Key topics:
Accessibility standards
Security, Stability, and ISO27001 Certification
How is my data stored, is it secure?
Complying with the TRUST Principles
Item types
File formats supported for in-browser preview
Use Metrics and Statistics
Figshare Metadata Schema Overview
How Figshare aligns with the FAIR principles
What browser versions are supported?
How persistent is my research?
What categories are available and why?
Claiming authorship of an item on Figshare
Accessibility standards
This accessibility statement applies to the Figshare website. Ensuring that our website is usable for as many of our visitors as possible is a key objective for Figshare and Digital Science. We are actively committed to reaching and maintaining strong accessibility compliance standards.
Publicly facing pages:
We are committed to making our publicly facing pages on Figshare, which are any pages not behind a user log in, compliant with the following accessibility standards:
- European accessibility standard EN 301 549
- WCAG 2.1 AA
- Section 508
Private facing pages:
Our private facing pages, which includes any page behind a user log in, aim to be as accessible as possible, but may not meet all requirements of the above standards. We are in an ongoing process to upgrade the technology and design for our existing private facing pages in order to better support compliance with the above standards. All new pages, whether they are public or private, are designed with compliance to the above standards in mind.
User generated content:Our site contains content and files that are not directly generated by Figshare. User-generated content, like files uploaded by users, isn’t covered in our standards compliance. For some tips for how to make files on Figshare as accessible as possible, check out this article from the University of Kent.
Security, Stability, and ISO27001 Certification
This page is applicable to academic institutions, government agencies, funders, and publishers. If you are a figshare.com user, see the other section on this page.
Figshare is a fully maintained and developed Software as a Service (SaaS) platform running on Amazon Web Services (AWS) with a record of 99.9% uptime, reported transparently through the Figshare Status page. Figshare (founded in 2010 and incorporated in 2012) is held by Digital Science & Research Solutions Limited (founded 2010) and works with Digital Science and its other portfolio companies to provide a secure and stable research services environment. Figshare aims to be as transparent as possible around security measures and personal data protections. This page outlines Figshare’s security measures and data storage options to help you understand how we protect information. Figshare can provide an example of the standard SLA and other security documentation upon request (info@figshare.com).
Figshare Security Information
We have a dedicated team with robust security measures in place (dictated by one of the highest standards in the industry, ISO27001). Real-time and historical status for the platform is at status.figshare.com and email updates are available from that page.
Figshare is ISO27001 certified
Being a trusted digital repository is a vital component in ensuring funder and government compliance when providing these services to institutions. As such, Figshare is delighted to have been awarded ISO27001 certification, after more than a year of structured improvements to our system and our workflows.
ISO 27001 is a specification for an information security management system (ISMS). An ISMS is a framework of policies and procedures that includes all legal, physical and technical controls involved in an organisation’s information risk management processes.
ISO27001 is part of ISO/IEC 27000 family of standards that helps organizations keep information assets secure. Using this family of standards helps your organization manage the security of assets such as financial information, intellectual property, employee details or information entrusted to you by third parties.
For more information on our ISO27001 certification, please visit this page.
Given growing concerns around the sustainability of digital repositories and what is considered trustworthy, we feel that all repository systems should be aiming for ISO27001 compliance going forward.
Platform security overview
- Digital Science and Figshare are both ISO27001 certified. If you require more details please contact us at info@figshare.com
- Figshare is a multi-tenant platform. Access to data is controlled through access control lists and query filters
- The system is monitored 24/7 with OS level monitoring, real-time analysis, and an antivirus solution
- The system also undergoes regular vulnerability scanning and 3rd party penetration testing.
- Figshare has completed a HECVATlite audit and we can share the results with those evaluating the platform for enterprise use.
Figshare scalability and availability
Figshare serves individuals and institutions across the globe. To meet IT business continuity requirements, the Figshare platform is deployed across multiple AWS Availability Zones and Regions. All Figshare public services are deployed in a highly available and fault tolerant design following AWS cloud best practices.
Platform updates and functionality
- The Figshare platform is updated about eight to 12 times a year with no planned downtime during updates
- Figshare’s public pages are optimized for mobile devices through a mobile responsive website
- Figshare functions on these minimum browser versions
Data location, transfer, backup, and preservation
Storage can be provided via the closest AWS node, via another cloud storage provider, or data can be stored locally at the institution.
If using Figshare Amazon S3 storage:
- Resistance to unavailability of a data center is provided by AWS S3 standard multiple backups. Both Figshare and AWS are ISO 27001 certified.
