Figshare is one of the most widely used general-purpose research repositories: a place to upload, preserve, and share the research outputs that don't fit in a journal article - datasets, figures, code, media, posters, conference presentations, theses, and preprints. It was founded in 2011 by Mark Hahnel, then a stem-cell biology PhD student who wanted somewhere to publish the outputs of his own research, and has been developed commercially by Digital Science (part of the Holtzbrinck group) since its relaunch in January 2012. Digital Science remains a separate company from Springer Nature, even though both sit under Holtzbrinck ownership.

More than 8 million research outputs have been made openly available through Figshare, and over 150 universities, funders, and publishers run their own Figshare-powered repositories. Every publicly published item receives a DataCite DOI, which makes Figshare uploads formally citable in reference lists - a key reason journals and funders accept it as a data-sharing venue.

1. Create a free account at figshare.com (ORCID sign-in is supported, and linking your ORCID pushes your public items to your ORCID record).
2. Upload your files. Free accounts get 20 GB of private storage and can upload individual files up to 20 GB; there is no cap on how much you make public.
3. Add metadata. Title, authors, categories, keywords, a description, and related links (for example, the DOI of the paper the data supports).
4. Choose a license. CC BY is the default; CC0 is recommended for datasets and databases; code can carry software licenses such as MIT, GPL, or Apache.
5. Publish - or hold. You can publish immediately, keep items private, generate a private sharing link for reviewers, set an embargo date, or reserve the DOI ahead of publication so you can cite the dataset in the manuscript before either is public.

Figshare is not a peer-reviewed venue. Uploads pass basic checks by Figshare staff for spam, copyright problems, and obviously non-research content, but no one evaluates methods or conclusions. That is by design: the repository's job is preservation, discoverability, and citation, not certification. Treat a Figshare item the way you would treat any unrefereed material - useful, citable, but not validated. Readers can judge reuse by the item's metrics (views, downloads, citations), which Figshare tracks and displays on every item page.

Every public item on figshare.com is assigned a DataCite DOI of the form 10.6084/m9.figshare.XXXXXXX (institutional portals mint DOIs or Handles under their own prefixes). Versioning is built in: editing a published item creates a new version, and each version keeps a resolvable DOI, so citations always point to the exact state of the data you used.

To cite an item, use the Cite button on its page, which formats the reference and exports to BibTeX, EndNote, RefWorks, DataCite, and other managers. A typical data citation looks like: Author(s). Title. figshare. Dataset. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.XXXXXXX (year). Include the version number when the item has more than one.

Figshare complements rather than replaces journal publishing, and it is wired into the workflows of several major publishers:

• Supplementary data hosting. Springer Nature, Wiley, Taylor & Francis, PLOS, and other publishers use Figshare to host supplementary material and datasets linked from articles, making those files independently discoverable and citable.
• Data availability statements. Depositing your data on Figshare and citing its DOI is an accepted way to satisfy most journal and funder data-sharing policies - check your target journal's policy for any repository preferences.
• Timing. Reserve the DOI before submission so the manuscript can cite the dataset; keep the item private or under embargo until the paper is accepted, then publish both together.
• Preprints. You can post a manuscript on Figshare, but check your target journal's preprint policy first, as you would with any preprint server.

Pricing for Figshare+ and institutional plans changes over time, so check figshare.com for the current details before budgeting a large deposit.

Figshare stores data on cloud infrastructure with redundancy, exposes metadata through DataCite, Dublin Core, and Schema.org so items surface in Google Dataset Search, and states a long-term preservation commitment for public items. Items cannot simply vanish after publication: deletion requests are handled conservatively, and removed items leave a tombstone page at the DOI. Uploaders are responsible for holding the rights to what they deposit and for removing personally identifiable or sensitive data before making files public - de-identify human-subjects data and confirm consent covers sharing.