Usage Metrics and Statistics
This article outlines the usage metrics measured and displayed on item pages in Figshare: views, downloads, citations, and Altmetrics.
Views
This metric shows the number of times your Figshare item page has been viewed. The threshold for counting multiple events from the same source is set at 30 seconds, in compliance with COUNTER.
Downloads
This metric shows the number of times one or all files in your Figshare item have been downloaded. For example, if you item has multiple files, if someone downloads one of the files, that will be counted as one download. If someone clicks the ‘Download all’ button, that will be counted as one download. If there are three files in an item and someone downloads each file individually, the download count will be incremented by three.
Citations
** Citation counts across Figshare repositories are being updated. You may see citation counts go to zero and increment to accurate values through January 2025. **
Citations are counted using data from Dimensions, a research information database. Th data come from searching the full text of publications from a database of over 80 million papers indexed in ReadCube. The publications come from a number of sources including Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis, Wiley, Emerald, and more.
Citations often take a few days to weeks to appear on item pages in Figshare. Once a citation has been registered, it will automatically appear on the item page. Users can click on the citation and be taken to a Dimensions page with detailed information on where the citation(s) occurred. This does not require a Dimensions subscription. Users will need to create a free account to see the information. Citation counts are generally updated monthly.
Altmetrics
Altmetric data appears on item pages where Altmetric has picked up attention. This will appear automatically without any action having to be taken by the user. Altmetrics can include attention on social media, news outlets, blogs, patents, and more. Users can click on the Altmetric donut to see where their item has received attention.
FAQs
- Are you Make Data Count and COUNTER compliant?
Yes, we are Make Data Count and COUNTER compliant.
- What filtering do you do on views and downloads?
Whilst we discount things like double clicks, we show raw counts on the landing pages and can export different levels of filtered counts to different services such as Make Data Count.
- Do you track usage metrics for embedded items?
Yes, if you embed a Figshare item into a webpage, the usage statistics will count toward the overall metrics displayed on the item page.
- Why are my downloads higher than my views?
This could be because your item has been downloaded using the API which wouldn’t contribute toward a view count. Or if you have multiple files that were downloaded individually by a user the download count will be higher. If you think there’s an issue with the usage statistics displayed on your item page, please contact support@figshare.com.
- Does Dimensions pick up citations on URLs?
No, like most citation tracking tools, Dimensions only tracks citations on DOIs.
- Does Dimensions track citations on versioned DOIs?
Yes, Dimensions’ citation data covers versioned and non-versioned DOIs. Versioned DOIs have ‘.v2, .v3, etc.’ appended to the DOI string.
- How does Dimensions extract and parse the citation data?
Dimensions extracts strings that look like DOIs from PDFs and Figshare then matches these to our records. If a DOI is a versioned DOI, both are provided to Figshare to include in the citation data.
- Why are the citations figures on Figshare and Dimensions different?
Figshare imports citation data as parsed by Dimensions on a weekly basis; this includes both the addition of new citations and also the removal of citations that were incorrectly identified previously. This can cause the numbers on the two applications to differ slightly for brief periods of time.
