In our weekly Research Culture Uncovered conversations we are asking what is Research Culture and why does it matter?

In episode 3 of Season 7, Daryl O'Connor, Professor of Psychology at the University of Leeds joins Nick Sheppard, Open Research Advisor and Ruth Winden, Careers with Research Consultant, to discuss all things Open Research, Research Culture, and Careers.

We delve into:

1. Daryl's long-standing commitment to advocating for Open Research - and why Open Research plays such a key role in not just academics' careers but also in creating a collaborative, equitable and positive Research Culture as a whole
2. How a publication in Science in 2015 shaped Daryl's research interests, his engagement with research - and his entire career
3. How and why Psychology played such an important role in creating the Reciprobability movement, and why it really isn't a Psychology problem, but an overall challenge for ALL sciences.
4. How to build a researcher career, and why collaboration has to be at the centre of it.
5. How professional associations can play a huge part in building one's research career - and why taking on leadership roles in committees, associations, and international networks offers so much to our professional and personal development.
6. Why the most impactful way to change Research Culture for the better is to change the reward and recognition structure in academia. A quote from Daryl: "... it's about changing the reward and recognition structure that will really change behaviour, which will change Open Research".

If you'd like to find out more about Daryl's work, please check out the following links:

• Twitter/X: Daryl O’Connor @healthpsycleeds
• The Laboratory for Stress and Health Research (STARLAB) led by Daryl O'Connor https://sites.google.com/site/doconnorlab/
• Daryl's extensive University profile: https://medicinehealth.leeds.ac.uk/psychology/staff/2725/professor-daryl-o-connor

Open lunch talks with Daryl:

• Preregistration and the architecture of open science
• The UK Reproducibility Network (UKRN): promoting robust and trustworthy research

All of our episodes can be accessed via the following playlists:

• Research Impact with Ged Hall (follow Ged on Twitter and LinkedIn)
• Open Research with Nick Sheppard (follow Nick on Twitter and LinkedIn)
• Research Careers with Ruth Winden (follow Ruth on Twitter and LinkedIn)
• Research talent management with Tony Bromley (follow Tony on Twitter and LinkedIn)
• Meet the Research Culturositists with Emma Spary (follow Emma on Twitter and LinkedIn)
• Research co-production
• Research Leadership
• Research Evaluation

Follow us on twitter: @ResDevLeeds (new episodes are announced here), @OpenResLeeds, @ResCultureLeeds 

Connect to us or leave us a review on LinkedIn: @ResearchUncoveredPodcast (new episodes are announced here)

Leeds Research Culture links:

• Researcher Development and Culture Website
• Our Concordat Implementation plans and progress
• University of Leeds Research Culture Statement
• University of Leeds Responsible Metrics Statement
• University of Leeds Open Research Statement
• University of Leeds Research Culture Strategy - launched September 2023

Welcome to the Research Culture Uncovered podcast, where in every episode we explore what is research culture and what should it be? You'll hear thoughts and opinions from a range of contributors to help you change research culture into what you want it to be.

Hello, it's Nick, and for this podcast I'm joined by my colleague Ruth Winden, Careers with Research Consultant in OD&PL. If you haven't yet listened to Ruth's series of podcasts, you can catch up with her playlist in the show notes, all about research careers, or with mine, of course, discussing all things open research. My playlist is also in the show notes. So Ruth and I decided to join forces today to talk to Daryl O'Connor, Professor of Psychology here at Leeds. Daryl is also the institutional lead for the UK Reproducibility Network and very active in promoting open science and improving psychological science in particular. So I've worked with him a fair bit in that context. He's done a couple of talks for our Open Lunch series of webinars, also linked below, and we both sit on the university's Open Research Advisory Group. So Ruth and I were interested in talking to Daryl about the role open researchers played in his career and to what extent it may influence the career choices of today's young scientists and researchers as they forge their own academic careers, or perhaps a career outside academia.

So thanks for listening and here's our conversation with Daryl. So hello, Daryl, and thank you for joining us on the podcast.Daryl O'Connor: Hi guys, lovely to be here. So we've just been chatting a little before we started recording, but today I'm joined by my colleague Ruth, who is. Just remind me, Ruth, what your job title is, because I got it wrong once already.

I'm a Careers Consultant and it's for researchers.