- Data in transit and at rest is encrypted.
Figshare integrates with preservation systems to enable institutions to use their preferred preservation service or system. Figshare provides preservation for researchers accounts on figshare.com. For organizations that license Figshare, we enable integrations with various preservations systems. Figshare does not provide preservation services for clients.
User authentication and user roles
- Institutional portals can integrate with SAML2 single sign-on systems.
- Permissions for the Figshare API are managed through account tokens. A user account’s permissions determine their permissions when using the API. The Figshare REST API supports the OAuth2 authorization standard and API Personal Access Tokens.
- Authenticated users can be assigned roles by group and these are managed internally. A user account can have multiple roles. Users with no administrator privileges are only able to access their own private records. Administrators can assign roles with elevated permissions to users as needed. Available user roles are detailed on our support site.
Support
Support is detailed in the standard Figshare SLA. In addition to 24/7 monitoring of the figshare platform, support agents are available to respond to general technical and configuration issues between 8am – 4pm UTC, Monday – Friday, excluding public holidays. Email support requests may be submitted at any time. For customers based in regions with working hours outside of the Main Support Desk Hours, regional account managers monitor support tickets, so requests and emergencies can be responded to and escalated in a timely manner.
Data Protection Compliance
Figshare complies with GDPR and thus most other requirements around the world. As part of a licensing agreement, we provide a Data Processing Addendum to clients that details compliance with data processing under data protection laws. Digital Science complies with GDPR and is ISO 27701 certified.
Figshare collects IP and user agent information (as advertised by our cookie banner) for visitors to the public portal. We collect this in our capacity as the platform provider and in accordance with our privacy policy. Figshare (or one of our third party sub processors) is the processor and the user or institution is the controller of their data. We only record non-sensitive information provided by the user, such as name, email, title, research categories and city/location. Please see our privacy policy for security measures taken.
We keep personal data for as long as it is necessary for the purposes for which it was collected, after which it is destroyed, erased, or anonymised. For figshare.com users that have made content public, we retain a record of the association with that content.
If you need more information, please contact us at info@figshare.com.
How is my data stored, is it secure?
All uploads that are privately stored can only be accessed by the uploader when they are logged in.
Figshare is hosted on Amazon Web Services to ensure the highest level of security and stability for your research data, full security. Amazon S3 stores multiple, redundant copies of your information so you don’t have to worry about ever losing your master copy. AWS utilises an end-to-end approach to secure and harden its infrastructure, including physical, operational, and software measures. Amazon S3 provides authentication mechanisms to ensure that data is kept secure from unauthorised access.
Please note that this only applies to figshare.com and those institutions who have chosen figshare to host their data. If you are unsure, please contact your institutional administrator.
Every part of the figshare data store is backed up – we don’t just rely on the redundancy of Amazon’s cloud. We do daily backups of the metadata, and weekly snapshots of the entire data system, including an encrypted one of the S3 file store.
The figshare server clusters are monitored in real time and the service is able to scale readily to meet traffic spikes that may occur when you release new or exciting datasets. We also use MD5 checksums when ingesting and storing a file to ensure the file is intact in each of its storage locations.
The security and persistence of your files on figshare make it easy to prevent plagiarism of your research data, as all uploads are time-stamped.
Complying with the TRUST Principles
The TRUST Principles for digital repositories
These principles offer guidance for maintaining the trustworthiness of digital repositories, especially those responsible for the stewardship of research data.
Figshare has endorsed the TRUST principles for digital repositories (https://www.rd-alliance.org/trust-principles-rda-community-effort)
| Principle | Guidance for Repositories |
| Transparency | To be transparent about specific repository services and data holdings that are verifiable by publicly accessible evidence. |
| Responsibility | To be responsible for ensuring the authenticity and integrity of data holdings and for the reliability and persistence of its service. |
| User Focus | To ensure that the data management norms and expectations of target user communities are met. |
| Sustainability | To sustain services and preserve data holdings for the long-term. |
| Technology | To provide infrastructure and capabilities to support secure, persistent, and reliable services. |
Source: Lin et al., 2020. The TRUST Principles for Digital Repositories. Scientific Data. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-020-0486-7
Item types
There is a default list of item types available for items created in Figshare. There are also non-default item types that can be added to your Figshare portal if you use Figshare for Institutions. Non-default item types are not configurable on a per-account basis. To add these non-default item types, please contact support@figshare.com.
