a number of guidelines, as outlined by Google. Moreover, Figshare has been in direct contact with the Google team to ensure that all guidelines have been correctly implemented and that the records can be crawled by the Scholar.

1. Figshare Metadata Schema Overview. https://info.figshare.com/user-guide/figshare-metadata-schema-overview/
2. How to fill in the metadata fields (first step). https://info.figshare.com/user-guide/how-to-fill-in-the-metadata-fields-first-step/
3. How can Figshare help my research? https://info.figshare.com/user-guide/how-can-figshare-help-my-research/
4. figshare | Data Management. https://datamanagement.hms.harvard.edu/share-publish/data-repositories/figshare
5. Using Figshare to Archive Supplemental Information. https://asabe.org/figshare
6. Is Figshare content indexed by Google Scholar? https://info.figshare.com/user-guide/is-figshare-content-indexed-by-google-scholar/