Figshare account management

Key topics this guide will cover:

Maximize your research profile 
How to change your name 
How to delete your account 
How to request more storage 
Account limits

Maximise your research profile

Create your research profile

Head to Profile in the user drop down:

This is your public facing profile page. You can:

  • Add your first and last name and job title
  • Add a photo of yourself
  • Add your research field of interest from the drop down list
  • Add your geographic location
  • Provide links to your social media pages (Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn)
  • Include biographical information
  • Provide links to any publications you may have on the web
  • Edit email address (for figshare.com users only)
  • Change password (for figshare.com users only)

Any items that you or others have made public via figshare that you are an author on, will also appear on your public profile page along with a list of your collaborators.


Add your ORCID ID! See the ORCID help section in this guide for more details. To learn more about ORCID please visit their website here: https://info.orcid.org/what-is-orcid/ 


How to change your name

To change your name in your Figshare profile, click on the dropdown menu in the top right and go to Profile. Under Professional details, you can change your first and last name. Making this change will update your profile page to display your new name. 

Please note, this change will affect existing items as well as newly created items. The name change will show immediately on existing items, but may take some time to be reflected in search results. If you have any queries related to this, please contact support@figshare.com.

If you are at an institution, your repository administrators may lock the name fields to ensure consistency. Contact your administrator(s) with questions.


How to delete your account

It would be a shame to see you go. If you are experiencing difficulties, please submit a support ticket support@figshare.com, perhaps we can help.

If you’d still like to delete your account, please follow these instructions:

Login to your Figshare account > Select ‘Settings’ from the menu in the top right > Select delete account > An automated ticket will be created and our engineers will follow up shortly.

Please note that your account will be disabled for 7 days first before being permanently deleted.

Once your account has been deleted, your profile will no longer be visible. However, public data will still be publicly available and the DOI will remain visible, just not linked to a user. Any private/drafted data in your account will be deleted.

Are you an institutional user?

If yes, the above does not apply and please contact your University administrator. If you don’t know who that is, just login to the support portal and submit a ticket, a member of the Figshare team will be happy to point you in the right direction.


How to request more storage

If you are using a free account on figshare.com, please consider Figshare plus, our Figshare repository for FAIR-ly sharing big datasets. There is a one-time cost associated with Figshare plus to cover the cost of storing the data persistently ad infinitum. Find out more about Figshare plus or get in touch at review@figshare.com with the storage amount needed and we will find the best way to support your data sharing.

If you are using your institution’s Figshare repository, you can request more storage from within your account on the My data page. Look for the storage information above your list of items and click the ‘request more storage’ link. Requests will be sent to your organizational administrator to approve before the change is reflected in your account.


Account Limits

Figshare.com accounts (i.e. free accounts) have the following limits for sharing scholarly content:

  • storage quota: 20GB
  • max individual file size: 20GB
  • max number of collections: 100
  • max number of projects: 100
  • max number of items: 500
  • max number of files per item: 500
  • max number of folders per item: determined by the file limit
  • max number of collaborators on project: 100
  • max number of authors per item or collection: 100
  • max number of item versions: 50

If you have more than 500 files that you need to include in an item, please create an archive (or archives) for the files (e.g. zip file). Please be in touch if you have questions about these limits.

Storage and files size information

All figshare.com accounts are provided with 20GB of private storage and are able to upload individual files up to 20GB. For institutional users, your private space limit is dependent on your institution, please contact your institutional admins if you require more space. Figshare for institutions also offers larger file size uploads up to 5TB.

If you would like to publish outputs larger than 20GB (up to many TBs) or files larger than 20GB (up to 5TB), please consider Figshare plus, our Figshare repository for FAIR-ly sharing big datasets that allows for more storage, larger files, additional metadata and license options, and expert support. There is a one-time cost associated with Figshare+ to cover the cost of storing the data persistently ad infinitum. Find out more about Figshare plus or get in touch at review@figshare.com with the storage amount needed and we will find the best way to support your data sharing.

It is important to know that Amazon S3 has a limit of 5TB per file. This is a hard limit that we cannot surpass.