Key topics:
How Figshare.com meets the OSTP and NIH “Desirable Characteristics for Data Repositories”
– Organizational infrastructure
– Digital object management
– Technology
– Additional Considerations for Repositories Storing Human Data
US Funder user guide
– Include Figshare in your data management plan
– Publishing your data with Figshare
– US Federal Data sharing resources
How Figshare.com meets the OSTP and NIH “Desirable Characteristics for Data Repositories”
Policies around open access and data sharing are expanding for federal funders. Data repositories that make research data and other outputs accessible and citable are a core piece to these policies.
Three sets of guidance/policies in particular are significant because of how many funders, publishers, or researchers are affected.
- In May 2022, the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) published a document, Desirable Characteristics of Data Repositories for Federally Funded Research. The NSTC is part of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and this document describes the features and functionality desired by the OSTP “to reduce the complexity for the research community — including investigators, program officers, data managers, librarians, and others — in complying with Federal data sharing policies.”
- In January 2023 a new NIH Policy for Data Management and Sharing went into effect. It includes supplemental information on Selecting a Data Repository (NOT-OD-21-016), which outlines desirable data repository characteristics that researchers should seek out to share their NIH-funded research data and materials.
- In March 2023, the U.S. Repository Network published its Desirable Characteristics of Digital Publication Repositories with an eye “to increase interoperability across the national and global repository network and establish suitability of a digital publication repository to be an “agency-designated” repository for federally funded research.”
Figshare.com is an appropriate and well-established generalist repository for researchers to permanently store the datasets and other materials produced from their Federally-funded research. Figshare Plus uses the same repository infrastructure to offer support for sharing large datasets including transparent costs that can be included in funding proposal budgets.
Figshare.com and Figshare Plus offer established repository infrastructure including adherence to community best practices and standards for persistence, provenance, and discoverability with the flexibility to share any file type and any type of research material and documentation. Figshare makes it easy to share your data in a way that is citable and reusable and to get credit for all of your work.
The following table lists the desirable characteristics for each policy. The ‘Figshare compliance’ column indicates how Figshare.com and Figshare Plus comply with the desirable characteristics from repositories as outlined by the OSTP and NIH, and links to more information further down the page.
For users of an institutional or organizational instance of Figshare or those considering using Figshare at their organization, please see our support article for more on how our institutional portals offer additional compliance with funder requirements.
| OSTP | NIH | U.S. Repository Network | Figshare.com compliance |
| Organizational Infrastructure | |||
| Free and Easy Access | Free and Easy Access | Free and Easy Discoverability & Access | Fully met |
| Clear Use Guidance | Clear Use Guidance | Clear Use Guidance | Fully met |
| Risk Management | Confidentiality | Partially met on figshare.com, fully met on Figshare Plus | |
| Retention Policy | Retention Policy | Preservation | Fully met |
| Long-term Organizational Sustainability | Long-term Sustainability | Long-term Organizational Sustainability | Fully met |
| Digital Object Management | |||
| Unique Persistent Identifiers | Unique Persistent Identifiers | Unique Persistent Identifiers | Fully met |
| Metadata | Metadata | Metadata | Fully met |
| Curation and Quality Assurance | Curation and Quality Assurance | Curation and Quality Assurance | Partially met by Figshare.com, fully met by Figshare Plus |
| Broad and Measured Reuse | Broad and Measured Reuse | Broad and Measured Reuse | Fully met |
| Common Format | Common Format | Common Format | Partially met |
| Provenance | Provenance | Provenance | Fully met |
| Technology | |||
| Authentication | – | Authentication | Fully met |
| Long-term Technical Sustainability | Long-term Sustainability | Long-term Technical Sustainability | Fully met |
| Security & Integrity | Security & Integrity | Security & Integrity | Fully met |
| Additional Considerations for Repositories Storing Human Data: Figshare is not designed for sensitive data. However, de-identified data from human participants may be shared in the repository when the data collection process is managed and data files are processed in order to safely allow for this in accordance with all applicable regulations, IRB protocols, participant consent, and the institution’s terms of use. See additional information from the NIH on sharing human data | |||
| Fidelity to Consent | Fidelity to Consent | – | Responsibility of the user |
| Security | Privacy | – | Fully met |
| Limited Use Compliant | Restricted Use Compliant | – | Partially met |
| Download Control | Download Control | – | Partially met |
| Request Review | Request Review | – | Not applicable |
| Plan for Breach | Plan for Breach | – | Partially met |
| Accountability | Violations | – | Partially met |
Desirable Characteristics of Data Repositories for Federally Funded Research
Organizational Infrastructure
Free and Easy Access
Fully met
Figshare believes that data should be as open as possible and should always be free to access. All content hosted on Figshare can be downloaded by anyone, with no need to log in. The content can also be mass downloaded or mined using the Figshare API, also openly available to anyone at docs.figshare.com. All Figshare metadata is licensed CC0 for broad reusability.
