In our weekly Research Culture Uncovered conversations we are asking what is Research Culture and why does it matter? This episode is part of Season 3, hosted by Nick Sheppard, who is speaking to colleagues from both the University of Leeds and from other universities and organizations about open research, what it is, how it's practised in different disciplines, and how it relates to research culture. In this episode Nick is joined by Dr Alexandra Freeman, the creator of Octopus, an innovative new open science platform designed to replace journals and papers as the place to establish priority and record your work in full detail.Dr Freeman is Executive Director for the Winton Centre for Risk & Evidence Communication at the University Cambridge. Previously she had a 16 year career at the BBC, working on series such as Walking with Beasts, Life in the Undergrowth, Bang Goes the Theory, Climate Change by Numbers and as series producer of Trust Me, I’m a Doctor. Her work won a number of awards, from a BAFTA to a AAAS Kavli gold award for science journalism. You can connect with Alex via Twitter.In this episode we talk about:Alex's professional background and her long standing interest in science communicationHer work at the Winton Centre to help patients make evidence based decisions about healthcareHow academic journals aim to both disseminate useful findings to practitioners and to act as the primary research record, which can pull them in different directionsProblems with how research is incentivised, rewarded and assessed which can lead to 'questionable research practices' and contribute to the 'reproducibility crisis'How she came up with the idea for Octopus and how it aims to address these fundamental issuesThe Octopus model which disaggregates the journal article into its component parts in a structure that more closely matches the actual process of research: problem, hypothesis, protocol, data, analysis, interpretation, real world use, reviewThe sheer ambition of her vision for Octopus and the challenge to fundamentally change the research ecosystem, to encourage and incentivise intrinsic research qualityHow Octopus is currently STEM focussed, reflecting Alex's own background, but that she has begun to explore the model for the social sciences and humanitiesHow you can start using Octopus right now by visiting https://www.octopus.ac/ and publishing your first research problem Be sure to check out the other episodes in this season!Links:Octopus - https://www.octopus.ac/Octopus: A new way to open and transparent research (blogpost and recorded virtual talk at University of Leeds, March 2022)Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence CommunicationAAAS Kavli gold award for science journalism (2015)Baker, M. 1,500 scientists lift the lid on reproducibility. Nature 533, 452–454 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/533452a

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