Queen’s University Belfast to launch Figshare-powered repository to share, showcase and manage its research data and theses
Figshare, a leading provider of institutional repository infrastructure that supports open research, is pleased to announce that Queen’s University Belfast has chosen Figshare as its new repository platform to store, showcase and manage its research data and theses outputs.
Queen’s – a prestigious Russell Group UK university and ranked in the top 250 universities in the world – chose Figshare as its new repository platform owing to a selection of core features and functionality that will support the team in creating proficient research management workflows for its outputs.
Notably, Queen’s had an interest in providing an accessible submission page for theses that didn’t require users to have an existing account or relationship with the platform they were submitting to – a use case Figshare supports with its option of a non-logged-in submission page.
Queen’s was also looking for a platform that would be able to handle the upload and storage of large files, particularly in regards to the growing need for research data sharing. The existing publications-focused repository in place at Queen’s lacked the flexibility needed to support the breadth and size of some research data being produced, and Figshare was identified as a suitable alternative platform to support this, with its 5TB upload limit on single files.
The team at Queen’s also saw the potential of Figshare’s flexible API and hope to be able to utilize its functionality to assist in their reporting and integration needs. As the new repository project at Queen’s evolves, the intention is to set up an integration between its CRIS system (Pure) and the Figshare repository, to create a joined-up environment and a comprehensive research management workflow. This will drive the visibility and potential impact of open research data and theses outputs.
Jane O’Neill, University Librarian, Academic Services at Queen’s, said: “The ability to issue persistent identifiers (e.g. DOIs) to our thesis content will be facilitated by the new Figshare repository. This is an exciting development, which will ensure that content is more FAIR-enabled (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable). Assigning DOIs to digital content is probably the most important element to achieving FAIR, ensuring permanence, persistent identification and helping other researchers cite the work of our authors.
“Improvements in terms of the scale and scope of the new repository will also benefit the look and feel of its content, including access controls for datasets, ensuring for the first time that we have a specifically dedicated thesis and data repository, designed and developed overtly for this unique type of content.”
Mark Hahnel, Figshare Founder and Digital Science’s VP of Open Research, said: “It’s wonderful to see the prestigious Queen’s University Belfast choose Figshare to support the open and FAIR sharing of research data for its research community. I’m also thrilled that the Figshare-powered repository will be used to showcase Queen’s theses, with the platform’s capabilities lending itself to such a broad range of disciplines; I’m very much looking forward to seeing the breadth of research that will be shared in the new repository.”