Figshare has endorsed the TRUST principles for Digital Repositories, the FAIR principles for open data, and is ISO27001 certified.
At the same time, there are some cases when it is appropriate to restrict access to data, which Figshare supports via embargo, private link, and linked data options. An embargo can be applied for any period of time on either the files only or the entire item.
Learn more:
About Figshare
Data Access Policy
Clear Use Guidance
Fully met
Content on figshare.com must be licensed under a machine readable license: either a CC0 or CC-BY license, or a GPL, MIT, or Apache license for code, to encourage broad reusability of the data. Additional open licenses are available in Figshare Plus.
Researchers are encouraged to include additional documentation regarding any access or reuse requirements as a README file and in the dataset description.
Learn more:
Copyright and License Policy
Terms of Use
Risk Management & Confidentiality
Partially met
Figshare is ISO27001 certified, meaning we adhere to their framework of policies and procedures regarding information risk management processes.
Researchers are directed not to share sensitive data on figshare.com per the terms of use. While Figshare employs stringent security protocols, these may not meet the requirements for restricted and human identifiable data. Nonetheless, Figshare data is stored securely and carefully monitored to ensure integrity and privacy.
Learn more:
Data Storage and Security
Terms of Use
Retention Policy / Preservation
Fully met
All content on Figshare will be retained for the lifetime of the repository. Figshare has been working hard to establish a business model that supports sustainability of the research outputs hosted on Figshare. Data is stored redundantly in the cloud as well as archived for long-term preservation.
Learn more:
Persistence of Data
Data Storage and Security
Long-term Organizational Sustainability
Fully met
Figshare was founded in 2011 and in 2012 became a part of the Digital Science portfolio of companies that support the research lifecycle. Over this period of time, it has grown into a sustainable company with more than 150 clients including research institutions around the world. Using a subscription model for software as a service, Figshare is able to provide policy-compliant infrastructure for FAIR data sharing to users at institutions and freely on Figshare.com.
All content in Figshare will be retained for the lifetime of the repository. All public research data published using the free version of figshare.com is stored redundantly in the cloud on Amazon Web Services S3 storage.
Learn more:
Persistence of Data
Data Storage and Security
Digital Object Management
Unique Persistent Identifiers
Fully met
All research made publicly available on Figshare gets allocated a DataCite Digital Object Identifier (DOI) at the point of publication. DOIs can also be reserved in advance to be included in associated publications. This ensures the unique identifier for the dataset is persistent and will not easily disappear as public content cannot be deleted from Figshare.
A globally unique identifier is one that once assigned to one entity cannot be assigned to another. But equally important, persistence means that resources must be allocated to the entity to ensure that reference rot (comprising link rot and content drift) do not occur. All items published through Figshare receive a DOI which is accessed by clicking on the Cite button on a Figshare item page.
