“Mark Hahnel is the CEO and founder of Figshare, which he created whilst completing his PhD in stem cell biology at Imperial College London. Figshare currently provides research data infrastructure for institutions, publishers and funders globally. He is passionate about open science and the potential it has to revolutionize the research community. For the last eight years, Mark has been leading the development of research data infrastructure, with the core aim of reusable and interoperable academic data. Mark sits on the board of DataCite and the advisory board for the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). He was on the judging panel for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Wellcome Trust Open Science prize and acted as an advisor for the Springer Nature master classes….”
Category Archives: oa.figshare
Guest Post: A Decade of Open Data in Research — Real Change or Slow Moving Compliance? – The Scholarly Kitchen
“There has been much made of the recent Nature news declaration of the NIH Data Policy (from January 2023) as ‘seismic’. In my opinion, it truly is. Many others will argue that the language is not strong enough. But for me, the fact that the largest public funder of biomedical research in the world is telling researchers to share their data demonstrates how fast the push for open academic data is accelerating.
While a lot of the focus is on incentive structures and the burden for researchers, the academic community should not lose focus on the potential ‘seismic’ benefits that open data can have for reproducibility and efficiency in research, as well as the ability to move further and faster when it comes to knowledge advancement….
Reflecting on the past decade of open research data, there are a few key developments that have helped speed up the momentum in the space, as well as a few ideas that haven’t come to fruition…yet.
The NIH is not the first funder to tell the researchers they fund that they should be making their data openly available to all. 52 funders listed on Sherpa Juliet require data archiving as a condition of funding, while a further 34 encourage it. A push from publishers has also acted as a major motivator for researchers to share their data. This goes as far back as PLOS requiring all article authors to make their data publicly available back in 2014. Now, nearly all major science journals have an open data policy of some kind. Some may say there is no better motivator for a researcher to share their data than if a publication is at stake.
In 2016, the ‘FAIR Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship’ were published in Scientific Data, and a flurry of debate on the definition of Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable data has continued ever since. This has been a net win for the space. Although every institution, publisher and funder may not be aiming for the exact same outcome, it is a move to better describe and ultimately make data outputs usable as a standalone output. The principles for Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable data emphasize that when thinking of research data, future consumers will not just be human researchers — we also need to feed the machines. This means that computers will need to interpret content with little or no human intervention. For this to be possible, the outputs need to be in machine readable formats and the metadata needs to be sufficient to describe exactly what the data are and how the data was generated.
This highlights the area (in my opinion) that can create the most change in the shortest amount of time: quality of metadata….
NIH Office of Data Science Strategy Announces New Initiative to Improve Access to NIH-funded Data | Data Science at NIH
“Generalist Repository Ecosystem Initiative will make it easier to find and reuse NIH-funded data…
GREI is intended to supplement the domain-specific data repositories that are critical components of the NIH biomedical data ecosystem for data sharing.
The GREI builds on the findings from the 2019-2020 NIH Figshare pilot and the NIH Workshop on the Role of Generalist Repositories to Enhance Data Discoverability and Reuse. ODSS anticipates that this initiative will further enhance the biomedical data ecosystem and help researchers find and share data from NIH-funded studies in generalist repositories.
The GREI includes six established generalist repositories that will work together to establish consistent metadata, develop use cases for data sharing, train and educate researchers on FAIR data and the importance of data sharing, and more.
This initiative will also aim to improve discoverability of data within and across participating generalist repositories and lead to greater reproducibility and reuse of data.”
NIH Office of Data Science Strategy Announces New Initiative to Improve Access to NIH-funded Data | Data Science at NIH
“Generalist Repository Ecosystem Initiative will make it easier to find and reuse NIH-funded data…
GREI is intended to supplement the domain-specific data repositories that are critical components of the NIH biomedical data ecosystem for data sharing.
The GREI builds on the findings from the 2019-2020 NIH Figshare pilot and the NIH Workshop on the Role of Generalist Repositories to Enhance Data Discoverability and Reuse. ODSS anticipates that this initiative will further enhance the biomedical data ecosystem and help researchers find and share data from NIH-funded studies in generalist repositories.
