University of Bristol reveals 'heartbreaking' challenges in research culture

New research from the University of Bristol has found academic researchers are experiencing major challenges around open research.

The 77-page report, “A snapshot of the academic research culture in 2023 and how it might be improved”, was conducted to create a benchmark to measure the effectiveness of the online publishing platform Octopus.ac, which is funded by Research England.

It is a free platform where researchers from all disciplines can record all their research outputs, designed to improve research culture by removing sources of bias.

For the report, researchers from the University of Bristol carried out a literature study, one-to-one interviews, and a survey of over 400 research professionals to understand how they felt about their work, careers and the state of open research.

Octopus said: “Interviewees claimed that the current culture was unfair and is enabled by a focus on traditional peer-reviewed papers. One described writing research under the pressure to find ‘impactful’ results as feeling like ‘I’m a novel writer instead of a researcher’.

“Nearly half (46%) of respondents said they would not publish ideas or methods for fear of being ‘scooped’, because only ‘findings’ mattered. About a third said they saw no benefit to their careers in sharing work quickly and openly.

“The researchers also found multiple causes for bias in research assessment and fear of discrimination based on the personal characteristics of the researcher, such as gender.”

The report recommended: outreach and education about open research publishing platforms; changing funder and institutional policies to better enable research sharing and adjusting peer review; and research assessment to focus on smaller units of work.

One of the report’s authors, Dr Pen-Yuan Hsing of the University of Bristol, said: “We found that the current research culture encourages researchers to hide their work at least until a traditional journal paper is published. In some situations, these pressures lead to questionable research practices.” 

Octopus platform founder Dr Alexandra Freeman, who founded the company in 2017, said: “It’s heartbreaking to read how researchers currently feel. The current system incentivises the wrong things.

“This means that those wanting to do the best quality research have to actively swim against the tide. Octopus is designed to realign research incentives to reward people for the intrinsic quality of what they do, removing the concept of ‘scooping’, encouraging specialisation, and removing the feeling of having to ‘be good at everything’.”

The report was funded by Research England and Jisc (a membership organisation offering technology for UK education and research), as part of the Octopus project. It was carried out in and supported by the School of Psychological Science at the University of Bristol.

To read the report, visit its page on the Octopus website.