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Embargoes and restricted access publishing

An embargo allows you to publish your research in a controlled way. Typically, the files are embargoed and remain private to you, while the metadata is findable to the world. You can then provide access to the files as needed. There are a number of reasons why you may need an embargo:

  • There may be ethically or commercially sensitive data
  • You may not have permission to make the data available (i.e. the research hasn’t be published yet)
  • Your data may be stored somewhere else, but you want to link to it to get a DOI

Please don’t embargo files by default! If your files are deidentified and do not contain sensitive information, it is best practice to publish them openly.

Add an embargo

Click the Apply embargo or Apply embargo and restricted access (institutional users) link on the right side of the page.

Find the embargo option on the right side of the edit page for any item.

Select the embargo expiration

Select a time period for the embargo. Embargoes expire at 00:10 (ten minutes after midnight UTC time) on the chosen date. For permanent embargoes, select ‘permanent embargo’ at the bottom of the dropdown menu. Permanent embargo is only available for files. Permanently embargoing both files and metadata would be the same as not publishing the item in the first place.

Select what is embargoed and who sees the embargo

Choose whether the embargo is on the files only or on the entire content (files and metadata). Institutions can add restricted access option for their users. Depending on how your institution has configured restricted publishing, you may see additional options for who can access the embargoed content.

  • Nobody: nobody will have access to the embargoed content publicly until the embargo period expires.
  • Administration: only users authorised by your institution will have access to the embargoed content until the embargo period expires.
  • Custom: under this option, the item owner can choose whether to restrict access to logged in users of one or more groups within the institution and/or users within a certain IP range.

Add a title and embargo reason

You can also change the title of the embargo (the standard text is ‘File(s) under embargo’) and add an optional reason as to why this item is under an embargo. This is useful for people who are viewing the public metadata record.

Request access option

Your institution may have an option configured to allow users to request access to your restricted files. If so, you can include additional context for anyone requesting access to the files. If anyone requests access to your restricted files through this feature, you and your institutional administrators will receive an email request to grant access.

Note: To request access from the public item page, users will need to log into their Figshare account (institution or figshare.com). 

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