Okay. And obviously I'm Open Research Advisor, so I've worked with you, Daryl, in the context of open research in quite a lot of different areas, actually. So we're both on the Open Research Advisory Group, aren't we? We've worked with UKRN and the UK Reproducibility Network. You've done various talks for us, but before. Hopefully we'll get onto some of that. But before we do, it just occurred to me that I don't really know that much about your day job, as it were. You're a professor of psychology and what's your actual sort of research about? Which I know all about your sort of meta research and the open research side of things, but not your real research, I guess.

Great question, Nick.. Yeah. So I'm a health psychologist who's got strong interests in psychobiology, so I'm particularly interested, I'm suppose a stress expert. So I've got this large research profile where I'm interested in, or portfolio where I'm interested in understanding how psychological stress leads to disease and ill health and reduced longevity, and then also trying to understand factors which might influence that process, vulnerability factors, and also factors which might help protect people. So that's one thing. And then as part of that work, I'm also interested in different aspects of behavior, things like eating behavior, physiology, such as blood pressure, cortisol, mental health outcomes and also suicide behavior. And then also what interventions we can maybe develop, psychological interventions that we might be able to test and then intervene in a way which might reduce the effects of stress on these range of different outcomes. Then I've also a very related but still very different area of research, which I'm also interested in trying to increase - cancer screening. So again, as health psychologists working with colleagues in psychology, we've been lucky to be funded over many years, where we're trying to influence how the NHS increases uptake of particularly cancer screening and cervical cancer screening nationally.

So we're doing quite a lot of work in that arena. And then as third arm then I've been interested now for many years now on how we can improve science and how you can improve psychological science in particular. But given that psychology has played a key role in changing the scientific landscape in the context of open research and open science, I've been doing a lot of advocacy work over the last 5,6,7,8 years. So hopefully that gives you a useful background. Nick? Nick Sheppard: Yeah, no, thank you. And in that context, you are obviously a professor of psychology and I've spoken to quite a lot of psychologists in this space, in the open research space. Is there a particular reason for that? Maybe. Is it a bit of a double edged sword? I sometimes wonder that people think that this applies more to psychology and the social sciences, when perhaps that's not actually the case.

It's not. It's a problem of all sciences, genetics, clinical medicine, pharmacology, name it. It's got a replication crisis. But what it really tells us is we should be exploring more about openness, transparency and reducing what many of you will be familiar with: this idea of questionable research practices. So really good question, because it really gets that point out there. And another thing I'll say is that many years ago at the Royal Society, maybe we'll talk about this. I arranged a meeting about the whole replication crisis and how we can improve psychological science. And I gave a talk at that meeting and the talk was entitled "Psychological science as a trailblazer for science".

And that at the heart, gets to the message of where I'm at and why I'm interested in being an advocate for Open Science as a psychologist, is that, the amazing work that psychology has done and many of the key players, like I'm going to name Brian Nosak, which is a key player internationally in this area, involved in setting up the Open Science Framework. He is a psychologist. But the point is that we, all that we've done has really benefited all areas of science. So I think that's a great question, but a really important thing for listeners to be aware of. All areas of science are impacted.

I won't ask you to tell us how long ago your undergraduate degree was. Perhaps. But first of all, has it been a big part of your career? And is that likely to be the case for students studying psychology now, more so or less so? Has the landscape changed a lot over the years? And then with that, I'll hand on to Ruth to ask you some more career related questions.

So I've been interested in trying to play a role where I can. So I've done a lot of work in the British Psychological Society, but then that's broadened out into Europe. So I also chaired, it's called the European Federation of Psychology Society, Board of Scientific Affairs. So then we started doing work at a European level. I've been doing work in the United States as well as other colleagues in some of the key organizations that I'm a member of. So in terms of my career, so it's really become the strand of work that I have been keen to advocate for and to devote quite a lot of my time to. And other than there's lots of initiatives that, again, working with many others, we've tried to then change the publication landscape.

Yeah, that's an interesting point, Ruth, actually. So from my point of view, it was initially happenstance in one sense, but then personally I became intrigued with this whole idea and I'm a positive person, very upbeat and I kind of felt, well, I've got some key roles currently in terms of some of my professional activities. I thought, well, there's an opportunity to use the sort of things I like doing, which is getting out there and selling a story, or in this case leading on, doing what we could to promote a positive spin on this whole open research, open science agenda. But then it became more planful. So initially it was thing that happened, but then it got me thinking, I think I've got a skill set where I can try and engage and use those aspects of my personality and my interest to then be positive in a wider and more national, then become an international arena. But it's interesting. Yeah, I remember thinking this is something that I really want to pursue. It's interesting even when I remember one key point where we all have folders, I use Dropbox and we've got all these different folders on one's Dropbox.

