Making research more accessible with Figshare

Author: Penny Freedman

By: Iain Hrynaszkiewicz

We want to enable all of our authors and editors to publish the best research and promote wider access to research data, and other materials that support publications. To help achieve this we have introduced enhanced display and discovery of supplementary materials (additional files) in BioMed Central and SpringerOpen journals, in partnership with Figshare.

We are now depositing additional files from more than 300 BioMed Central and SpringerOpen journals in Figshare. This new service to authors and readers will:

• Improve the online display of articles
• Improve readership of and engagement with published articles
• Increase the discoverability of additional files (and articles)
• Provide richer, more specific metrics about the readership and reuse of additional files
• Assign each additional file a unique Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
• Provide each journal with its own portal within Springer Nature’s Figshare repository, giving each journal its own data repository (example from Genome Biology)

Figshare is a repository where users can make all of their research outputs available in a citable, shareable and discoverable manner, and also works with publishers to enhance scholarly publications.

Articles published in SpringerOpen and BioMed Central journals can now show a widget for previewing and browsing additional files, enabling readers to see this enhanced content in line with the article in the same browser window. See example below from an article from BMC Genomics and screenshot of the widget.

We will be introducing Figshare portals and widgets to the whole BioMed Central and SpringerOpen portfolio soon, and other Springer Nature publications in the future.

Mark Hahnel, CEO of Figshare said:
“Springer Nature and BioMed Central are innovators in research data sharing and publishing, enabling researchers to make their data discoverable and reusable with industry-leading work on data policies, data journals, data licensing and support for data citation. Springer Nature is also one the largest research publishers and so I’m thrilled that so many researchers will benefit from better discoverability and reuse of their research data by the introduction of figshare technology, starting with BioMed Central and SpringerOpen journals.”

As part of our Research Data Support for authors and editors, we are also providing custom data publishing services for researchers with larger datasets, and working to make these available in journals’ Figshare portals. We encourage authors and editors with data intensive publications and projects to contact researchdata@springernature.com to discuss their requirements.