Exploring Humanities Research Data in Figshare

Abstract

Purpose/Thesis: The purpose of this study is to explore the uptake and use of Figshare by humanities community and to know if opening of the research data is enough to make them visible and findable.Approach/Methods: The overall research design was to gather a sample of humanities artifacts found on Figshare through its API, and then to analyze such indicators as the number of articles by discipline, the evolution of contribution per year, and the number of views and downloads by affiliation to an institution.Results and conclusions: The humanities community engagement with Figshare varies depending on the discipline; in addition, even when research data is published, 50% is rarely viewed. This means that making research data open is not enough to make it visible and to ensure their reuse. The final conclusion is that articles affiliated to an institution have more chance to be visible than unaffiliated ones.Research limitations: The limit of our study is that it can only analyze data present in Figshare and not the data that is missing, so we cannot know the reasons for the small visibility of humanities research data; the study of other data warehouses is necessary to give more explanation, but the results con­form to the pattern visible in the data presented in several studies of research management practices.Originality/Value: The first study that explores the humanities contents the multidisciplinary data repository Figshare.