Data Archiving Platforms: Figshare

by Brianna Marshall, Digital Curation Coordinator

This is part three of a three-part series where I explore platforms for archiving and sharing your data. Read the first post in the series, focused on UW’s institutional repository, MINDS@UW or read the second post, focused on data repository Dryad.

To help you better understand your options, here are the areas I will address for each platform:

  • Background information on who can use it and what type of content is appropriate.
  • Options for sharing and access
  • Archiving and preservation benefits the platform offers
  • Whether the platform complies with the forthcoming OSTP mandate

figshare

About

figshare is a discipline-neutral platform for sharing research in many formats, including figures, datasets, media, papers, posters, presentations and filesets. All items uploaded to figshare are citable, shareable and discoverable.

Sharing and access

All publicly available research outputs are stored under Creative Commons Licenses. By default, figures, media, posters, papers, and filesets are available under a CC-BY license, datasets are available under CC0, and software/code is available under the MIT license. Learn more about sharing your research on figshare.

Archiving and preservation

figshare notes that items will be retained for the lifetime of the repository and that its sustainability model “includes the continued hosting and persistence of all public research outputs.” Research outputs are stored directly in Amazon Web Service’s S3 buckets. Data files and metadata are backed up nightly and replicated into multiple copies in the online system. Learn more about figshare’s preservation policies.

OSTP mandate

The OSTP mandate requires all federal funding agencies with over $100 million in R&D funds to make greater efforts to make grant-funded research outputs more accessible. This will likely mean that data must be publicly accessible and have an assigned DOI (though you’ll need to check with your funding agency for the exact requirements). All items uploaded to figshare are minted a DataCite DOI, so as long as your data is set to public it is a good candidate for complying with the mandate.

Visit figshare.

Have additional questions or concerns about where you should archive your data? Contact us.