Pfizer partnered with Figshare to centralize the sharing and discoverability of publication-related outputs, leading to greater impact and a wider reach to key audiences including healthcare providers and the general public.
To achieve these goals, Pfizer created a Figshare portal that hosts:
- Publication Plain Language Summaries (PLS)
- Supplemental data associated with published manuscripts
- Green Open Access (OA) manuscripts.
PLS are summaries of a published article written in non-scientific language that can be easily understood by non-specialist healthcare providers, patients, caregivers, and the general public.
Pfizer partnered with Figshare to create a Pfizer Figshare portal with the following requirements:
- a custom-branded, web-based interface
- support for any file type (including photos and video)
- support for large files
- the ability to download content
- the ability to place embargoes on content
- the ability to request access to embargoed content
- detailed usage metrics, including views, downloads, citations, and Altmetrics
- indexing in Google, Google Scholar, and Google Dataset Search
The figure below illustrates the steps taken to develop and implement Pfizer’s Figshare portal.
One of the reasons we turned to Figshare for help is that some publishers were unable to publish PLS alongside scientific articles,” said Angela Sykes, Content & Education Director at Pfizer. “Figshare is a good option as it allows us to have a consistent place for publishing, not only PLS, but also supplemental data associated with published manuscripts. The idea was to create a centralized location for sharing content related to Pfizer publications in a manner that is discoverable and freely accessible to anyone.”
The PLS on Pfizer’s Figshare are usually a combination of infographics and text that are typically a few pages long. They all link to the related publication directly from the Figshare page and include a clear reuse license.
Pfizer has also found Figshare to be invaluable for sharing supplemental materials – research data, tables, images, videos, software, and more – because it simplifies the process of managing journals’ requests to post supplemental data related to Pfizer-sponsored articles.
Additionally, Pfizer hopes to use Figshare to publish Green OA manuscripts. Certain journals allow authors to submit Green OA versions of their publications into institutional repositories like Figshare to make them openly and freely available.
“Open access is a big goal for Pfizer. The publications management team has a goal of publishing 95% of our manuscripts open access and, as of last year, we’ve achieved 86% open access. We’re hoping that we can increase that number even more by publishing Green OA in Figshare,” said Angela.
So far, content in Pfizer’s Figshare portal has been viewed over 1,000 times and downloaded over 200 times. “We’re very happy with how things are going so far,” said Angela. “The system is very easy to use, and it’s definitely been a success. We’re hoping that we’ll have a continued partnership with Figshare, and that uptake will continue to grow as time goes on.”
