figshare for Institutions

figshare for Institutions is an online digital repository designed to allow academic organizations to store, manage, and publicly share their research outputs, including research data, posters, figures, videos, and papers. Organizations can choose to make some research private, while employing figshare for Institutions to meet funder requirements for open access and/or data management. By creating a public portal and assigning digital object identifiers (DOIs), figshare makes an organization's research products searchable, discoverable, and citable, and their impact is captured through detailed statistical reporting. figshare for Institutions is a paid version of the no-cost figshare.com digital repository that is available for researchers to publicly share their outputs.

Although officially launched in late 2015, figshare for Institutions was implemented in some organizations earlier that year. In December 2015, figshare integrated their institutional product with the figshare corpus, making publicly available data on the figshare for Institutions' platform discoverable on figshare.com. This enhancement expands the reach of research output beyond a single organization. The product builds upon features and functionality of figshare, while adding more organizational capabilities and impact measures. Some of the features include generating and using DOIs specific to an institution for tracking research impact, employing custom metadata and license schemas, adding portals for groups such as departments or laboratories, and reporting capabilities on usage and other key metrics. figshare for Institutions serves as an institutional repository, but it can also be integrated into existing repositories or research information management systems (RIMS) such as Symplectic and Pure (Elsevier).

FEATURES

figshare for Institutions assists researchers with data management by providing preservation and metadata options for research data and files. Researchers upload files in the system and apply appropriate metadata. The system can be configured to allow researchers to share files without intervention, or it can route new uploads to an administrator or project manager for review before they are made public. Administrative control of file uploads can occur at an institution or group level, such as a department.

All files and data in figshare are citable and have DOIs associated with them. In 2012, figshare announced a partnership with DataCite through EZID at the California Digital Library, allowing DataCite to issue DOIs [1]. If data in figshare need to be embargoed for a period of time, DOIs can be reserved for the files and assigned at a specified time in the future.

To assist researchers with group projects, collaborative spaces for sharing at the department or institution level are available in figshare for Institutions. In these spaces, it is possible to invite as many collaborators as needed and add notes and comments to files when researchers review content. Although figshare for Institutions encourages open data, researchers can make their data private and create private links. In addition to research projects, spaces could potentially be used for many different applications such as poster sessions or journal clubs.

Statistics on an organization's publicly available research are customizable with figshare for Institutions. Data including number of downloads, views, times shared, and citations are available on an institutional dashboard and can be viewed at an organizational, department, researcher, or file level. Statistical reporting includes storage quotas (set by project managers or administrators) and workflow status as well as usage statistics. In April 2016, figshare announced the integration of Altmetric Badges with figshare outputs [2]. This new feature adds another level of impact measurement by capturing mentions in nontraditional impact sources such as social media, news sources, and various online forums. Statistics reside on the figshare platform yet can be queried from an institutional repository using a statistics application program interface (API). Researchers can capture their figshare statistics in the form of badges to embed on their blogs or personal websites [3].

figshare is an Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID) partner. The purpose behind the nonprofit ORCID organization is to provide a unique, digital identifier for researchers to account for all of their scholarly output. By associating ORCID numbers with figshare, researchers can add publicly available records in figshare to their ORCID accounts and elements of ORCID, including publication lists, can be transferred to their figshare profiles [4]. figshare is planning to enable searching by ORCID number.

The Collections feature of figshare allows users to gather related information of any type on figshare into a grouping called a Collection. That Collection can then be given a public uniform resource locator (URL) to make it more discoverable. Uses of Collections are many but include hosting information on a current research topic, grouping supplemental material for a publication, or linking materials from a conference, special event, or academic department. All files in a Collection need to be published (made public) for the Collection to be public. Once a Collection is published, items can be added or removed as needed. Private Collections can be shared with others using a private link, enabling a group to decide on the content of the final Collection before publishing. figshare provides view counts for Collections, so groups can monitor usage.

IMPLEMENTATION

figshare for Institutions provides an implementation guide to help institutions understand available options [5]. figshare also works with organizations to determine specific needs by understanding the organization's structure, defining groups and member roles, determining storage needs and quotas, and determining custom metadata requirements, licensing options, embargo settings, and institutional branding. Other parts of the implementation process include establishing the desired custom formatting of institutional DOIs, which can be done by working with figshare and DataCite, and configuring user authentication. figshare primarily employs Shibboleth for authentication but can also support LDAP [5].

figshare for Institutions' primary focus is making content discoverable, but it also provides various storage options for repository data. Data can be housed on figshare or in local storage, including storage in existing institutional repositories. figshare uses an API to manage and transfer files between figshare and an institutional repository. figshare typically works with data stored on cloud-based services such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, OpenStack SWIFT, and DuraCloud but can also work with remote-mounted drives. Regardless of where it is stored, institutions retain ownership of their data and metadata and control the storage allotments for their various groups [6]. figshare for Institutions requires no customization, but institutions can customize the product by designing the front page to look like other organizational web pages if desired.

figshare for Institutions supports a variety of options for licensing data. Publicly available data are usually stored under Creative Commons licenses, with objects such as papers, posters, and figures using a Creative Commons—Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC-BY) license (reuse with attribution) and metadata and datasets employing a Creative Commons No Rights Reserved (CC0) license (public domain, no restrictions), but other types of licenses can be applied [7].

figshare for Institutions currently supports Dublin Core, DataCite, RIF-CIS, and MODS metadata schemas and is working to add additional schemas such as RDF and JSON-LD. Metadata are customizable at both the institutional and department levels.

CONCLUSIONS

figshare for Institutions continues to develop their product while adding features that researchers and institutions find helpful to their workflows. Updated information can be found on their blog [8]. Navigation of the figshare for Institutions platform is intuitive and should be familiar to users of figshare.com, as it shares many of the same features. Users of both figshare and figshare for Institutions can merge their data or keep the data in separate accounts. The additional layers of administrative control in the figshare for Institutions platform are easy to understand; simple instructions guide you through the upload process, including assigning DOIs or embargoes. Links to more complex subjects like the definitions of licenses are available.

figshare is up to date on current technologies and funder requirements and continues to add functionality to assist with researcher needs. figshare for Institutions can be a valuable tool for universities looking to employ an institutional repository for data management compliance or enhance an existing repository with additional administrative control and statistics to measure research impact. One of its strengths is its dedicated support team to help institutions determine their specific needs when implementing the product.

Note: This review was compiled using access to a mock-up instance of figshare for Institutions designed to demonstrate functionality. Discussions with figshare Product Specialist Dan Valen were also very helpful.