The below list also indicates which item types are indexed by Google Scholar, Google Dataset Search, and Google Book Search.
| Figshare Item Type | Default | Indexed by | Description |
| Figure | Yes | Figures are generally photos, graphs and static images that would be represented in traditional pdf publications. | |
| Media | Yes | Media is any form of research output that is recorded and played. This is most commonly video, but can be audio or 3D representations. | |
| Dataset | Yes | Google Dataset Search | Datasets usually provide raw data for analysis. This raw data often comes in spreadsheet form, but can be any collection of data, on which analysis can be performed. |
| Poster | Yes | Poster sessions are particularly prominent at academic conferences. Posters are usually one frame of a powerpoint (or similar) presentation and are represented at full resolution to make them zoomable. | |
| Journal contribution | Yes | Scholar | Any type of content formally published in an academic journal, usually following a peer-review process. |
| Conference contribution | Yes | Scholar | Any type of content contributed to an academic conference, such as papers, presentations, lectures or proceedings. |
| Preprint | Yes | Scholar | Preprints are manuscripts made publicly available before they have been submitted for formal peer review and publication. They might contain new research findings or data. Preprints can be a draft or final version of an authors’ research but must not have been accepted for publication at the time of submission. |
| Presentation | Yes | Academic presentations can be uploaded in their original slide format. Presentations are usually represented as slide decks. Videos of presentations can be uploaded as media. | |
| Thesis | Yes | Scholar | In order to distinguish essays and pre-prints from academic theses, we have a separate category. These are often much longer text based documents than a paper. |
| Software | Yes | Code as a research output can either be uploaded directly from your computer or through the code management system GitHub. Versioning of code repositories is supported. | |
| Book | Yes | Google Book Search (+Scholar) | Books are generally long-form documents, a specialist work of writing that contains multiple chapters or a detailed written study. |
| Online resource | Yes | Any type of resource available online. | |
| Chapter | No | Scholar | Division of a book, which in a scholarly context usually treats a part of a larger subject in a stand-alone manner. |
| Peer review | No | The evaluation of a scholarly work, usually performed before formal publication by a number of field experts. | |
| Educational resource | No | Any type of content useful for teaching, learning or research in an educational context. | |
| Report | No | A formal account of an observation, investigation, finding, activity or any other type of information. | |
| Standard | No | A formal and detailed description of an invention, protocol or workflow; examples include patents, patent applications and requests for comments (RFC). | |
| Composition | No | A creative work in a fine art context, such as a piece of music or a poem. | |
| Funding | No | A resource describing various aspects related to the funding of a research venture, such as funding agency, amount, grant name or recipient. | |
| Physical object | No | A record describing any type of physical object, such as a work of art, instrument or archaeological artefact. | |
| Data management plan | No | Data management plans are an integral part of a research venture, describing what data will be collected or created and how, and also the means by which it will be shared and preserved. | |
| Workflow | No | Resource describing protocols, procedures, methods or activities part of a scientific experiment. | |
| Monograph | No | Google Book Search | A non-serial scholarly publication (either one or multiple finite volumes). |
| Performance | No | The presentation of a theatrical play or music concert within a fine art context. | |
| Event | No | Information on the purpose, location, duration, agents or effects of an occurrence such as a conference, performance, natural phenomenon, or conflagration. | |
| Service | No | A system supplying a research need, such as a facility, instrument or API. | |
| Model | No | A formal representation of any system, entity, phenomenon or structure useful in the research endeavour. | |
| Registration | No | Description of a research project, including, for example, the hypotheses, data collection plans, or scripts, provided before any actual experiment or analysis is performed. |
File formats supported for in-browser preview
What file formats can I upload?