And I remember this one day where I created this folder called Open Science and that's where all the open science things went to. And I think that point really, I reflect on a couple of times thinking, well, actually that was me then realizing that this is part of what I do and it's what I then continue to do. And I mean, interestingly, in a slightly different note, I also recall, remember making a new folder on my Dropbox called Covid-19. And that was another interesting point where you can think, this is real now, right? This is something which I'm going to be pursuing in the whole research area, which then also did. But yeah, so that was a turning point. But actually what I have also then when I give talks on Open Science, Open Research, there's a really interesting point I nearly always finish on, which is linked to a kind of careers type angle. And there's two angles. One is, when I finish the talk, one of the final points is, and Nick has seen this probably when I presented in the university, is that I always say is that it's an exciting time to be a scientist because of all these things going on.

I always have this idea, but it's an even more exciting time if you're an early career scientist because there's all these balls in the air, all these different new techniques, from statistics to approaches, to platforms and tools, that you really can grab one of those balls and run with it. What's interesting to me is that lots of the brilliant people in this area are early career individuals at the University of Leeds and elsewhere, nationally and internationally. But I also recall being at a meeting and I think it was in Vienna where it was a large, I think it was a psychological science conference, and there was a whole big room, full session based on Open Science. And I looked around that room and okay, it wasn't a scientific study, but my conclusion was the average age in the room was way south of 40. Wow, it would have been thirties at least. And that to me was an interesting thing, where the people who were engaging with open research were more early career people, or people earlier, further on the line, but still weren't the senior people who've been around for a long time. And I think that's telling anyone listening to this podcast from a careers point of view should be thinking, this is a great opportunity, grasp it and run with it.

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting you say that because I look at AI and I need to know about AI and careers, but it's really interesting because what I see in my industry is it's actually the younger career professions who are really going for it all in, and I think, wonderful, because it's their future, whereas I'm much more going into careers and emotions and career conversations and more the human side of it where I go deeper and deeper, deeper, and you can see the younger generation really going for all these new technologies and new threats, the new ethics, all these kind of things.And one thing I wanted to ask you, and that is a personal curiosity, and I hope that Nick doesn't mind, but I've driven my career a lot through professional associations. I've had the nickname committee girl at some point, which I thought was a bit of an insult, but I think it was meant because I was on so many committees, professional standards and ethics, and internationally in the UK, because for me it was always a wonderful opportunity to connect, understand the sector, be aware of trends, new opportunities and contribute. So when I looked at your description on the staff website about your background, and you have not only had that distinguished academic career, you also obviously had a very clear commitment to your profession in your leadership roles in the professional associations. And I don't get the chance to talk about that very often with people, but I think being part of a professional association is actually an incredibly clever career strategy. Can you say a little bit more about, I mean, yes, you have those leadership positions, but as a researcher, what does it give you to be active in a professional association and what can that do for your career?

And actually it's nice to see, I mean, there's work that we're starting to do in terms of Leeds and linked to the UKRN work, we are about work and recognition. Right. But to me these sort of things are location. So in order to promote it, certainly in the academic, you'd be able to demonstrate how you all, whether or not you've worked on committees, what differences you've made, etc. Big advocate of it. But the other side for me is that the sort of things I talked about earlier, having those leadership roles as part of the professional associations, if it's in the United Kingdom or in the United States. So I'm a member of what's called the American Society, bring all the open science stuff to another organization, which again, point is a good one. An early career individual should, or all of us should be thinking of being involved in relevant societies.

I just wanted to come in on that, just to comment as well. You're breaking up a little bit for me. I don't know if it is. Is it for you as well, Ruth? Yeah, I think a little bit in the past, actually, I found that the recording is okay because I think the way Zoom works sometimes it doesn't actually affect it, but we'll see.But just on that point that you were making, both of you, about the committees, et cetera, because I've done a lot of that as well in my career in libraries, et cetera. But I just had a bit of a question on that for both of you, really. To the extent to which that's enabled by working in an academic environment, is it enabled enough for early career researchers? Because that's another part of research culture, right. Actually giving people the time. You're under pressure to produce the grants or to write the research, et cetera.