Figshare authors can also add their ORCID iD, a unique author identifier to their Figshare Author Profile and can sync Figshare with ORCID and DataCite so that all of their public items from Figshare are pushed to ORCID.
The Funding field in Figshare metadata allows authors to add the specific grants and other sources of support for a project either by searching the linked Dimensions grants database or with free text. Researchers can add grants by searching for the grant ID or title and selecting the appropriate grant.
Metadata
Fully met
To publish on Figshare, all outputs must include mandatory metadata including: title, author(s), category, item type, keywords, description, and a machine-readable license. Funding sources, author ORCID, title and DOI of an associated peer-reviewed publication, and links to other references may also be included.
Metadata on Figshare is represented in a number of languages including but not limited to HTML, Dublin Core (oai_dc), Datacite (oai_datacite), RDF (rdf), CERIF XML (cerif), Qualified Dublin Core (qdc) (hasPart support), Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard (mets) and UKETD_DC (uketd_dc). The Figshare OAI-PMH v2.0 implementation has the following baseURL: https://api.figshare.com/v2/oai.
The link between data and metadata needs to be made explicit by clearly stating the globally unique and persistent identifier in the metadata that relates to the data. Figshare does this in all metadata export languages, including Schema.org which is used to ensure indexing of Figshare content on Google, Google Scholar, and Google Dataset Search.
Curation and Quality Assurance
Partially met
Currently, research published on figshare.com is not reviewed before it is published and checks are limited to verifying the output is within our terms of use. Nonetheless, researchers are encouraged to share high quality research outputs that are well documented and can use our user guides for guidance in doing so.
Figshare Plus, Figshare’s repository for big datasets, does include expert review of files and metadata before they are published to maximize discoverability and reuse.
Broad and measured reuse
Fully met
Data on figshare.com must be licensed under a CC0 or CC-BY license (or a GPL, MIT, or Apache license for code) in order to encourage broad reusability of the work. Metadata is licensed CC0.
Metrics of reuse are openly tracked for each public item on Figshare including the number of Views, Downloads, and Citations and the Altmetric score. Views and downloads are COUNTER compliant and citation data is harvested from the full text of preprints and publications based on the dataset’s unique DOI. Figshare has also implemented Make Data Count to meet community standards for metrics.
Learn more:
Copyright and License Policy
Common Format
Partially met
Figshare accepts all file formats in order to keep the barriers to data sharing low for researchers. This allows researchers to share the data according to the best practices of their research communities as well as allows flexibility for certain methods or disciplines where specific file types that may not be open are required for data access or reuse. Figshare does not currently perform file conversion en masse specifically because we cannot know the open formats that would be best suited for specific data types or disciplines, although this is under consideration for future development.
Figshare encourages researchers to apply best practices for data sharing according to the FAIR principles, archival best practices in particular for file formats, the standards of their specific methodology or discipline, or the requirements of the funder, publisher, or data management plan (see our Guide to Best Practice for sharing data on Figshare).
All files and metadata publicly available on Figshare are available to be freely downloaded, including via the Figshare API at https://docs.figshare.com/. Figshare’s Open API supports OAI-PMH, which gives a simple technical option for data providers to make their metadata available to services, based on the open standards HTTP (Hypertext Transport Protocol) and XML (Extensible Markup Language). For more information please visit: https://www.openarchives.org/pmh/.
Provenance
Fully met
Figshare tracks all uploaded files and any revisions made to the files or metadata of draft and published items. Once published, Figshare supports version control. DOIs are version controlled and publication dates are openly tracked. Published data cannot be deleted from Figshare. For Figshare Plus, actions such as changes made by a reviewer or by an administrator impersonating a user are logged.
Learn more:
How does versioning work on Figshare.
Technology
Authentication
Fully met
User accounts on figshare.com are required to authenticate their account before the account is created.
Figshare authors can add their ORCID iD, a unique author identifier to their Figshare Author Profile so their ORCID is linked to published items and can sync Figshare with ORCID and DataCite so that all of their public items from Figshare are pushed to ORCID.