Figshare accepts the upload of any file type or format. Here are some nice examples:
- jupyter: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.2008401.v1
- molecule: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.4235285.v1
- presentation: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.4578886.v1
- 3dviewer: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.697549.v1
- txt: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.5016845.v1
- network graph: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1094642.v2
Figshare aims to preview in the browser as many file formats as possible. The following table lists all of these formats. You can search Figshare for examples of each extension using a query in the Figshare search bar like
:extension: kml
| viewer type | thumbnail type | controls | extensions |
| archive | svg glyph | tgz, zip, rar, iso, tar, bz2, gz, xz, txz, 7z | |
| audio | svg glyph | mp3, wav, aif, aiff, wma | |
| dataset | svg glyph | csv, sav, tsv, xls, xlsb, xlsx | |
| document | generated | zoom, pagination | doc, docx, dxf, odp, ods, odt, pages, pdf, rtf, ttf, xps, epub |
| image | generated | zoom | jpg, jpeg, png, gif, tif, svg, bmp, psd, tiff, ai, lsm |
| jupyter | svg glyph | ipynb | |
| kml | svg glyph | kml | |
| molecule | svg glyph | cif, pdb, xyz | |
| presentation | generated | pagination | ppt, pptx, pptm |
| video | generated | 3gp, avi, flv, gvi, m2v, m4v, mkv, mov, mp4, mpg, ogv, webm, wmv, mpeg, liveslide.zip | |
| viewer3d | svg glyph | obj, stl, ply, u3d | |
| txt | svg glyph | font zoom | 1c, accesslog, armasm, arm, avrasm, actionscript, as, apache, apacheconf, applescript, osascript, asciidoc, adoc, aspectj, autohotkey, autoit, axapta, bash, sh, zsh, basic, brainfuck, bf, cs, csharp, cpp, c, cc, h, c++, h++, hpp, cal, cos, cls, cmake, cmake.in, csp, css, capnproto, capnp, clojure, clj, coffeescript, coffee, cson, iced, crmsh, crm, pcmk, crystal, cr, d, dns, zone, bind, dos, bat, cmd, dart, delphi, dpr, dfm, pas, pascal, freepascal, lazarus, lpr, lfm, diff, patch, django, jinja, dockerfile, docker, dts, dust, dst, elixir, elm, erlang, erl, fsharp, fs, fix, f90, fortran, f95, gcode, gams, gms, gauss, gss, go, gherkin, golang, golo, gololang, gradle, groovy, htm, xml, html, xhtml, rss, atom, xsl, plist, http, https, haml, handlebars, hbs, html.hbs, html.handlebars, haskell, hs, haxe, hx, ini, inform7, i7, irpf90, json, js, java, jsp, javascript, jsx, lasso, less, lassoscript, ls, lisp, livecodeserver, livescript, ls, lua, makefile, mk, mak, markdown, md, mkdown, mkd, mathematica, mma, matlab, maxima, mel, mercury, mizar, mojolicious, monkey, nsis, nginx, nginxconf, nimrod, nim, nix, ocaml, ml, objectivec, mm, objc, obj-c, glsl, openscad, scad, ruleslanguage, oxygene, pf, pf.conf, php, php3, php4, php5, php6, parser3, perl, pl, powershell, ps, processing, prolog, protobuf, puppet, pp, python, py, gyp, profile, k, kdb, qml, r, rib, rsl, graph, instances, ruby, rb, gemspec, podspec, thor, irb, rust, rs, scss, sql, p21, step, stp, scala, scheme, scilab, sci, smali, smalltalk, st, stan, stylus, styl, swift, tcl, tk, tex, thrift, tp, twig, craftcms, typescript, ts, vbnet, vb, vbscript, vbs, vhdl, vala, verilog, v, vim, x86asm, xl, tao, xpath, xq, zephir, zep, cc, com, conf, txt, cxx, def, f, for, g, h, hh, idc, jav, list, log, lst, m, mar, pl, sdml, text, test, tst, fasta, fas, r, jsonld, aln, all, dist, ali, jvxl, csproj, rout, ado, gd, gb, hapflk, primer, als, agp, mws, geocat, gp, tr, alf, zmx, mainparams, nmt, oligos, norm, insightmaker, biom, bethedgingmodel, string, traj, flml, mpt, fai, exmkli, fam, xprs, ga, blast, deepaxax, hdr, cml, trc, bpmn, tre, dia, reg, p, mae, defaults, div, dcse, evt, infile, tem, cff, cfg, nbp, rev, sync, cvs, vhdr, run, append, clustalw, sum, evec, experiment, nex, shared, net, nwk, jdx, exi2mk, edited, meg, len, met, mep, groups, kinf, non, ctr, xmpmeta, mshp, mo, sla, ctd, rdf, morphoj, ctl, ctm, m3d, cti, extrnlf, ipf, app, strat, vin, names, jrp, counts, apf, popstar, pxd, twb, feb, exlirl, mss, msq, extrnli, predict, txt~, call, lfmm, msf, nlogo, atf, vout, src, plain, tf, train, adult, vpc, pper, tuftrs, me, tnt, mc, mb, dep, setup, annot, mt, mw, mp, ms, m~, example, history, shark, ids, synctex, nexus, chip, sps, spt, agent, tabular, spj, conttable, tab, eap3, csl, chile_xerocomoids, hoc, rdfs, afa, bayescan, env, parameter, vpj, fq, head, pqi, lab, fa, catalog, mesh, lay, snp, maf, data, f90_original, csh, tuftib, sparql, ss, nosex, q, gff3, sd, dx, taxonomy, nontuftrs, genomes, rd, sge, ttl, fis, faa, gtf, vti, unique_haplotypes, vtl, fpkm, gen, yaml, gtr, hin, gtx, vtx, nerwick, sif, ginml, r2, supbask, rwl, trprobs, tps, suplts, sorted, noq, mcmc, config, classified, l, ipm, el, mdh, bvals, mdm, dcrcdr3, rdmpd, exlilf, trd, osim, meta, reftableheader, bngl, prototxt, mdp, pareto, gff, matk, out, rex, bmg, vcf, qc, exmatk, smi, phb, calib, blg, dsc, asv, nts, mmp, asc, bayes, asd, freq, pfam, std, macos, mdist, pqr, filter, att, edgelist, bedgraph, wld, mperm, kin, mdown, rooted, mlab, pgn, mzxml, misa, trees-d-place, fdb, 