The Analytical Scientist / Issues / 2013 / Jul / Open Science
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Open Science

Founded by frustrated student Mark Hahnel in 2011, figshare has blossomed to offer a cloud-based publishing solution to otherwise wasted research outputs

By Rich Whitworth 07/23/2013 1 min read

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What?
Figshare allows researchers to publish figures, datasets, media (including video), papers, posters and file sets in a citable, searchable, and sharable cloud-based platform with unlimited storage space for publicly available data and 1GB of free space for secure private data.

Why?
Mark Hahnel realised that much of his research would never see the light of day in the traditional academic publishing model. As well as negative data, he had datasets, videos, and graphs that didn’t help to make up a complete publication. So, he went about making some of his research outputs available online. 

For more on Hahnel’s motivations, click here.

How?

  1. Register for a free account at figshare.com
  2. Login and ‘Upload new’ in ‘My Data’.

Details

  • Research data is published under Creative Commons license
  • All publicly-available research receives a DataCite DOI on publication to aid traditional citation of non-traditional outputs
  • The CLOCKSS Archive hosts content at the archive nodes of 12 major research libraries around the world
  • Security, persistence, and time‑stamping of uploads make it easier to prevent plagiarism of research data
  • Version control of all publicly available data is supported, and any privately stored data can also be altered or deleted. RW

For more information: figshare.com or follow @figshare on Twitter.

About the Author(s)

Rich Whitworth

Rich Whitworth completed his studies in medical biochemistry at the University of Leicester, UK, in 1998. To cut a long story short, he escaped to Tokyo to spend five years working for the largest English language publisher in Japan. "Carving out a career in the megalopolis that is Tokyo changed my outlook forever. When seeing life through such a kaleidoscopic lens, it's hard not to get truly caught up in the moment." On returning to the UK, after a few false starts with grey, corporate publishers, Rich was snapped up by Texere Publishing, where he spearheaded the editorial development of The Analytical Scientist. "I feel honored to be part of the close-knit team that forged The Analytical Scientist – we've created a very fresh and forward-thinking publication." Rich is now also Content Director of Texere Publishing, the company behind The Analytical Scientist.

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