Figshare is an online
open access repository where researchers can preserve and share their research outputs, including figures, datasets, images, and videos.
It is free to upload content and free to access, in adherence to the principle of
open data
Open data are data that are openly accessible, exploitable, editable and shareable by anyone for any purpose. Open data are generally licensed under an open license.
The goals of the open data movement are similar to those of other "open(-so ...
. Figshare is one of a number of portfolio businesses supported by
Digital Science,
a subsidiary of
Springer Nature
Springer Nature or the Springer Nature Group is a German-British academic publishing company created by the May 2015 merger of Springer Science+Business Media and Holtzbrinck Publishing Group's Nature Publishing Group, Palgrave Macmillan, and Macm ...
.
History
Figshare was launched in January 2011 by Mark Hahnel
and has been supported by
Digital Science since a January 2012 relaunch.
Hahnel first developed the platform as a personal custom solution for the organization and publication of diverse research products generated in support of his
PhD in
stem cell
In multicellular organisms, stem cells are undifferentiated or partially differentiated cells that can change into various types of cells and proliferate indefinitely to produce more of the same stem cell. They are the earliest type of cell ...
biology.
In January 2013, Figshare announced a partnership with
PLOS to integrate Figshare data hosting, access, and visualization with their associated PLOS articles.
In September 2013, the service launched a hosted
institutional repository
An institutional repository (IR) is an archive for collecting, preserving, and disseminating digital copies of the intellectual output of an institution, particularly a research institution. Academics also utilize their IRs for archiving published ...
service.
In December 2013, they announced integration with
ImpactStory to support the collection of
altmetrics
In scholarly and scientific publishing, altmetrics (stands for "alternative metrics") are non-traditional bibliometrics proposed as an alternative or complement to more traditional citation impact metrics, such as impact factor and H-index, ''h ...
.
Figshare also hosts the Reproducibility Collection as a founding member of The Reproducibility Initiative, which acts as an independent and blinded validator for replication of submitted data.
Figshare releases '
The State of Open Data' each year to assess the changing academic landscape around open research.
Concept
Researchers can upload all of their research outputs to Figshare, thus making them publicly available. Users can upload files in any format,
and items are attributed a
DOI. The current 'types' that can be chosen are figures, datasets, media (including video), papers (including pre-prints), posters, code, and filesets (groups of files).
All files are released under a
Creative Commons license
A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work". A CC license is used when an author wants to give other people the right to share, use, and bu ...
, CC-BY for most files and CC0 (public domain) for datasets.
Figshare allows researchers to publish negative data.
The withholding of negative publications is a widely known phenomenon that leads to a significant bias, often referred to as the
file drawer effect.
By encouraging publishing of figures, charts, and data, rather than being limited to the traditional entire 'paper', knowledge can be shared more quickly and effectively. Figshare also tracks the download statistics for hosted materials, acting in turn as a source for
altmetrics
In scholarly and scientific publishing, altmetrics (stands for "alternative metrics") are non-traditional bibliometrics proposed as an alternative or complement to more traditional citation impact metrics, such as impact factor and H-index, ''h ...
.
The main hosting mechanism for the platform is
Amazon S3, with CLOCKSS serving as an additional host for public content.
Both of these resources support backup and preservation via a distributed
cloud computing
Cloud computing is "a paradigm for enabling network access to a scalable and elastic pool of shareable physical or virtual resources with self-service provisioning and administration on-demand," according to International Organization for ...
network.
Integration with other platforms
Figshare features integration with
ORCID,
Symplectic Elements, can import items from GitHub, and is a source tracked by Altmetric.com.
See also
*
Dryad
*
List of preprint repositories
This is a list of repositories used to store open science
Open science is the movement to make scientific research (including publications, data, physical samples, and software) and its dissemination accessible to all levels of society, ama ...
*
Open Science Framework
The Center for Open Science is a non-profit technology organization based in Charlottesville, Virginia with a mission to "increase the openness, integrity, and reproducibility of scientific research." Brian Nosek and Jeffrey Spies founded the or ...
*
Zenodo
Zenodo is a general-purpose open repository developed under the European OpenAIRE program and operated by CERN. It allows researchers to deposit research papers, data sets, research software, reports, and any other research related digital art ...
References
External links
*
List of organisations, universities and other entities using Figshare
{{commons category-inline, Figshare
Creative Commons-licensed works
Open-access archives
Open science
Open data
Academic publishing
Data publishing
Scholarly communication
Institutional repository software
2011 establishments