1d, array, isd, genotype, jet, script, fmw, top, sdm, fml, gpx, phytab, cdxml, afasta, exits2, exits1, qti, rm5, pdt, pds, gto, ogm, qual, xml~, ncl, csvy, frt, rst, rdump, ascc, 11, 10, ka, sto, tree, mcif, bed, dtd, trex, phyml, str, gbs, qpj, meme, prg, pkint, sam, prm, fastq, prn, prj, phy, prt, spinstell, stru, prs, sas, fastg, sat, lim, inv, arff, mix, fsata, fsta, phrynos_mptp, tfam, vna, xbif, bst, suppyrrs, pyr, altman, stats, fcl, kb, tpl, cki, praat, spept, gts, exmklf, mcr, mrb, nls, mfa, sage, xdsl, cdt, jags, bgz, pao, bvecs, paup, menu, clustal, dict, moses, xmp, yml, do, dl, off, template, prmtop, xfasta, sst, spped, trees, thm, tbl, rawtable, new, report, ssd, geo, ds, ssc, tikz, bas, jape, exi1rl, summary, vmrk, cf, logistic, x, xmap, nexml, ars, lir, seq, msat, ko, gbl, mlmtdna_pbt, newick, suppyrfrb, outgroup_gblock, result, nuc, spp_test_structure, nrt, lur, mus, jtv, tcr, sites, mtx, deeplts, mzdata, props, readme, irc, xvg, rmd, xslt, snps, fchk, jl, hd_matrix, bibs, outtree, rttm, hits, cor, fit, mor, tmax, blastp, blastn, missingclades, cod, fna, uni, rnp, ptraj, con, aa, exi1i2, genetrees, por, pos, pop, header, pom, vtp, church, cp, tax, pck, dis, oln, frq, pi, pro, pm, rproj, qsf, ych, mcd, hmp, digi_structure, hmm, geste, wfn, exlfrl, gnu, align, batch, xgmml, rbcl, sln, hdb, tds, ly, phylip, tdt, tped, exi2li, qiimeotutable, ris, vn, vot, vu, in, id, par, pau, generic, exi2lf, gbk, s2s, parts, qmat, filtered, paj, pal, bib, its2, phe, its1, sys, user, bayenv, arp, dat, estimation, dadi, d1s, sdx, analysis, epf, model, wig, resx, gdv, taxa, drw, gdf, exi1lf, nam, mdcrd, gml, taxo, ele, source, hap, allele, elp, gmt, rnk, bim, embl, psl, psc, psf, mot, summ, mol, namd, bip, treeout, intel, sizes, qua, manifest, consensus, t, rmsfit, gjf, alignments, reduced, pyx, r~, gtl, sequences, rec, pdbqt, supaxax, fld, est, aml, ref, pep, fods, rdmped, jsl, pzfx, masked, ped, ict, cgi, blastoutput, plt, pls, vaxml, properties, dcp, ve, obo, bgd, map, sphybrid, rpres, obs, gsheet, owl, fplot, mbi, ace, soi, ahk, mgm, bound, xyd, url, genepop, loc, m4, ptp, rplot, xpd, hed, xpx, fasn, xpr, exi1mk, xpw, ode, function, dnd, pipeline, xyzi, deepbask, trnli, sdd, sdf, gmx, delta, sdl, nanorc, pwm, bug, info, trnlf, input, penat, birdcoi_ii, gro, mtl, lvm, brd, trim, c3xml, int, cbk, trig, unsafe, msp, graphml, msl, trix, file, ntree, ind, pir, exi2rl, inc, igv, igs, cdq, exrbcl, nb, nal, ijm, nx, grd, u, grm, nw, node, stat, v3s, outgroup, models, mol2, exmkrl, xtekct, sqn, matrix, fsa, mase, nxs, cpg, cps, pet, fst, dot, kgg, time, n3, sbml, adaf, supplementaryfiles |
| graph | svg glyph | gephi,gexf | |
| fits | svg glyph | zoom, pagination, histogram | fits |
| dicom | svg glyph | zoom, pagination, histogram | dicom, dcm |
Examples (widget)
To get widget examples and check how they adapt with different width and height, please use the same article id as the ones in the links above under: https://widgets.figshare.com/examples/index.html?widget=wellcome&options=eyJ3aWR0aCI6IiIsImhlaWdodCI6NDUwLCJicmVha1BvaW50Ijo1N TAsInNob3dTdGF0cyI6dHJ1ZSwiYXJ0aWNsZUlkIjoxMTQ4OTYwfQ==
Use 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.
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 compliant?
Yes, we are Make Data Count 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.
Figshare Metadata Schema Overview
Figshare metadata is based on the DataCite schema. It is stored in a relational database and can be mapped to other metadata schemas. Metadata for an Item, Collection, or Project is available in JSON format from the API (https://docs.figshare.com). The citation metadata is also available from the public item page formatted as Dublin Core, DataCite, National Library of Medicine, BibTeX, RefWorks, EndNote, or RIS. To learn more about where this metadata is indexed and searchable, see our help page on discoverability.