And it's all very well. Being slightly devil's advocate that it's a hobby and I love Open Research and all the stuff that I do, and I do stuff at home and in my spare time because it's a hobby, but that's not for everybody. And perhaps there's a cultural aspect to that in terms of how academic careers in particular are facilitated and rewarded, maybe.

Yeah, that's an interesting point, I suppose, personally speaking mostly, no, I was going to say I don't think I've ever really had any workload reductions, for example, being a part of those roles, which meant you're right, you have to work harder. Right. And it just means you have to build, find the time to do all the other stuff as well. That said, think like REF. These things are esteem indicators in REF in terms of universities. So universities could probably do more to be supportive of those rules, but I would never say that my department, they've always been supportive of it. So I think it's really important to be clear with that. But if it was quite a very significant role, then I think you could probably could negotiate that into your workload. And now we've more transparent workload models, mostly, I think there's ways to help. But the other side is, I think it's important to realize that there is the benefit you're given back and you're able to then put things in cvs in terms of promotion. But also the networking side cannot be forgotten because even then, you're writing your grants, you're writing your papers. The fact is that you're increasing your profile by involving in these associations and the conferences and the committees and the podcasts and whatever else might come with that. That benefits you as well in terms of people know who you are when it comes to reading your grant application or reading your paper, and then it can also increase other things come, invitations come as a result of that as well. So I think, let's not forget there's these hidden benefits, which may not be explicit at the time. I don't know if Ruth, if you'd agree with that as well.

Yeah, and I also see, I see some of the younger researchers, for instance, in engineering, and most of them are in an association and they get a lot out of it because they go to events and they meet lots of people from different parts of their field and they can have these conversations. It opens their horizons. For me, that's a really big one. When you're a young researcher and you think, oh, I know what I want to do but you have maybe not necessarily looked at other opportunities or connections or that's all what these associations give you. And for me one really big selling point is also from the university point of view you never know what kind of connections you're making and what these connections lead to. So for instance research collaborations at some point grant being aware of what is the trend, what is new, what is not so much in demand and all this sector intelligence that you get from being in an association. And I think for me one of the most beautiful things and I've been at this for a long long time. So I've been in associations for 30 years. I have lifelong friends and when I look at some of my friends in my professional networks the great majority come from associations where I was active and there's also a real joy in feeling passionate about a specific profession and really helping others understand or helping the younger generation get mentoring opportunities and helping them learn and grow. So there's so many things that you can get from it. I'm just delighted Daryl that we can talk about it. Know I'm a massive fan of professional associations as a career development tool and also as a way to engage with your profession.

Just to clarify that, I totally agree, I was just playing slightly devil's advocate.

I know, yeah, Nick. Can I sneak in one last question? Yeah, go for it, Daryl. And I just wanted to ask you, for you looking at the younger generation coming through and you're, you know they're in a good place because there's so many exciting things happening. This is your time to really look at what interests you, what excites you, what else can they do? Because if I said that to people I work with at the university and say yeah Ruth, but know it's so competitive, what do I do? Because we're all brilliant and there are just not enough opportunities. So looking back over your career what would you say? Is there a tip you can give to the younger generation following in your footsteps?

Just before you answer that Daryl, could I just add to that because the question I wanted to ask related to that I suppose was in terms of psychology: was it always about an academic career for you or did you think of other sort of avenues in psychology?

No actually. So to answer your question Nick, no I think it was always an academic career actually. I always liked the kind know scientists running experiments and studies and that was always my route so I wasn't thinking of going into a more applied or clinical setting but as a health psychologist there is all that route as well. So I'm a health psychologist. So there's lots of breadth to the sort of things I can do. But Ruth, coming back, your question, that's something which I answer as often as I possibly can. I think there's a really simple answer. The answer is, my top tip to anyone who's willing to listen is collaboration, collaboration, collaboration. It's as simple as that.So that's the sort of thing I've always done. So even it links to the professional association's point earlier, is that even there's many colleagues who I've sat on with committees or on chairs and worked with, who I collaborate with on research, on research grants, on papers, et cetera. I've been doing that for years. But I've always collaborated. And the key to success is not trying to furlough this single little thing on your own and trying just to run on your own. I've always, always collaborated and I've also been lucky. I'm a monozygotic twin, as it happens, and my twin is also a professor of psychology at the University of Glasgow and he and I have collaborated lots over many years. And that's been a really fantastic joy to have because he can be early in our career, certainly we can be each other's greatest critic.

