Figshare Data Sharing User Story: Open Science in Neuroscience

User story showcasing a real-world researcher's experience with data sharing and reuse in the Figshare repository. This article details the data sharing experiences of doctoral researcher Oliver Contier and the Hebart Lab team, focusing on their THINGS-data project. The project is a comprehensive collection of large-scale datasets designed to investigate how the human brain represents and distinguishes between objects. The shared data includes brain activity measured with MEG and fMRI, as well as millions of behavioral data points. Driven by a belief in open science, the team made the data an open resource from the outset. They strategically used Figshare as their central repository, while also hosting neuroimaging data on OpenNeuro and behavioral data on the Open Science Framework (OSF) to adhere to community standards. The decision to share has already yielded impressive results, with the dataset being used by other research groups to produce new insights and becoming part of a larger, ongoing collaborative initiative.