Institutional Figshare

1. Open the ‘Upload’ form from your figshare account page.

2. Select category, group, and item type.

3. Fill out the required metadata: Use a title that is meaningful to others, keywords, and descriptions to enhance discoverability. The title will be used in citations so ensure it is as specific as possible without being too long.

4. Add authors and their ORCiDs.

5. Add funding information if appropriate.

6. If you’re publishing the data at the same time as the associated publication then see this guide for how to generate a private link to send to the journal ahead of publication. You will need to connect your ORCiD to your Figshare account.

7. To connect an existing publication to your figshare record fill in the Resource Title and Resource DOI fields. 

8. Select a licence so others know how they can reuse the item. Creative Commons licences are frequently used for this purpose. If you’re unsure which one to choose, use the interactive licence chooser.

9. Publish the data.

When uploading many individual files (>250) or files larger than 1GB, it might be better to use the Figshare API. Get in touch with your subject librarian or an eResearch staff member for help with this.

Depending on the sensitivity of the data (see the Research data classification standard) and associated ethical, legal, contractual, sovereignty, funder or publisher constraints, it may be more appropriate to publish a descriptive or metadata-only record about the data, but not the data itself. A metadata-only record broadcasts the existence of the data without making the data files public.

Making a metadata-only record

Before uploading a file, you will see a checkbox at the top of the Figshare upload form saying “Metadata record only”. If you tick this and fill in the form as normal you will publish information about the data but no files will be included.

Published files can also be embargoed until a specified date.

You can edit records after publishing them. Editing a metadata or descriptive field or the file(s) will cause the item to be versioned. People will be able to access previous published versions of the item. The base DOI remains the same and links the items together.

Deleting or unpublishing data

You can only delete data which you have not made public or published. If you want to delete or unpublish a public data record, contact a University of Canterbury Figshare administrator by logging an eResearch Consultancy ServiceNow form.

Unpublished records leave a 'tombstone' record within the DOI registry, Datacite.

To avoid problems, we recommend the following before publishing the item:

• Check all metadata fields, files and filenames to avoid unnecessary versioning and unpublishing
• Save and share items privately to enable review
• Contact subject librarian or eResearch staff with questions

A Figshare collection enables published items to be grouped and can be private or public. If made public, that grouping can be assigned a digital object identifier (DOI).

Changes such as adding/removing an item or editing the metadata fields for the collection will generate a new version of the collection with a corresponding DOI.

Use cases for a collection

• datasets and figures from different chapters in a thesis or publication
• multiple publications or artefacts associated with a funded project for citation in a grant application
• presentations, posters, etc, associated with an event

Institutional Figshare users get access to both individual and group projects. Members of a project can upload files, add text notes or comments, and all actions on the project are tracked.

Group projects have their own storage quota and support collaboration.

University and external collaborators can be invited to and removed from Projects by the Project owner.

Warning about Figshare Projects

Do not publish your Figshare project because it does not get a DOI and can not be unpublished. Projects are meant to be used to collaborate on items and then publish those items separately.

University of Canterbury Institutional Figshare accounts are provided with 10GB of storage by default, but this can be increased by request.

To increase storage allocation:

1. login to institutional Figshare using University credentials
2. go to the My data screen
3. click on "request more storage" (near the top right)

In addition to the web interface, Figshare has an API and a desktop FTP client uploader which can be useful for uploading large files or large numbers of files. Depending on how large your dataset is (>500 GB), you will need to log a consultation with the eResearch team through ServiceNow.

Linking DOIs of related materials allows others to more readily access your scholarly work, increasing transparency, reproducibility and impact.

Steps to link research data and the associated research output with their DOIs

1. Use a research data repository (e.g. Institutional Figshare) to create a research data record and assign or reserve a DOI (this can be done before submitting your research output).
   
2. Add the research data DOI to the Data Availability Statement for the related research output (usually done during initial submission).
3. Update the research data repository record by adding the DOI of the research output as related material.
4. In this way, the related research materials (e.g. dataset and article) will link to each other using their DOIs.

Benefits of linking your ORCID

• Information about your data publications will flow between your Figshare and ORCID profiles to maximize accessibility and impact.
• Your ORCID is recorded on your Figshare items to uniquely identify you, avoiding mistaken identity.

Steps to connect your ORCID from within your institutional Figshare profile

1. Login to the institutional Figshare
2. Click on your profile image, top right, and select "Profile"
3. Click "Connect" next to ORCID
4. You'll be sent to orcid.org to authenticate by signing in
5. Select which options you want to turn on (if any)

For more information go here.