Not all research has a positive outcome. Some research produces equivocal findings; some research results in negative findings. Research with positive findings tends to hog all the attention, which is good in one way but can be bad in others.

If negative findings are not published, how can other researchers find out about them and avoid re-doing pointless research?

Figshare is one place where negative findings are welcomed. It provides an online data store for research of all kinds - positive, negative and equivocal - so that data can be made available for others to use, if only as a warning away from unproductive areas of enquiry.

Users sign up, upload, and get a citable dataset they can then make available to others. There is scope for 'hiding' data by keeping it private. Private data stores are limited to 1GB. Public space is currently unlimited.

Data on figshare can be tagged, and the site accepts data in any format, including videos and datasets. Since figshare is in the cloud, data is thus accessible from anywhere.

An API, a desktop uploader service and collaborative workspaces are all under development.

Researchers at lots of prestigious universities (Yale, Stanford) are patronising figshare and the service is backed by Digital Science, a business unit of Macmillan Publishers Ltd. Digital Science's activities build on the reputation for editorial and technological excellence of its sister company, the Nature Publishing Group.