From 2019-2020, the NIH conducted a pilot with Figshare to provide a generalist repository for all NIH-funded researchers to share their data openly.
We interviewed several researchers funded by the NIH who deposited their research data into the NIH Figshare repository to find out what impact sharing their data (and lots of it!) had on their research.
Key lessons from the NIH Figshare pilot
- Generalist repositories are an important part of the data sharing landscape supporting data sharing to meet funder and publisher requirements.
- Researchers need training and guidance about data sharing best practices for FAIR data.
- Metadata review and enhancement by experts for more complete and high quality metadata is important to improve dataset discoverability.