Long-term Technical Sustainability
Fully met
Figshare’s technical infrastructure is designed and backed-up regularly to ensure sustainability and security. Files uploaded by users are backed up, the core metadata database and statistics database are backed up and tested regularly, and the search engine indexes are backed up and tested regularly. Source code and configuration files are backed up on change and tested at build time.
Security, Integrity & Privacy
Fully met
Figshare has clear policies on security, integrity, and privacy:
- Data Integrity and Authenticity Policy
- Data Moderation and Take-Down Notice Policy
- Data Storage and Security
- Privacy Policy
- Terms of Use
Figshare is ISO27001 certified.
Figshare has a documented Incident Management Procedure as does Digital Science.
Note that researchers are directed not to share sensitive data on Figshare per the terms of use.
Additional Considerations for Repositories Storing Human Data
When sharing data from human participants, particular consideration must be paid to data sharing practices from the beginning of the project (e.g., IRB protocol and informed consent language) through data management and sharing (e.g., de-identification, access). Researchers must manage and share data in accordance with Federal Regulations for the protection of human research participants, NIH expectations for sharing data from human participants (NIH Human Subjects Research), and any requirements of their academic institution or Institutional Review Board.
Figshare does not accept “health or other sensitive personal, highly classified or regulated information or personal information of others, or which you are not authorised to upload, publish or share.” However de-identified data from human participants may be shared in the repository when the data collection process is managed and data files are processed in order to safely allow for this in accordance with all applicable regulations and the Figshare terms of use.
Figshare may also be used in combination with other data repositories to share some research outputs in a restricted manner and others more openly. Links between these related outputs can be specified in the dataset description and metadata.
Figshare.com does not currently meet the considerations for documenting fidelity to consent or security features specific to human data (e.g. tiered access, credentialing of data users) or data access requests, however some of these considerations are met by Figshare Plus, which employs dataset review.
Fidelity to Consent
Responsibility of the user
Meeting this characteristic is entirely dependent on the user. Users are responsible for ensuring that their research outputs are suitable for upload to Figshare and that access to research outputs is consistent with participant consent and changes to consent.
Security, Integrity & Privacy
Fully met
Figshare has clear policies on security, integrity, and privacy:
- Data Integrity and Authenticity Policy
- Data Moderation and Take-Down Notice Policy
- Data Storage and Security
- Privacy Policy
- Terms of Use
Figshare is ISO27001 certified.
Figshare has a documented Incident Management Procedure as does Digital Science.
Note that researchers are directed not to share sensitive data on Figshare per the terms of use.
Limited / Restricted Use Compliant
Partially met
Figshare does not currently administer restricted access to datasets but researchers using Figshare Plus may apply an embargo to files only or to files and metadata. Linked files can also be hosted elsewhere, and private access can be provided by private link to unpublished items.
Learn more:
Guide to Embargoed and Restricted Access Items
Download Control
Partially met
Access to files uploaded but not yet published on figshare.com is limited to the user account that uploaded them. Private links may be generated by a user to provide access to others, however access is available to anyone with the link and is not audited. For published items on figshare.com, access is freely available to all without an account unless an embargo has been applied and this access is not audited. Views and downloads are counted on a per item basis and are logged by IP address but not by user account or any other end user information.
Request Review
Not applicable
figshare.com and Figshare Plus do not administer restricted access to data.
Plan for Breach
Partially met
Figshare has a security policy and a documented incident management procedure that includes handling breaches. Note that the Figshare plans are not specific to breaches of sensitive research data such as identifiable human subjects’ data as storing this type of data is prohibited by the Figshare terms of use.
Accountability / Violations
Partially met
The Figshare terms of use prohibit certain uses of the repository including the upload of certain categories of materials. In the case that Figshare terms are violated, we have a transparent take-down policy we will follow in addition to procedures in the terms of use including termination of a user account if appropriate.