Descriptive Metadata
These are fields available in the metadata entry form, with a focus on fields related to Items – the most granular type of record in Figshare. If you are at an institution using Figshare as a repository rather than using a figshare.com account, you may have more of the optional fields or custom fields available to you. The API field name column does not list the subfields that may be part of the metadata field. To see subfields, visit the API endpoint descriptions in the API documentation: https://docs.figshare.com
| Field | DataCite Field (sent to DataCite) | Required/Optional | Field Limits | API field name | Institutions Only |
| Title | <titles><title> | Required | 3-1000 chars | title | No |
| Authors | <creators><creator><creatorName><nameIdentifier> (ORCID and ROR is sent if available) | Required | 1:100 | authors | No |
| Item Type | resourceType | Required | 1 | defined_type_name | No |
| Categories | <subjects><subject> | Required | 1:100 | categories | No |
| Keywords | – | Required | 1:100 (1-2000 chars each) | Keywords or tags | No |
| Description | descriptions | Required | 4:10,000 chars | description | No |
| License | <rightsList><rights> | Required | 1 | license | No |
| Funding | fundingReferences | Optional | 0:100 (3-2000 chars each) | fundingfunding_list | No |
| References | <relatedIdentifiers><relatedIdentifier> | Optional | 0:100 | references | No |
| Resource Title (Deprecated) | – | Optional | 0:1 (3-1000 chars) | resource_title | No |
| Resource DOI (Deprecated) | <relatedIdentifiers><relatedIdentifier> | Optional | 0:1 ( up to 255 chars) | recource_doi | No |
| Related Materials | <relatedIdentifiers><relationType><relatedIdentifier><relatedIdentifierType> | Optional | – | Related_materials: relation, link, identifier_type | No |
| First Online Date | – | Optional | 0:1yyyy-mm-dd | timeline: firstOnline | No |
| Publisher Date | <dates><date> (dateType=”Created”) And publicationYear | Optional | 0:1yyyy-mm-dd | timeline: publisherPublication | Yes |
| Accepted Date | – | Optional | 0:1yyyy-mm-dd | timeline: publisherAcceptance | Yes |
| Submitted Date | – | Optional | 0:1yyyy-mm-dd | timeline: submission | Yes |
| RevisionDate | – | Optional | 0:1yyyy-mm-dd | timeline: revision | Yes |
| Files | – | Optional | 0:Configurable | files | No |
| Is Metadata Record | – | Optional | true/false | is_metadata_record | No |
| Metadata Record Reason | – | Optional | 0-255 chars | metadata_reason | No |
| Has Linked File | – | Optional | true/false | has_linked_file | No |
| Linked File URL | – | Optional | 0-1000 chars | files: download_url | No |
| Is Embargoed | – | Optional | true/false | is_embargoed | No |
| Embargo Title | – | Optional | 3-80 chars | embargo_title | No |
| Embargo Reason | – | Optional | 3-1000 chars | embargo_reason | No |
| Embargo Date | – | Optional | yyyy-mm-dd | embargo_date | No |
| Embargo Type | – | Optional | – | embargo_type | No |
| Embargo Options | – | Optional | – | embargo_options | Yes |
| Custom Fields | – | Optional | – | custom_fields | Yes |
| Group | – | Optional | integer | group_id | Yes |
Descriptive fields that are managed by the system:
| Field | DataCite Field | Field Limits | API field name | Description | |
| Version | – | 0:Configurable | version | DataCite maintains version information through the DOI | |
| Size | sizes | – | size | Size in bytes | |
| DOI | identifier | Valid format | doi | ||
| Handle | – | Valid format | handle | Institution only | |
| Item URL | – | Valid format | figshare_url | ||
| Created Date | – | yyyy-mm-ddThh:mm:ssZ | created_date | This is the date the version was published on Figshare. | |
| Modified Date | <dates><date> (dateType=”Updated”) | yyyy-mm-ddThh:mm:ssZ | modified_date | ||
| Published Date | – | yyyy-mm-ddThh:mm:ssZ | published_date | This is the same as posted date and is used in searches when limiting by “published_since” | |
| Posted Date | <dates><date> (dateType=”Created”) and publicationYear | yyyy-mm-dd | timeline: posted | Overwritten by “Publisher date” if available | |
| Item Type ID | – | integer | defined_type |
System Metadata
This table shows some of the other fields available from the user interface or through the API.
| Field | DataCite Field | Field Limits | API field name | Description |
| ID | – | – | id | Every entity receives an id |
