The University of Sheffield Partners With Figshare To Launch ORDA, A Custom Portal To Manage Research Data

By Alex Jackson • June 29, 2017

The University of Sheffield has launched a custom-branded research data portal using Figshare for Institutions technology https://orda.shef.ac.uk/

29th June 2017: London, UK — The University of Sheffield today announced the outcomes of a joint venture with Figshare, an online digital repository for academic researchers. Through this partnership, they have delivered an integrated hub for managing and sharing research data, named ORDA (Online Research Data https://orda.shef.ac.uk/). The University of Sheffield has developed this custom-branded portal on top of their Figshare portal (https://sheffield.figshare.com/) using the Figshare API.

By creating a public portal and assigning digital object identifiers (DOIs), Figshare makes an organisation’s research products searchable, discoverable, and citable, and their impact and attention is captured through statistical reporting and altmetrics.

The University of Sheffield’s solution enables staff, students and researchers to meet funding-body requirements for open access to data while providing a secure, long-term space for a wide range of content; all on one platform that encourages collaboration. The solution will also allow for the easy citation and re-use of their digital data by making it discoverable, citable and shareable from anywhere.

Professor Dave Petley, Vice-President for Research & Innovation, The University of Sheffield commented, “This collaboration allows us to build on our success of sharing and preserving research outputs. It provides a customisable portal for our research data and other research artifacts, enabling us to communicate our research findings as openly and widely as possible.”

Anne Horn, Director of Library Services & University Librarian, The University of Sheffield added, “University Libraries have a long history of working with researchers to promote the products of their work. We are constantly developing our services and we are excited to be working in partnership with Figshare and our Corporate Information and Computer Services colleagues to provide a simple and effective means of showcasing and sharing the University’s research objects.”

Mark Hahnel said, “With imminent funder guidelines coming into effect, UK institutions are having to take measures to make sure their research data is stored securely and persistently, with correct metadata and made freely accessible on the Internet. This cutting-edge integrated solution meets the key requirements set out by The University of Sheffield and the solution will support the storage of primary data generated during original research projects, alongside derived and summarised data used to support publications.”

Figshare for Institutions functionality includes:

Portals that showcase research of an institution or department
Ability to group content into collections
Data curation and administrative workflows
Flexible storage options
Increased file upload limits
Enhanced content discoverability through a revamped search, categorization and metadata

Figshare for Institutions operates under an annual subscription license and can provide data storage through Amazon Web Services. Alternatively, Figshare interoperates with existing institutional storage and infrastructure or centrally provided storage such as RDSI in Australia or other third party providers including DuraCloud.

Notes for Editors

The University of Sheffield With almost 27,000 of the brightest students from over 140 countries, learning alongside over 1,200 of the best academics from across the globe, the University of Sheffield is one of the world’s leading universities. A member of the UK’s prestigious Russell Group of leading research-led institutions, Sheffield offers world-class teaching and research excellence across a wide range of disciplines. Unified by the power of discovery and understanding, staff and students at the university are committed to finding new ways to transform the world we live in.

Sheffield is the only university to feature in The Sunday Times 100 Best Not-For-Profit Organisations to Work For 2017 and was voted number one university in the UK for Student Satisfaction by Times Higher Education in 2014. In the last decade it has won four Queen’s Anniversary Prizes in recognition of the outstanding contribution to the United Kingdom’s intellectual, economic, cultural and social life. Sheffield has six Nobel Prize winners among former staff and students and its alumni go on to hold positions of great responsibility and influence all over the world, making significant contributions in their chosen fields. Global research partners and clients include Boeing, Rolls-Royce, Unilever, AstraZeneca, Glaxo SmithKline, Siemens and Airbus, as well as many UK and overseas government agencies and charitable foundations.

Figshare is a web-based platform to help academic institutions manage, disseminate and measure the public attention of all their research outputs. The light-touch and user-friendly approach focuses on four key areas: research data management, reporting and statistics, research data dissemination and administrative control. Figshare works with institutions in North America and internationally to help them meet key funder recommendations and to provide world-leading tools to support an open culture of data sharing and collaboration. For more information, visit http://figshare.com and follow @figshare on Twitter. Figshare is a Digital Science portfolio company: https://www.digital-science.com/

Digital Science is a technology company serving the needs of scientific and research communities, at the laboratory bench or in a research setting. It invests in and incubates scientific software companies that simplify the research cycle, making more time for discovery. Its portfolio companies and investments include a host of leading and admired brands including Altmetric, BioRAFT, Figshare, GRID, IFI CLAIMS, Labguru, Peerwith, Overleaf, ReadCube, Symplectic, TetraScience, Transcriptic, and ÜberResearch. It is operated by global media company, the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. Visit www.digital-science.com and follow @digitalsci on Twitter.