The GREI includes six established generalist repositories that will work together to establish consistent metadata, develop use cases for data sharing, train and educate researchers on FAIR data and the importance of data sharing, and more.
This initiative will also aim to improve discoverability of data within and across participating generalist repositories and lead to greater reproducibility and reuse of data.”
NIH Office of Data Science Strategy Announces New Initiative to Improve Access to NIH-funded Data | Data Science at NIH
“Generalist Repository Ecosystem Initiative will make it easier to find and reuse NIH-funded data…
GREI is intended to supplement the domain-specific data repositories that are critical components of the NIH biomedical data ecosystem for data sharing.
The GREI builds on the findings from the 2019-2020 NIH Figshare pilot and the NIH Workshop on the Role of Generalist Repositories to Enhance Data Discoverability and Reuse. ODSS anticipates that this initiative will further enhance the biomedical data ecosystem and help researchers find and share data from NIH-funded studies in generalist repositories.
The GREI includes six established generalist repositories that will work together to establish consistent metadata, develop use cases for data sharing, train and educate researchers on FAIR data and the importance of data sharing, and more.
This initiative will also aim to improve discoverability of data within and across participating generalist repositories and lead to greater reproducibility and reuse of data.”
a figshare case study: A Repository for All Open Access Resources
“This case study explores the evolution of La Trobe University’s instance of Figshare from a data repository to Open@LaTrobe (OPAL) — an institutional repository that supports data, publications, special collections, educational resources, and more as well as their process for rolling it out across the university.”
Introducing Figshare+
“Figshare has been helping researchers make their data publicly available for more than 10 years, over which time we have watched data sharing grow across disciplines as funders and publishers require data sharing and researchers seek to get credit for all the products of their research. While we will continue to offer figshare.com as a freely available generalist repository for the research community, we have found that there is an increasing need for sharing larger datasets as well as to have additional flexibility to describe and organize data. We also recognize the importance of open data that is not just openly accessible but that also adheres to the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable). To address this, we want to offer a way for researchers to get more support during the data sharing process in making their data well documented so it can be discovered, reused, and ultimately have more impact.
That’s why we are introducing Figshare+ to offer support for sharing larger datasets in a trusted generalist repository.
We frequently get requests from researchers seeking to use figshare.com with a need for more storage space for their data or larger file size uploads. There are few options for researchers to share TBs of data in a FAIR way. There are also long term ongoing costs in ensuring the data persists.
Figshare+ offers data deposit as a one-time Data Publishing Charge (DPC) to share the datasets and materials supporting a specific publication or project. To be as transparent as possible, nearly all of the DPC cost goes towards covering our costs to host this data securely and redundantly in the cloud. Many funders allow data sharing costs to be included in grant budgets, so you may be able to use grants funds to pay for Figshare+ and can include it in data management and sharing plans in funding proposals.
Because we want researchers to get the most out of their open data, Figshare+ also offers additional license options and metadata compared to figshare.com. Personal email support is also provided during data deposit which includes the review of your dataset files and description by a Figshare data expert who can offer guidance on making your data as discoverable and reusable as possible….”
Something old, something new: Figshare’s new ORCID integration is here
“We’re big fans of ORCID here at Figshare. Our first ORCID integration was released way back in 2013 when we were “Alpha launch partners”. We’ve made a few changes to the integration along the way, of course. We’re very pleased to say that as of September 2021 and in collaboration with our friends and development partners at Singapore Institute of Technology, we are launching a new ORCID integration with significantly improved functionality!…”
A New Option for Scientific Exchange and an Alternative to the Commentary Format – Patricia J. Bauer, 2021
“Letters to the Editors will be disseminated online only to permit more rapid publication and to keep the discussion timely and responsive. They will be hosted on Figshare, which is an online open-access repository and the site that hosts all of the journal’s Supplemental Material. To further speed dissemination, accepted Letters to the Editors will not be copyedited or held for replies but instead will be disseminated as quickly as possible on acceptance. Letters to the Editors will have DOIs but, fitting their existence in the liminal space between a formal publication and an unmediated social media conversation, they will not be indexed (i.e., discoverable through PubMed, PsycInfo, etc.). To facilitate connections between the target article and Letters to the Editors, they will be linked to each other. …”
Sharing data to fuel discovery | VTx | Virginia Tech
“The University Libraries provides expertise in data planning, management, and publishing to fuel discovery and future research. Recently, the library launched a new version of its research data repository platform, powered by Figshare.
