researchers can upload all of their research outputs to figshare, thus making them publicly available. users can upload files in any format, and items are attributed a doi. the current 'types' that can be chosen are figures, datasets, media (including video), papers (including pre-prints), posters, code, and filesets (groups of files). all files are released under a creative commons license, cc-by for most files and cc0 (public domain) for datasets. figshare allows researchers to publish negative data. the withholding of negative publications is a widely known phenomenon that leads to a significant bias, often referred to as the file drawer effect. by encouraging publishing of figures, charts, and data, rather than being limited to the traditional entire 'paper', knowledge can be shared more quickly and effectively. figshare also tracks the download statistics for hosted materials, acting in turn as a source for altmetrics. the main hosting mechanism for the platform is amazon s3, with clockss serving as an additional host for public content. both of these resources support backup and preservation via a distributed cloud computing network.