23 Research Things on Figshare: What’s fruit got to do with it?
Last year, 23 Research Things showcased different resources, strategies, and ideas to work smarter, not harder, when researching to an audience of over 500 subscribers. So, why do anything else? This post takes you through why the team decided to add 23 Research Things to Melbourne Figshare – view the collection here.
First things first, what’s Melbourne Figshare?
Despite the name, Melbourne Figshare is not a method of distributing fruits to others.
It’s a repository where University staff and graduate researchers can share, publish, and manage their data, Non-Traditional Research Outputs (NTROs), and supplementary materials. Think code, datasets, musical scores, artworks, presentations, reports, and more!
It’s open and freely discoverable to everyone, allowing people to view, download, and (depending on the licence) reuse or adapt.
What are the benefits of putting 23 Things on Figshare?
The 23 Research Things posts aren’t traditional research outputs, but are materials that other researchers, research support professionals, and anyone can use. Adding the 23 Things to Figshare allows:
1. Preserving the Things
23 Research Things is a Library blog with each post having its own URL. But what if that URL got changed, or the blog archived? Putting the posts on Figshare provides a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) for each Thing. A DOI is a unique, persistent series of characters that will always link back to the post in Figshare.
2. Increased cite-ability
Figshare automatically generates a citation for each item in its repository that includes the authors and the DOI link. We’ve included this in the “Cite this Thing” section on each post – the DOI will never change, so the citation will always link back to the right content.
3. Showcasing impact
The Figshare entry shows how many views, downloads and citations the Thing has, so we can gauge how many people are interacting with the content, as well as the geographic location they are based. It also links to Altmetrics, so we can see how many times the post has been mentioned in social media, blogs, and other platforms.
4. Licensing the content
Figshare requires a licence to be selected for any item that’s uploaded. All the 23 Research Things posts are CC-BY, so anyone can reuse, adapt and share the Things with attribution to the author. Choosing a licence clarifies what people can do with the 23 Research Things content.
5. Improving accessibility
Users can download a copy of the Things from Figshare, rather than read it in their browser, allowing more options for engagement. Accessibility was a focus of the 23 Research Things series in 2023 – read the First Thing here to learn more making research accessible.
Want to know more?
How do you distribute your reports, presentations, posters, and other research materials? Consider using Melbourne Figshare as a way to share your research with others, increase its reach, and have a permanent online location.
You can find out more about Melbourne Figshare in the:
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