How data published on Figshare is reused is generally not monitored nor addressed by Figshare, but we encourage researchers to follow any stated terms including license requirements. Misuse of the platform for download of data would also constitute a violation of terms of use and access may be terminated.
Learn more:
Data Moderation and Take-Down Notice Policy
Terms of Use
Want to know more?
Can’t find your answer here, check the community discussion or raise a support ticket.
US Funder user guide
All researchers with US federal funding are invited to use Figshare to make the products of their research publicly available, reusable, and citable when a discipline-specific repository is unavailable.
Figshare.com is free for researchers to use and provides free, open access for others to view and download your research. Any type of data can be shared and many file types can be previewed in the browser. Also, many other products of your research beyond data can also be shared including code and software, multimedia files, figures, protocols, workflows, posters, presentations, and papers.
Figshare Plus is a repository that allows for openly sharing big datasets (over 20GB), more files, and larger files together with more license and metadata options than figshare.com as well as expert support and dataset review. Figshare Plus has a one-time data publishing charge based on storage amount, which may be an allowable cost on your grant.
Sharing all of the results and components of your research can make it more transparent, reproducible, reusable, and impactful and planning how to share your work in a trusted repository like Figshare from the beginning of a project can help you comply with both funder data management and sharing policies, including NIH and NSF, and journal policies for data availability.
Here we outline how to share your federally funded research on figshare.com and Figshare Plus, including writing Figshare into your data management plan and some best practices to make your work as discoverable and reusable as possible.
Include Figshare in your data management plan
As recognition of the importance of data management and sharing grows, it is increasingly common that funders of research and institutions require a data management plan (DMP) to be created for grants and projects. In the US, many federal funders require DMPs at the time of grant submission including the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Overall, a DMP asks the researcher to consider how data and associated products of research such as code or other files, will be handled across the life span of a project and beyond. This includes how the data will be stored, secured, accessed, documented, formatted, and versioned. The plan should also include where and when data will be shared, if it will be made publicly available, how it will be licensed for reuse, and how and for how long data will be archived.
If there is a repository that is specific to your research discipline or methodology, it is recommended and sometimes even required (e.g. genomic data), that appropriate data be deposited there to facilitate discovery and reuse. However for all other data and research materials for which a discipline-specific repository does not exist or isn’t appropriate, trusted generalist repositories are a suitable choice for sharing data responsibly.
Figshare.com is an appropriate repository for researchers to permanently store the datasets and other materials produced from their research and to include in their data management plans submitted to funders.
How to describe sharing your data in Figshare in a data management plan:
When you describe sharing your data in Figshare in your data management plan, the following details should be noted:
- Where the data will be made publicly available (i.e. published on Figshare)
- What data will be shared in Figshare (e.g. raw data, processed data, de-identified data, data supporting publications, null results, etc.)
- When the data will be made publicly available
- What file formats the data will be shared in so that they can be reused.
- What documentation will be included with the files to provide context and enable reuse such as a README file, data dictionary, or codebook.
- What other materials will be shared (e.g. code, software, images, video, workflows, anything)
- How the data and other materials will be licensed for reuse
- How the data will be described so that it can be discovered
- How long the data will be preserved
Example Text for Your DMP
- Where the data will be made publicly available: Research data from the project will be deposited in Figshare, an established data repository that makes the results of research discoverable and freely available to view, download, and reuse. Figshare maintains a digital repository infrastructure dedicated to data preservation and continuity of access, data integrity, and security, and has endorsed the TRUST principles for digital repositories.
- When the data will be made publicly available: Data will be deposited in Figshare and made publicly available at the time a preprint or peer-reviewed publication associated with the data is published. New releases of the data will be published as subsequent versions of the same DOI if additional analyses are shared. Unpublished data including null results will be made open at the end of the award period.