| Status | – | – | status | |
| API URL | – | – | url | Same as Public API URL |
| Is Public | – | – | is_public | |
| Thumb URL | – | – | thumb | |
| Private API URL | – | – | url_private_api | |
| Public API URL | – | – | url_public_api | Same as API URL |
| HTML Private URL | – | – | url_private_html | |
| HTML Public URL | – | – | url_public_html | |
| Citation | – | – | citation |
How Figshare aligns with the FAIR principles
The FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) as described by Wilkinson et al 2016 are now the standard guidance for publishing open digital research objects. Whether you are publishing an open access paper, dataset, or other output, meeting these principles will make sure others can access and reuse the output and then give you credit through a citation.
Whether using a Figshare account on figshare.com or an account in an institutional Figshare repository, the platform helps you make outputs as FAIR as possible in the following ways.
Findable
| Principles | Figshare Alignment |
| F1. (meta)data are assigned a globally unique and persistent identifier | Every record receives a persistent identifier. On figshare.com this is a DataCite DOI. At institutions it may be a DOI or a Handle. |
| F2. data are described with rich metadata (defined by R1 below) | Figshare metadata is based on the DataCite metadata schema and the user interface encourages complete content for required fields through help tips and simplicity in layout. Additional fields provide optional ways to enhance the metadata richness. |
| F3. metadata clearly and explicitly include the identifier of the data it describes | In Figshare’s metadata schema, the identifier is stored in a dedicated field called ‘doi’ or ‘handle’. |
| F4. (meta)data are registered or indexed in a searchable resource | Figshare has highly discoverable pages indexed in major search engines and specialty indexes. |
Accessible
| Principles | Figshare Alignment |
| A1. (meta)data are retrievable by their identifier using a standardized communications protocol | Metadata and data are available through https and a REST API, both standard communication protocols. Metadata is also available through OAI-PMH. |
| A1.1 the protocol is open, free, and universally implementable | https, REST API, and OAI-PMH are all open, free, and universally implementable. |
| A1.2 the protocol allows for an authentication and authorization procedure, where necessary | Figshare encourages both metadata and files to be published as openly as possible. This is not always possible depending on the nature of the content. On figshare.com authors can apply an embargo to files limiting access only to the author who can authenticate to the account. A Project can be used to provide access to other users. Published metadata is always available with no authentication. For institutions using Figshare, metadata and files may be published with embargoes or restricted access and may have a request access step for access. |
| A2. metadata are accessible, even when the data are no longer available | On figshare.com any public item receives a DOI and will have its metadata stored by both Figshare and DataCite. Figshare will retain and keep available this metadata for the lifetime of the repository. For institutions using Figshare, metadata will be sent to the chosen DOI service and the institution can also back up metadata and files to a preservation system. If an institution cannot maintain its repository, Figshare has options to help keep the metadata accessible. |
Interoperable
| Principles | Figshare Alignment |
| I1. (meta)data use a formal, accessible, shared, and broadly applicable language for knowledge representation. | Figshare’s metadata schema uses common elements from DataCite Schema 4.4 and is documented in the API documentation. It can be mapped to standard metadata schemas. Landing pages offer citation metadata in Dublin Core, DataCite, National Library of Medicine, RIS, Endnote, BibTeX, and RefWorks formats. Additional formats are available through the OAI-PMH Endpoints. |
| I2. (meta)data use vocabularies that follow FAIR principles | On figshare.com several metadata fields offer controlled lists of values including Categories (ANZSRC Fields of Research), funding (dimensions.ai), and open licenses. Institutions using Figshare can add controlled vocabularies to custom metadata fields and can include more license options. |
