What should be shared through figshare for Institutions?

Any of the raw material used for your research whether it be sensor data, species lists, genome sequences, text, images, or video.
Everyone has data, not just the sciences. If you do research, you have data.

Figshare is file-format agnostic, however some types of research data are more appropriate for figshare than others. Figshare is great for:

• data that underlie peer-reviewed publications
• data that are (mostly) complete and self contained, e.g., a set of tabular files containing sensor monitoring data for a specific time period with accompanying images of monitored plots
• data for ongoing research that periodically needs to be shared

What should not be deposited in figshare for Institutions.

Peer-reviewed publications should be deposited in Smithsonian Research Online (SRO).

Very large quantities (> 1TB) of photos and/or video - these should first be deposited in SI DAMS for safe keeping. Contact Keri Thompson to coordinate deposit of photos and video into DAMS.

Video with audio that requires captioning, e.g., narrated tours or presentations. Though figshare supports video it is not a streaming platform that supports creation and display of accessible captions. If you have such video, contact Keri Thompson to discuss the many other options there are for sharing.

Datasets that are not intended to be publicly available - any data, regardless of format, that cannot be made public due to any of the "Allowable Restrictions" as listed in SD 609, Digital Asset Access and Use such as:

• Content with Intellectual Property (IP) restrictions such as copyright, moral rights, trademarks, or rights of privacy and publicity, 
• Content with contractual restrictions, e.g., deeds of gift or licensing restrictions
• Content with Personally Identifiable Information (PII)
• Content that includes Native American and Native Hawaiian human remains and cultural patrimony subject to repatriation
• Content with rare, threatened or endangered species locality or collector information
• Content that reveals the location of sensitive archeological, paleontological, geological, or sacred and historic sites.
• Content with uncertain provenance or export records, e.g., Holocaust-era assets
• Sensitive content, e.g., data related to traditional knowledge and practices whose display may give offence if used inappropriately or commercially, or that are the private domain of specific individuals, clans, cults or societies. 

If you have restricted data that needs a secure repository, contact the Office of Research Computing for advice.

How to get an account

Go to https://smithsonian.figshare.com/ResearchData and click on the "log in" link in the upper right hand corner.  If prompted, use your SI network credentials to log in, but gif you are on campus or connected to the SI network via VPN or remote desktop, it will authenticate you automatically. If you are off-campus, you will be prompted for your username, password, and MFA token.
If there are problems contact Keri at thompsonk at si dot edu

Get started

Check out the How-to guides for step-by-step instructions and tips on using figshare.

More details, q's etc.

contact via email Keri Thompson thompsonk at si dot edu or message me on Teams