How the data will be described so that it can be discovered: Each dataset published in Figshare will be assigned a unique permanent identifier, a DOI (Digital Object Identifier) that is version controlled and can be cited and tracked. All files published in Figshare will also include metadata that conforms to community standards for DataCite DOIs. This includes a title, authors, description, keywords, categories, a machine-readable license, item type, funding sources including grant IDs, associated publications, and references.
DMP Resources
At academic institutions, support for data management including guidance on creating DMPs is often available from experts such as data librarians, so we recommend checking the websites of the library and the research office at your institution to get assistance.
There are also resources such as DMPTool and DMPonline that track funder requirements for DMPs and offer both examples of DMPs and templates to write your own DMP according to the funder’s requirements.
DMPTool List of Funder Requirements
DMPonline List of Funder Requirements
You may also find our guide to Best practice for managing your outputs on Figshare helpful.
Publishing your data with Figshare
To get started, sign-up for a free figshare.com account (view our getting started guide for more) or submit a Figshare Plus order request form. Then upload, describe, and publish your data.
Here are a few things to think about when uploading and sharing your US federally funded research to figshare.com or Figshare Plus. We also encourage you to seek out data sharing guidance that is specific to your funding agency and/or your field of research as well as to seek support from your institution that may be available from the library or office of research.
Items and Collections
Before you begin, decide how you will organize your dataset. Group research products as you would want them to be cited and as they support specific publications. If you have a research project with multiple data files or outputs, you can choose to create multiple items. An item in the repository represents a unique page with files, a description, metadata, a citable DOI (digital object identifier), and openly tracked metrics of views, downloads, and citations. Each item can contain anywhere from one file up to 500 files.
How you choose to group files into items should depend on how similar they are, if they are the same type of research output, and what licenses you wish to apply to which outputs. Figshare offers a variety of item types based on the research product you are sharing.
You can also create and publish a collection to group together any public items published across Figshare portals – a collection offers a way to point to all of the outputs associated with a specific paper, project, grant, or research group with a single DOI and citation. Published collections have their own descriptions, DOIs, and usage metrics.
Uploading your files
Files can be added to your items by dragging and dropping them into the upload box via the browser, browsing on a local drive, or by using the Figshare FTP or API (recommended for large files or many files). Documentation on how to use Figshare’s API can be found at https://docs.figshare.com/ along with some examples on our API Guide.
Sharing big datasets
To publish datasets 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. There is a one-time cost associated with Figshare Plus to cover the cost of storing the data persistently that may be an allowable cost on your grant.
Find out more about Figshare Plus features including transparent pricing based on storage 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.
Sharing complex datasets
If you have complex hierarchical data, Figshare supports folder upload, which allows the relationship between files to be maintained when viewing an item. Please organize your files into folders before uploading the top level folder(s), as files cannot be moved between folders after upload.
If you have large files or more than 500 files to share in a single item, you may wish to upload zipped or compressed files as archives. You can upload one or many zipped files (archives) to an item. The file names within these archives, but not the files themselves, will be previewable.
You can also link a GitHub repository to publish releases to Figshare. See all Figshare integrations.
Data sharing considerations
See our guide to best practices for managing your outputs on Figshare for important considerations including:
- Make sure that you have given full consideration to research ethics, e.g., consent to share, human subjects data, and personally identifiable information (PII). Note that only fully deidentified data without PII should be shared on Figshare.
- Opt for open and preservable file formats that can be used without proprietary software when possible, even if it requires posting the same data in multiple formats.
- Use a consistent and descriptive file naming convention.
- Provide documentation that would be needed to understand and reuse the data as a file together with the dataset such as a README text file, a code book, or a data dictionary.
Prepare high quality metadata
Include both descriptive metadata to enhance the discoverability of the work and provide context to the research study and discipline or method specific metadata to adhere to data standards for your research community when possible.