| I3. (meta)data include qualified references to other (meta)data | Links with descriptions can be added to the Description field. Contextual options to links in the References field will be added this year. |
Reusable
| Principles | Figshare Alignment |
| R1. meta(data) are richly described with a plurality of accurate and relevant attributes | Figshare’s metadata schema is designed to be descriptive but also relatively easy to complete and flexible for all researchers. Help tooltips provide guidance for each field. |
| R1.1. (meta)data are released with a clear and accessible data usage license | Every item in Figshare receives a license and the landing page for the item links to the license information. |
| R1.2. (meta)data are associated with detailed provenance | The Figshare system tracks posted, first online, and modified dates (institutions may have other date options). Every item is associated with an account and authors can be described with email addresses and ORCIDs, and institutions can include additional internal identifier information. Figshare records are also versioned and end users can access previous versions. |
| R1.3. (meta)data meet domain-relevant community standards | The figshare.com repository is a generalist repository for use by any domain. Figshare’s metadata schema is based on the DataCite metadata schema and so is broadly applicable across domains and interoperable with other community initiatives supporting discoverability. Institutions may use custom metadata options to create metadata application profiles that align with specific domain relevant community standards. |
What browser versions are supported?
As the complexity of figshare grows, the cost of supporting a large number of platforms has an increasing impact on our speed of delivery and quality of support. So that figshare can continue to deliver a great product and excellent support, it is necessary to limit support for older technologies.
Currently you can enjoy figshare optimally performing on many browsers – our minimum supported browser versions are listed below:
- Firefox 100
- Chrome 101
- Opera 86
- Safari 15
- Edge 100
How long will Figshare host and retain my public research data for?
Items 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. Our publisher model requires an SLA statement guaranteeing 10 years of persistent availability.
Backed up in multiple institutions around the world.
Learn more about this here.
Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs)
Sharing and discoverability being at the core of Figshare we use DataCite DOIs (What is a DOI?) for persistent data citation. DataCite is a widely adopted service providing DOIs for data that also specifies a level of minimum metadata in order to create a new DOI. This metadata is key for persistence and ensures your research remains discoverable and useful to the academic community.
What categories are available and why?
The available category options are based on the Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC) Fields of Research (FOR) codes, view the full figshare category list.
The FOR is a hierarchical classification that includes major fields of research investigated by national research institutions and organisations, and emerging areas of study. For more information please see Field of Research (FoR) Codes.
Claiming authorship of an item on Figshare
This article details the process of claiming authorship of an existing item on Figshare. This process will replace authorship of an item from one author (often a manually-added author) to another author associated with an account (often an account created after the item was published).If there’s an existing item on Figshare that you’d like to claim authorship of, click on the ellipses next to +Collect and select Claim authorship.
This will open your default email application with a pre-filled template to submit a ticket to our Support team requesting that the item in question be assigned authorship to the account you are logged into. Alternatively, please email support@figshare.com with the DOI of the item you would like to claim authorship of and your account details.
Please note: You must be logged into the account you wish to claim authorship to — you cannot claim authorship unless you are logged in. In addition, claiming authorship does not migrate the ownership of the item to your My data area but rather replaces your account as an author on the item.