figshare in North America

Plan S compliance

Funding organizations that are part of cOAlition S are working to implement Plan S. Members of cOAlition S stipulate that any research they fund should be made available immediately through open access journals, platforms, or repositories. Figshare meets the Plan S required repository requirements:

1. Figshare is registered in openDOAR
2. PIDs are assigned to all Figshare items. Figshare.com accounts received DOIs, institutional accounts may be set up receive DOIs or Handles.
3. The Figshare metadata is in a standard interoperable non-proprietary format and is under a CC0 public domain license on figshare.com by default. Institutions can apply any license and make sure their content is compliant. Figshare metadata includes the PID as well as funding information.
4. Machine readable information on the Open Access status and the license embedded in the article, in standard non-proprietary format.
5. The Figshare platform is continuously available (uptime at least 99.9%) and is available even during updates.
6. Figshare offers support for both free figshare.com accounts and institutional accounts through our support portal: https://support.fighshare.com.

Figshare also meets other strongly recommended criteria:

1. Figshare supports bulk upload of items through its API or an FTP client
2. PIDs for authors (ORCID) and grants (through the dimensions.ai database)
3. FIgshare has an API openly documented at https://docs.figshare.com. 
4. Metadata on Figshare is OpenAIRE compliant.

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Recent webinar summary:

Data Curation in the Cloud with the Figshare API

Making the curation workflow efficient for researchers and repository managers is a constant challenge. In this recent webinar, University of Arizona's Chun Ly and Fernando Rios discussed the data curation workflow they implemented for their data repository, ReDATA, available at arizona.figshare.com.

They discussed the best practices they follow for curation and software development, the strengths and weaknesses of doing curation in the Cloud, and how they have used the Figshare API for a semi-automated workflow. 

The Python tool they developed is available on GitHub: https://github.com/UAL-ODIS/LD-Cool-P and you can view a recording of the webinar here: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.14730420.v1

View the recording of the webinar

New repositories

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Virginia Tech’s New Data Repository

Virginia Tech just launched a new data repository at https://data.lib.vt.edu/. The first thing to notice in this repository is that every dataset has a readme file that describes the files. The Library offers Data Services that help researchers format and describe their research outputs.

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University of Wyoming

The University of Wyoming’s new repository (https://wyoscholar.uwyo.edu/) contains resources from across the campus. Along with ETDs, publications, and datasets, UW migrated state publications, undergraduate research outputs, and open educational resources into their Figshare instance.

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Ryerson University

Ryerson University’s institutional repository is now live at https://rshare.library.ryerson.ca/. It is primarily ETDs at the moment but also contains peer reviewed papers, presentations, and online resources.

Policy and compliance:

Using Figshare to meet your university’s open access policy

University faculties across North America are passing open access policies. The Coalition for Open Access Policy Institutions lists 95 full members. As of 2017, fourteen Canadian institutions had passed open access policies. If your institution is one of those, or if an OA policy is under discussion, your Figshare repository has multiple features to aid this workflow.

• Review workflow to process researcher submitted OA papers
• The ability to assign handles and DOIs within the same repository. OA papers can be given a handle while associated data can have a DOI.
• Metadata field for reference links pointing to references or publisher version of a publication
• Custom metadata that gives your institution the ability to add metadata needed to comply with the OA policy or publisher requirements. 

Here are a few examples of North American institutions that share open access articles through their Figshare repositories:

• Carnegie Mellon University
• University of Wyoming
• University of Illinois at Chicago

Tri-Agency Compliance

Policy: https://www.science.gc.ca/eic/site/063.nsf/eng/h_97610.html

The Canadian government has three large funding agencies that are collectively called the Tri-Agency. The Tri-Agency has been developing a research data management policy and there is a plan for incremental implementation: By Spring 2022 there will be a list of funding opportunities that require DMPs, by March 1, 2023 institutions will need to post their RDM strategies, and after assessing RDM strategies and with community feedback, they will phase in a data sharing requirement.

NIH Compliance

The new NIH policy for data management and sharing will go into effect January 25, 2023. It requires any NIH funded research to include a data management plan (DMP) and asks researchers to “maximize appropriate data sharing when developing” a DMP. In 2020, the NIH awarded over 60,000 grants. Without a doubt the new policy will spur an increase in requests for data sharing infrastructure at research institutions. A data capable institutional repository can save researchers time and provide rich opportunities for reporting and assessment. The Figshare platform meets the NIH guidelines for repositories and in fact has been used by the NIH itself.