Title
Include a meaningful title for your items as you would for any other research work such as a paper or presentation so that the title provides context about the research question and method. If the data supports a specific publication you may include the paper title in the item title, but they should not be exactly the same (e.g. “Dataset supporting Paper Title”).
Author Information
Uploading authors are expected to sync their ORCID iD with their Figshare user profile. ORCID iDs enable unique author identification and allow for recognition of all types of research contributions. Please refer to our guide How to connect your ORCID profile for instructions on syncing your ORCID iD so it is included with your Figshare published research. Note that for co-authors without a Figshare account, you can also add an ORCID manually when adding the co-author by name.
Description
Include a description of the specific research items shared as well as a description of the research methods used and the research study as a whole. This is important if someone discovers the research independent of any other description. This is similar to the captions you might write for a figure or the abstract you would provide for a paper. You might also wish to note related materials including publications, code, data, or webpages.
Funding
In the funding field, list all supporting funding with each funding source (grant, award, contract, or intramural project) entered separately. You can search for these by grant title or number, select the appropriate grant that will appear in the auto-populating search field from the Dimensions grant database.
For example, for NIH funding, enter the activity code (e.g. R01), the institute code (e.g. EY), and the grant 6 digit serial number in the ‘Funding’ field.
Funding information can also be added as free text in these fields for any support not found via the search function.
Related Materials
Add linkages to other research objects using Related Materials and provide information on the relation types. Figshare uses DataCite’s standard relation types. Common relation types are IsSupplementTo and IsReferencedBy. Both of those relation types are interpreted as a citation for the dataset in DataCite’s event data.
For example, to add the DOI for a paper that uses the dataset, add the title of the paper in the title field, add the paper’s DOI, select DOI from the identifier type list, and choose IsSupplementTo as the relation type. If you want to link to a related dataset or a Figshare collection, use the IsPartOf relation type.
License
Select an appropriate license for reuse paying particular attention to which licenses are best suited to different output types such as data, code, or written text as well as any other restrictions that may accompany the research. CC0 licenses may be useful for data to allow for the broadest reuse without restrictions. CC-BY licenses require attribution and are recommended for text materials as well as other research outputs.
Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs)
Each item you publish on Figshare will have a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), which is a globally unique, persistent identifier that is version controlled. You can view the DOI and full citation for any public item by clicking on the Cite button. The DOI will be live once the item is published but you can also reserve the DOI in advance to include it in manuscripts.
The DOI should be used whenever you cite the item so citation metrics can be collected including when pointing to the data in related publications or data availability statements. You can also include these DOIs in reports to your funder or publisher to demonstrate publicly available research products. For datasets supporting a publication indexed in a federal full-text archive like PubMed Central, the dataset DOI from Figshare may be included in the publication record metadata as well.
Editing and Versioning
You can edit your published research items at any time to update the files or metadata and DOIs will be versioned to reflect substantial changes.
Note that some changes will result in a new version of the item that will be reflected with an appended version number at the end of the DOI – these include edits to title, authors, and files. The base DOI will resolve to the newest version and all previous versions will also remain publicly available.
US Federal Data sharing resources
SPARC – Data Sharing Requirements by Federal Agency
DMPTool – A free, community-supported service that makes it easier to create machine-actionable data management and sharing plans (DMSPs) that meet funder requirements and follow open science best practice.
FAIRsharing Assistant Beta – This Assistant will help you find the standards, databases and policies you need to help make your data FAIR.
NIH data sharing resources
- NIH Scientific Data Sharing
- National Library of Medicine – NIH-Supported Data Sharing Resources
- Final NIH Policy for Data Management and Sharing (effective January 2023)
- NIH Grants & Funding – 2023 Data Management & Sharing Policy FAQs
- NIH Public Access Policy for peer-reviewed articles to be deposited in PubMed Central
NSF data sharing resources
NSF Public Access Policy for peer-reviewed articles to be deposited in the NSF Public Access Repository (NSF-PAR)
Preparing Your Data Management and Sharing Plan
NSF Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG)