How to use projects and collaborate on Figshare

The Projects tab is your pathway to collaboration; here you create new projects, access those you collaborate on and check out those you have view permissions for. Members of each project can upload files or add text notes, as well as comments. An activity stream keeps track of all actions on each users account. In addition to private projects, you can now make a project public; scroll to the bottom for more details.

If your organization uses Figshare for Institutions, there are two different types of projects: individual projects and group projects.

Individual Projects

• Everyone uses their own quota and account storage.
• People take their work with them if they leave the project.
• Items appear in the subgroup of the uploader.
• Items published by users from outside the organisation don’t have to go through review (if review is turned on for the group).

Group Projects

• Submitters’ quota will not be used, storage allocation comes directly from the project.
• All work is stored on institutional storage and remains within the project space if people leave.
• Items are created using the metadata schema of the submitter. Contributors must adopt the metadata schema of the project owner.
• Items appear in the subgroup of the project owner.
• Items published by users from outside the organisation have to go through review (if review is turned on for the group).

1. How to start a project

Go to your My Data page and select the Projects tab. Click on the +Create a new project button. Complete the metadata fields as descriptively as possible. If this project is just for individual use, select the individual option under Allocate storage. To use group storage, select the group option and find the relevant group.

Add users to the project by searching on the right-hand side. Add users not currently on Figshare by clicking on the invite new users link. Users can either be collaborators or viewers. Collaborators can comment on the project and the data within it, while viewers can only view the data. To make the project public, you must first make at least one item public within the project.

Please remember to select Save Changes (if you do not save the changes, members will not be invited).

Please also note that at present only the project creator can invite collaborators and they will also need a Figshare account, if they do not have an account they will be invited to create one. Also, the project owner, collaborators, and viewers cannot edit another uploader’s items. Items must be downloaded, edited, and re-uploaded to the project.

2. How to add data and notes to a Project

For new items: Select Add a new item, which takes you to the metadata form. Once you’ve saved the item, it will appear in the home page of the project. As a collaborator, you can comment on individual items within the project or on the project as a whole.

If you wish to add an item from My data to an existing or newly created project, you can do this by selecting the item/s, clicking Actions (located just above) and selecting the desired project destination.

With a figshare.com account you can have up to 100 project spaces and can add up to 100 collaborators to a project. For those using an institutional version of Figshare the number of collaboration spaces (and number of collaborators) will be determined by your institution.

3. How to publish your project

The only stipulation is that a project must contain at least one public article.

Click Manage and select Publish Project.  

Once you’ve done this, you now see your live project by selecting View Project from the Manage menu.

Some more bits of useful information:

• Now, any new items made public from within your project will automatically appear in your public project.
• Your notes and comments will always be private, as well as any draft items within the project space.
• There is no concept of versioning within a project, and there is no DOI for the public space.
• Once a project is public, you can cite all items within a project by downloading a citation file from just underneath the project description.

• You can create an item directly within a project or, if the item has already been created, you can move this item from your My Data space to the project space and vice versa.