That's a twin study right there, isn't it, Daryl, that you both worked closely together in lots of different real. I've been very lucky to have that. So we've been able to support each other throughout our careers. But the key thing is it's collaboration and it's reaching out and it's networking and it's working with everyone. Right? I love working in teams, but the key thing is that you give everyone, you treat everyone with respect, you make sure people get the due credit for the work they may be involved in. But collaboration, collaboration, collaboration, that's my tip.

Thank you so much, Daryl. That makes a lot of sense to me. Thank you.

And that's what we're trying to do with the podcast as well, isn't it? Ruth and I have been collaborating with other colleagues, so that was great. I just wanted to follow sort of final question for you to bring it back round to Open Research and Open Science, Daryl, and perhaps bringing in your academic specialism as well. How can we change behavior? You've already sort of suggested that behavior is changing and some of the mechanisms by that's what's happening. But thinking of the younger generation going to undergraduate degrees now, are they getting taught this stuff as much as they need to be? Do you think? Are there other things that we could do in the university sector to actually change behavior around science and move towards Open Science.

I mean Nick, you know as well, we could give an entire podcast to answer that question, but I'll be succinct. So the couple of things come to mind is, well, I think it's important that we basically conceptualize science as behavior, right? So this is a simple idea, we've written about this in a couple of papers, and this is the idea that all the good stuff and the bad stuff, the questionable research practices, et cetera, these are all behaviors. So if it's from p-hacking to pre-registration, even pre-printing. So what I think is important is just getting people, particularly people who are new to it and still who resistant to Open Science approaches.And I laid down this gauntlet, which is just do one thing which is consistent with Open Science or Open Research, and that can be as simple as pre-registering an article or pre-printing an article, or it could be writing your analysis plan in advance and posting it somewhere. So I think what we just need to say is, don't see it as a gargantuan thing where people feel it's overwhelming. Just say what small little thing can I do in the next twelve months to at least tick a box and say I'm engaging, moving towards using Open Research methods. So I think it's a really important thing and one that I think should reassure people. But the other thing of course, which we haven't talked about today, but just briefly, is the whole idea of the architecture of science and the incentive structure of universities ultimately and other related organizations. What is beginning to change is that reward structure. So at the moment there's two things, the architecture, science. What I mean is that for a long time we rewarded quantity and not always quality, and we rewarded fast science and not slow science.

So I think there's important stuff that we're starting to change in how we think about those sort of things, and that's within organizations. How do we actually reward people? Is there criteria on your promotions applications, at every single level, at your annual appraisals that help support and acknowledge people who are working in those sort of ways? Because sometimes it can be more time consuming to engage in Open Research practices. So there's that side of things and then there's all the funders are changing and publishers are changing. So there are lots of things changing. In five years time, the scientific landscape will look very different in my view. And even the changes in the last five years have been pretty impressive, I think. But there's still a huge way to move, to engage more. But I fundamentally believe that by changing the reward and recognition structure in all areas, that's the key to success.

Because as soon as you put an incentive in there, which is going to be rewarded, then of course people will follow over a period of time. And indeed, I'm pleased to say that the University of Leeds, we're acting as a pilot institution. So the UK Reproducibility Network, there's a piece of work which is about researcher award and recognition and trying to improve that, and we will be a pilot for that. So I'm hoping as things go forward, Leeds will further engage in that. And I should also put a shout out to the amazing work that Leeds has done over the last number of years. We've joined the UKRN, but around the same time, or just before, we also appointed Deans of Research Culture, Deans of Research Quality. And the brilliant work that Cat Davies is doing, the brilliant work that Amanda is doing as well, is incredible. The idea we've got a research culture strategy.

We're ahead of many other organizations in that regard. So I'm excited. I think we're doing lots of great things, but really it's about changing the reward and recognition structure that will really change behavior, which will change Open Research.

Great. Thank you. Well, that's basic psychology, isn't it? Instrumental conditioning, I think I remember from my own psychology. Daryl O'Connor: Exactly. There'd be lots of different types of conditioning as well. But yeah, absolutely. Nick Sheppard: That's great. Thanks very much for your time, Daryl.

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