Introduction

By default the Figshare system will mint DOIs for public items and Collections. Your institutional repository may be configured to also create Handles, or you may have an option to add a pre-existing DOI or Handle to an item. All accounts have the option to reserve a DOI before publishing and for more on that functionality, please see the public facing help pages. Read on for information useful to administrators.

How do DOIs and Handles work in Figshare?

Every public item must have either a DOI or Handle. The Figshare system automatically creates the DOI or Handle and maintains the link between the DOI provider or Handle server and the item's Figshare URL. The identifier is part of the metadata. What identifiers your repository uses is set up during implementation. The identifier configuration is at the group level, so one group can mint DataCite DOIs and another group can use Handles. The option to add pre-existing DOIs/Handles is also a group configuration. If you have questions about this or want to know how your current configurations can be changed, please be in touch via support ticket.

Pre-existing DOIs/Handles

If this is enabled, the user will see 'Manage identifiers' in the link menu to the right.

If pre-existing DOIs/Handles are enabled, users will see a 'Manage identifiers' link in the right menu

Clicking the 'Manage identifiers' link opens the options to either reserve an identifier or use a pre-existing one.

The options to reserve a DOI or use a pre-existing DOI/Handle

When using a pre-existing identifier, the identifier won't automatically link to the repository item you create, it will still link to the location stored by the DOI provider or the Handle server. If you are moving an item from another location into your repository, you'll need to contact the DOI/Handle provider to redirect to the Figshare URL. If you are just creating a duplicate record in your repository, there is no need to redirect (and you likely don't have the permissions to do so anyway!). Please note that a DOI added in this way will not be versioned or updated by the Figshare system, even if you own the DOI and it was minted with the same credentials as used by the repository. 

Using pre-existing identifiers is useful for creating data catalog records or adding gold/diamond open access paper records. For pre-existing DOIs, Figshare will automatically add the Altmetric score and citation count for that DOI. Below is an example of an item in a stage repository using the DOI for a public report from another repository. This record is providing more discoverability for the report and provides the original DOI so that any references will point to original location.

An example of a pre-existing DOI in a record

Things to consider

Pre-existing DOIs for papers, ETDs, or reports

It is ideal if you are able to include a copy of the publication in your repository, even if you need to embargo the file. Too many metadata only records in a repository may have negative effects on Google Scholar indexing. Please be in touch if you have questions.

It is also good to include the DOI as a 'Related material' entry and check the box to display the link in the call out area, as shown in the above image. The original DOI is linked in the box containing the text 'Is identical to...Original record'

Data catalog records

Your researchers are likely publishing data in a variety of data repositories, whether disciplinary repositories, collaborator's institutional repositories, or possibly generalist repositories. For better reporting and tracking, you can add linked file or metadata only items to your repository pointing to these external datasets. If you are directing end users to only one location, use a linked file item, if there are multiple locations that you want to represent with one item, use a metadata only record and add links as 'Related material'.

In this example, the institution has added this catalog record to link to a dataset that lives in the Dryad repository.