Talking the talk but not walking the walk?
I mention in some of the background information on this site that I’m currently in the process of writing my thesis. However, you won’t find this work-in-progress on any publicly accessible site. Does that make me a big hypocrite?
Before jumping in, I’ll point out that some people do (rarely) write their thesis and academic publications online and in a raw sort of “as you go” style, although to be fair these are often researchers who are at the bleeding edge of open access. See Pimm or UsefulChemistry for examples. I’ve thought about doing this myself, and as someone who cares so deeply about advancing Open Access, why not?
Well of course there are several reasons. The first and probably most important deals with anonymity. I’ve taken some few (flimsy) steps to remain anonymous with this particular blog, although nothing really overtly serious to keep things that way. Still, I like deluding myself into thinking that a casual observer (in the form of my co-workers and colleagues) won’t immediately identify who I am if they happen to come across this site. In my mind this drops some barriers as far as what I can and cannot say. I feel like publicly publishing my thesis would be a dead giveaway.
Of course, this isn’t a great reason, because this is the internet and anyone can be as schizophrenic as they like, right? Why not just start another site or account and publish that way? Well here it gets into more psychological barriers. I don’t know if my advisor or committee would go for it. I have a serious case of “imposter syndrome”, and throwing raw manuscript out into the world is pretty scary.
I’m writing this not as a way to sort of point out how I’m a big wimp, and can talk a big game when I’m just writing whatever I want, but to point out a few of the barriers to expanding the implementation of these ideas to the wider scientific community. I sort of wonder as well if works in progress should be made publicly accessible. As much as scientists like to dance around the issue, there is a fair bit of competition, especially in small focused communities. Broadcasting what you are working on, and (even worse) the exact steps to get to where you are at may lead to other labs swooping in and stealing your thunder at the last minute. This can be devastating, especially to graduate students who rely on innovative work as the foundation of their dissertation. The other issue, is of course the curation and control of this raw, unfinished data. Like blogs or other crowd-driven sources of knowledge, an unfinished thesis will be full of omissions and errors which should not find root in the public domain. If there were piles of half-finished theses floating around, giving hits on Google searches, this could lead to a lot of misdirection and misunderstanding (especially if the finalized literature based on those theses is not Open Access).
So it’s a bit of a sticky problem… What are your thoughts?
March 30th, 2008 at 8:07 am
“However, you won’t find this work-in-progress on any publicly accessible site. Does that make me a big hypocrite?”
Absolutely not.
I personally doubt that I’ll ever write a thesis myself so can’t fully compute to the sticky problem as you (and others have) put it.
The closest example that comes to mind is Open Notebook Science (ONS). Those that are leading the way are indeed at the bleeding edge of OA. I do sense however that others are catching on and here’s some examples:-
http://blog.openwetware.org/scienceintheopen/
http://tillje.wordpress.com/
http://www.thesynapticleap.org/
http://openwetware.org/wiki/Main_Page
http://www.chemistry.drexel.edu/people/bradley/bradley.asp
There is a lot of discussion taking place about the pro’s and con’s of ONS - fear of being scooped being the “usual suspect”. The more discussion that is had, the better.
I’m certainly all in favor of folks making their theses OA available. The one that I have learned the most from in this way is from Dr Jack Van Horssen in Holland:-
http://webdoc.ubn.ru.nl/mono/h/horssen_j_van/index.html
Probably safe to say that this thesis was uploaded AFTER he got his PhD.
My point would therefore be that I learned A LOT from this thesis alone and would strongly encourage you and others to archive your completed theses in an OA Repository.
Will the meme of theses writing in the open will catch on? No-one knows yet.
March 30th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
Everyone who has gone through the process of writing a thesis (or any type of extended scientific document) will understand how messy (and demoralizing) it can be at times. All that means is that you are human and people in similar situations are likely to appreciate the chronicles of your journey. I am wary of people who appear to do everything perfectly the first time - it makes me distrust that I am seeing the whole picture. I am much more comfortable with students who readily acknowledge their mistakes and take measures to reduce the probability of similar errors in the future.
It also depends greatly on how you present your work - if you make it clear that this is work in progress and that you might change your mind as more data come in then I think you will be well received and appreciated.
Good luck!
March 31st, 2008 at 1:41 pm
My concern is not so much in looking like a dope for posting things that aren’t completely vetted and accurate as part of a “work in progress” (although, let’s be honest, there is a certain element of this concern), but more that this may be indexed in a way that doesn’t retain the label of “incomplete”. This could happen by Google crawling or some other web spider for instance. In this case, the information could be considered a statement of fact, which of course is undesired.
June 4th, 2008 at 9:02 pm
Today most of the theses in The Netherlands appear online. To my opinion the availability of theses on the internet is a great way to share “scientific” knowledge, however one should be careful as most theses contain unpublished data. Anayway good to hear that at least somebody enjoyed my thesis…;-)