Octopus.ac: the global primary research record (12 May 2024)
- Ben Catt
Summary
This hybrid event was led by Tim Fellows (Product Manager, Jisc) and Dr Alexandra Freeman (creator and filmmaker) introducing Octopus, a new publishing platform for the global primary research record funded by UKRI and built in partnership with the UK Reproducibility Network (UKRN).
Tim and Alex demonstrated how Octopus can incentivise best practice and improve research culture by enabling practitioners to publish the constituent parts of their research workflows (research problems, rationale/hypotheses, methods, results, analysis, interpretations and real world applications). Researchers can make these publications available open access, “for free, in full detail, enabling peer review and quality assessment, gaining credit for what they have done, and allowing the research community to build upon it”. The session concluded with an insightful discussion led by questions from researchers and librarians, exploring some of the features, challenges and benefits of Octopus in further detail.
The Open Research team hope to organise a follow-up workshop on Octopus, and are keen to hear from any researchers at York who are using the platform.
Materials available
Slides from this session are not yet available, but you can watch a recording of a similar session organised by UKRN last year, ’Octopus.ac: A new academic publishing model to improve research culture' (YouTube). Octopus provide a step-by-step guide for authors who wish to publish on the platform.