Concern about Research Stealing

[EccentricAcademic]

Hey all,

 

Has anyone been concerned about sending in a really good writing sample (that you plan to publish) and possibly having a scholar at a school you apply to stealing your research before you publish it?

 

Another perk to publishing quickly, huh?

[doingthings]

Hasn't happened to me personally, but I've heard stories where PIs steal their student's research and publish it under their name. It's rare, but it happens.

[EccentricAcademic]

I guess I shouldn't be afraid that that would happen. It's already been given out. But I've always wondered. 

I guess I could have legal recourse too.

 

Not that it's happened. But still. I could have sent something less original, but I wanted to show everyone what I'm capable of.

[fuzzylogician]

I've never heard of anyone's writing sample being stolen, though I suppose it could happen. What happens more often is someone beats you to the punch and publishes the same basic idea you had, without acknowledging having heard it from you, and before you have any manuscript already in print or at least presented. This doesn't require using your actual text but is just as awful. It'd also be hard to prove that they took the idea from you, and even if you could show that they read your writing sample it'd be hard to argue that they didn't already have the idea in mind beforehand.

 

PIs stealing their students' work happens and is also terrible, but is different than what the OP asked about.

[EccentricAcademic]

Ok, well I plan to send my manuscript to a publisher soon. So I guess I would pretty much beat anyone. It's a toss up - send in original research or send in a slightly less great term paper? 

[EccentricAcademic]

How would you know someone was doing that (stealing your general idea before you published) unless you were constantly monitoring every research outlet?

[TakeruK]

Ok, well I plan to send my manuscript to a publisher soon. So I guess I would pretty much beat anyone. It's a toss up - send in original research or send in a slightly less great term paper? 

 

I think any time you show the fine details (e.g. what I would guess is the level of a writing sample, or even a conference talk/poster) of your research, I think you should always be ready to publish your results/paper ASAP. Some exceptions are cases where you alone have access to the model or data required to do the work. In your shoes, since it sounds like you have your work pretty much ready to go, I would go ahead and submit the manuscript as a writing sample. However, if you are submitting it to a peer-reviewed thing, then keep in mind that the peer review process might take awhile too. If you are publishing a non-peer reviewed book or something like that, then I have no idea what that process is like!

 

How would you know someone was doing that (stealing your general idea before you published) unless you were constantly monitoring every research outlet?

 

In my field, pretty much everyone, starting at grad school, keeps track of what gets published on their topics. There are pre-prints servers that gets updated daily as people submit preprints (usually either a copy of the article submitted to the journal or after peer reviewed corrections, or even after publication) and you can set up journal databases to send you daily/weekly/whatever updates on new items that contain certain keywords. So, this way, I am able to know about any new research published on my specific topic/interests pretty much right away and it would be easy to see if someone did the same thing as you! While making sure you are not scooped is important, what is more important, I think, is to do this in order to stay up to date on what people are doing on your topic!

 

Finally, it's actually pretty common in my field for multiple people to come up with the same idea/result independently. For example, someone might publish a theory and then multiple groups might independently come up with calculations/data that support that theory. Usually, when people find out that there is someone else working on the same thing, they communicate with each other to find out their progress. Sometimes see two papers appearing in the same issue of a journal on the same topic, and that both papers will disclose that during their work, they found out that the other group was doing the same thing independently, so they both agreed to submit at the same time. This is beneficial for all since no one will rush and produce sloppy science in an effort to be the first one published!

[danieleWrites]

Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace could have this conversation.

If you're worried about your research being stolen, why are you applying to that university in the first place? What would you gain from a program that you believe makes a practice of stealing research ideas? Yes, professors stealing student research ideas happens, and a lot more often than most of us want to acknowledge. It would be stupid to think that doesn't happen. However, you kind of have to trust the program with copies of your unpublished work at some point. You can't write a paper, get it published, and then turn it in, particularly if you have to discuss it with your professor first (submit a proposal or prospectus, or just have a conference).

There's an old trick people used to do before sending their work off for publication. They'd print it off and mail the printed copy to themselves, then store it, un-opened, as proof of the originality of their work. If you're that concerned that your idea will be stolen and you won't have any means of proving that you were there first, sure, get it published (if you can) or make sure you have incontrovertible proof that you had the idea before someone else published it. You're not going to get as much academic satisfaction as you would by publishing first (on the off-chance that your research hasn't been stolen), but you would have some recourse.