Figshare: A One-Stop Shop for Research Data Management with Diverse Features and Services

Abstract

Research data management is recognized as an important concern for institutions. Various academic and research institutions today maintain different institutional repositories operating on different platforms to save and share research data. Researchers require a platform that ensures maximum accessibility, stability and reliability to share research data. Sharing data makes it possible to replicate studies, formulate new research questions, and generate new knowledge. One such platform used for sharing and preserving research data is “Figshare”. The purpose of this paper is to look at the journey of the Figshare platform and investigate the usefulness of this platform for sharing and preserving data. This paper provides an understanding of the platform for research institutions to employ for data management purposes. The research design of this article consists of non-empirical research majorly based on literature review and analysis. The literature analysis focused on the architecture, metadata handling capacities, interoperability, compatibility and services offered to researchers and research institutions by this platform. Focused literature searches were conducted across various electronic databases and this study tried to explore the solution that Figshare offers in supporting research data. Further, the article outlines the benefits of the Figshare repository and shows how this registry helps in the appropriate storage and sharing of research data. This article presents the potential of the Figshare platform that can be applied and used in different research disciplines for preserving and sharing research data.