Hello everyone,

I'm relatively new to PhD life, thought I would seek advise here first. I want to share a rough draft of my paper with a Professor from another university whom I met at a conference. He said I could send him my work and he would take a look at it. I want to send the paper to him and also share some other ideas on methodology, which he is an expert in. My question to experienced PhD students - is it safe to share everything you are in the process of doing with other researchers? Will they not "steal" your ideas? Or am I being too paranoic and hillarious?:$ Your hints would be very much appreciated.

Hi Sheyna,

just some questions: what does your supervisor think about it? Or did you not contact your supervisor about the paper?

There's always a risk before it's in the public domain, as I found out to my (naive) cost....
S

One of my supervisors told me to be careful who I shared my work-in-progress with if it wasn't in the public domain. I was mildly surprised at the time as the rather senior academics concerned were all in the same area of research and I thought they were all quite chummy with each other, but academia is so competitive that I think it was very timely advice that I have always kept in mind. If you don't already know and trust these people, regardless of their status in the academic hierarchy, you could decide on whether to share your work by thinking about whether it would have a negative impact on your PhD if someone else passed your work or ideas off as their own? Not to encourage total paranoia, but you need to maintain intellectual ownership of your work if it's a career thing for you.

it is a bit of a risk, and you should cetainly speak to your supervisor first, that is just being polite. I would think long and hard before I sent any draft work to anyone other than my supervisors.

I also found out the hard way (although it hasn't caused me too much pain) that sharing too much of your research is risky. I sent an early outline of my thesis to an academic who seemed to be very impressed and appreciative, and, lo and behold, the following year a PhD student of his starts researching an aspect of the abstract - something I had chosen not to follow up. Your research etc is your product and you want to make sure you get the credit, before it starts turning up in pother people's books/papers/lectures.

I mean couldn't you speak to this person about methods etc anyway - is it really necessary to send them your work to get that kind help?

I don't know what field you are in but in mathematical subjects many people submit drafts of working papers online to sites such as arXiv.org. More recently Nature have started their Precedings services which offers a similar service for the life sciences. This can be a good way of protecting your ideas because it will make others less likely to copy your work once it is visibly in the public domain under your name.

Dear All,

Thank you so much for your quick replies! Wow, I've been kind of too uninformed and naive as well about so many things you wrote here. Well, the reason I considered this was in a hope to get a feedback, but I guess it's not really how it works. My supervisor has been totally out of touch lately. He has moved to another university in another part of Europe and due to the rules at my university he is entitled to be my supervisor for a limited amount of time, since he is not here anymore. I kept emailing him the outline, rough drafts of my papers during the last 4 months and no reply yet, except for short messages promising to get back when he is free and then disappearing again.

Jewel, thank you for the insight. I'm in social sciences but I will check the website you gave and maybe look for similar services in social sciences, too.

What do you guys mean with "public domain"?

the public domain means 'out there' out for people to see under your name, know the views as your views and so on. How? published papers, reports, articles, regularly sustained and updated blogs (perhaps), talks, seminars, lectures... anywhere where the public can access the thoughts YOU thought of and know that YOU thought of them.

One more question. So, before presenting any paper at a conference, are we supposed to receive a feedback from our supervisors first? Or should we be more independent on taking such initiatives because they are so busy all the time?

Hi Sheyna

Yes, I'd be wary about providing an external academic with a working draft. Not because they might steal it, but because I know that if I gave a working paper to someone without my supervisor seeing it first, it wouldn't go down well. She quite rightly makes me rewrite things, to a much better standard, and if I sent out a draft, it could reflect poorly on myself and on her. What we think is 'good' is different to what proper academics think! If you want feedback, maybe send them a detailed abstract, and a list of questions, then have a discussion with them.

And if your supervisor isn't looking at your work this early on, that doesn't bode well at all. You should check your uni guidelines about supervisor responsibilities, and try and make a verbal contract with them, so that you get what you need.

And re conferences - in the early days my supervisor looked at conference papers I was writing too. Not only to help with content, but also presentation and to make sure my slides didn't have too much info, flowed well etc etc. Now that I'm at the stage where I tend to just regurgitate the same stuff ;-), she doesn't need to see it.

Hi Sheyna,

I wouldn't worry about feeling naive about this, many of us have learnt about keeping PhD-related ideas to ourselves through bitter experience.

Regarding your supervisor being out of touch and unable to provide feedback, could you speak to someone responsible for postgrad students about it? Not necessarily to blame the supervisor for being unavailable, but to point out that it would be really helpful to have another appropriate member of staff to discuss your work with, in his absence. Some of our students have second supervisors or advisors officially attached to their supervisory team, to add specific expertise to that of the main supervisor. It's useful if one of them is away a lot, and also provides another perspective for feedback for the student.

Dear sheyna
I think you should not send him the whole paper it may not be safe as you may be thinking that you are getting new ideas and in the mean while the other totally irrelevant person may build his castles on your foundations. I will not suggest you to do so. It will be best for you to contact trustworthy professor of your institue. Believe me there are hidden pearls around us that can make us diamonds