Accessible from anywhere, Figshare is a cloud-based platform for storing, sharing, and citing research data. Virginia Tech researchers can upload their research data and receive a digital object identifier (DOI) for citing the data in publications and meet sponsor requirements for openly available data. Data uploaded to the Virginia Tech research data repository is discoverable in search engines, including Google Scholar and Google Dataset Search. Engagement and impact of the research can be tracked through views, downloads, citations, and Altmetric usage tracking. …”
How to make your code citable | Library Guides at UC Berkeley
This guide will help you to learn how to make your code citable. It will take you step by step to archive your code using data and code archiving platform Zenodo and get a DOI for your code.
Scientific Data recommended repositories
“Spreadsheet listing data repositories that are recommended by Scientific Data (Springer Nature) as being suitable for hosting data associated with peer-reviewed articles. Please see the repository list on Scientific Data’s website for the most up to date list….”
The State of Open Data 2020 #StateOfOpenData – Digital Science
“Our portfolio company, Figshare, has today launched its annual report The State of Open Data 2020. The report is the fifth in the series and includes survey results and a collection of articles from global industry experts, as well as a foreword from Dr Leslie McIntosh, CEO of Ripeta and Executive Director, Emeritus – Research Data Alliance US.
The State of Open Data is now the longest running longitudinal study on the subject, which was created in 2016, to examine attitudes and experiences of researchers working with open data – sharing it, reusing it, and redistributing it.
This year’s survey received around 4,500 responses from the research community and had an additional focus on research practices in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. It asked researchers how the pandemic was impacting their ability to carry out research, and their views on reuse of data and collaboration….”
Do researchers use open research data? Exploring the relationships between usage trends and metadata quality across scientific disciplines from the Figshare case – Alfonso Quarati, Juliana E Raffaghelli, 2020
Abstract: Open research data (ORD) have been considered a driver of scientific transparency. However, data friction, as the phenomenon of data underutilisation for several causes, has also been pointed out. A factor often called into question for ORD low usage is the quality of the ORD and associated metadata. This work aims to illustrate the use of ORD, published by the Figshare scientific repository, concerning their scientific discipline, their type and compared with the quality of their metadata. Considering all the Figshare resources and carrying out a programmatic quality assessment of their metadata, our analysis highlighted two aspects. First, irrespective of the scientific domain considered, most ORD are under-used, but with exceptional cases which concentrate most researchers’ attention. Second, there was no evidence that the use of ORD is associated with good metadata publishing practices. These two findings opened to a reflection about the potential causes of such data friction.
Why figshare? Choosing a new technical infrastructure for 4TU.ResearchData | Open Working
“4TU.ResearchData is an international repository for research data in science, engineering and design. After over 10 years of using Fedora, an open source repository system, to run 4TU.ResearchData, we have made a decision to migrate a significant part of our technical infrastructure to a commercial solution offered by figshare. Why did we decide to do it? Why now, at a time of increasing concerns about relying on proprietary solutions, particularly associated with large publishing houses, to run scholarly communication infrastructures? (see for example, In pursuit of open science, open access is not enough and the SPARC Landscape Analysis)
We anticipate that members of our community, as well as colleagues that use or manage scholarly communications infrastructures might be wondering the same. We are therefore explaining our thinking in this blogpost, hoping it will facilitate more discussion about such developments in the scholarly communications infrastructure….”