Figshare workshop held at UCT

What is Figshare?
Figshare is a web-based platform to help academic institutions, publishers and researchers to manage, disseminate and measure the public attention of all their research outputs. All research outputs on figshare are made available in a citable, shareable and discoverable manner.

History
Mark Hahnel founded Figshare in 2011, while he was completing his PhD in stem cell biology at Imperial College, London. He grew frustrated with the traditional scholarly publishing model, which focuses almost solely on the publication of papers and does not allow for the dissemination of data and other research outputs. He originally built a website to display his own datasets and videos; then he opened it up for other people to publish their work. The website gained traction in the open research movement and was invested in by Digital Science. Figshare works with institutions in North America, Australia, New Zealand and Europe to help them meet funder recommendations and to provide tools to support data sharing and collaboration (figshare 2017a). Figshare also provides data infrastructure and visualisation services to academic publishers, including the Royal Society (UK), Springer Nature, Public Library of Science, Taylor & Francis, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Wiley, and the American Chemical Society (figshare 2017b). Figshare is a portfolio company of Digital Science. Working in partnership with the academic community, figshare has continued to develop as a research data management and dissemination tool, hosting more than 3 million public articles.

How does it work?
Researchers can upload their research outputs, making them publicly available or sharing them privately with collaborators. The platform allows any file format to be presented and visualised in a customised browser so that illustrative figures, data and other file sets, diverse audio-visual media, papers, posters, and presentations can be disseminated in a way that complements traditional scholarly publishing technologies. All files uploaded to figshare get an institutionally branded Digital Object Identifier (DOI) provided through their relationship with Datacite. All data will be stored on servers located in South Africa, either provided by the institution or DIRISA which will ensure the long-term persistence and preservation of the data on local infrastructure.

Cost-Benefit
Figshare is open to consortia pricing in South Africa. The pricing below is for the annual license fee for the software. All integrations with national storage would be absorbed, or alternative storage options can be considered. Annual license fees range between £10,000 pa & £50,000 pa based on the institution’s research intensity.
 

Discounts offered for multiple institutions signing in South Africa:
3 or more institutions: 10% discount
4 - 7 institutions: 15% discount
7 - 10 institutions: 20% discount
10+ institutions: 25% discount

Workshop Presentations

Venue: Hlanganani Junction, UCT Libraries, Upper Campus, UCT
Date: Monday, 3 July 2017