Research support

Octopus provides researchers a new way to disseminate their research. Free to publish and read, the platform has been designed to be the primary research record and allows for all stages of the research project to be published and linked together.   

There are several benefits to using Octopus:

• It is free and easy to use.
• Researchers from all disciplines can use Octopus- its not discipline specific.
• Octopus has an emphasis on quality to promote good research practices. 
• Acts as a 'patent office' to document what research has been done when and where, and establishes your priority to provide protection from scooping.
• Allows you to get feedback at all stages of your research, and quickly.
• Transparency with open peer review and whole research process is shared.
• Fair recognition for researchers- the whole research process is recorded in stages so each part can be attributed to those that have conducted that work.
• Each published element is given a DOI, and it is also linked to the collaborative chain above and below it, so the whole research journey can be viewed. 
• Links to your ORCID profile.
• Peer reviewing seen as an activity and is recognised on your profile.

Octopus has been funded by UKRI and built in collaboration with JISC and UKRN. The video below provides a brief overview of the platform.  

To publish your research or interact with other's research on Octopus you need to create an account which is linked to your ORCID account. Once your account has been set up you can start publishing immediately. 

Octopus has 8 publication types that you can publish that are hierarchically linked in a branching chain, e.g. you can't publish a hypothesis without having published the research problem, this means that there are no 'missing links' in the research journey. All publications have a CC BY 4.0 licence. The eight publication types are:

1. Research problem
2. Rationale/Hypothesis
3. Method
4. Results
5. Analysis
6. Interpretation
7. Real World Application
8. Peer Review (you cannot peer review your own work). 

When working in collaboration with others all co-authors need to approve a publication before it is made live on the platform. Co-authors can review the draft and liaise with the submitting author any amendments.

The below video provides a guide to how to publish on Octopus, additionally there is an Author guide to publishing on Octopus and FAQ available on the Octopus platform.