Afraid of being scooped? Don’t be.
I just had a conversation about blogging research ideas (which are not published yet) and people, in general, were worried about being scooped — to get your research idea stolen. (e.g., Someone else picks up your ideas and write a paper before you.)
This is a valid concern for sure, especially in an industry or a journalism— when someone copies your ideas to make a product before you and if they make tons of money with it (or become famous with it), you would feel frustrated. However, I believe this is less of a concern in the academic world at least, which is one of the reasons why I like being an academic.
My response to that was it’s okay to get scooped. Here are four reasons (three reasons I gave on the spot and one reason that I added later):
- You should feel honored for presenting an idea that is attractive enough to be scooped. Honestly, when I am so excited about certain ideas and when I presented those to my colleagues, typically first reactions are nowhere near close to the excitement that I have. Conveying the idea is tough and you should be proud of making people take action just with ideas. It is either your idea is really good or you presented it effectively. Either way, you win. In general, people are not interested in your ideas. I have been talking about this idea of live writing for years and nobody buys it. It makes me think that I should do better at that.
- Presenting ideas to others — regardless it is written or spoken — will increase the probability of realization of the idea— probably quicker than other people who may want to scoop. First, it makes the idea more polished as you describe. It is a well-known method to verbalize ideas to others (even to rubber ducks). This blog post, for example, got much more strengthened than the initial idea that I had . Second, presenting the ideas will keep you motivated on the project and make you want to do it quicker. Lastly, you may find collaborators that are also excited about your ideas (but don’t worry, typically they are not). If they are not excited, you can learn why they feel so and get feedback to improve your idea.
- Maybe it’s okay for someone else to pick up your idea and do it. Again it’s an honor but also you are making contributions to the world in a way! If you want to protect your awesome idea by hiding it and doing nothing to realize it for years, well that’s not good for the world. If your goal is monetization (or fame), maybe it is a loss for you. However, if you are into that stuff too much, you better go someplace else other then academia. This is a place where people interact and converse to produce new knowledge. It does not have to be you to realize the idea from end to end. If you want to do it end-to-end way, you got to do a startup, not research. You can make a contribution not just by writing a paper, but also by donating the ideas and nudging people to write a paper that you wanted to write. I think people who donate ideas should still get credits but much less than the doers. Because, in research, an idea is cheap and the execution is costly.
- In fact, it is even better. In general, having a similar research work at a similar time probably is acceptable and maybe even preferable. If there are two research outcomes on one same idea at a similar time, it’s good that the idea just got more important, and more popular. Even in case you got completely scooped while you are realizing it, you should continue the idea on top of their efforts. If you are sure that they stole your ideas, cite the stealers, make them know that you are aware, and smile when you meet them at a conference like you know everything. However, the only way for you to make this revenge is to publish a paper about the idea. Only doers can have that privilege. Lastly, it might not be that you got scooped but your idea was timely enough that many people come up with it at a similar time. For example, these two papers(1, 2) came out in 2006 and 2007. I don’t think they had any interaction. See what happened ten years later here.
This is relevant to my other blog post about having research catalog, which we are trying in our lab (left picture). I presented the idea, I got scooped in a way (well I could have saved the idea for my own lab), and I feel honored.
Of course, this is not a new idea, I thought. Then I found more organized, more practical (e.g., what to do when you got scooped), and hopefully more credential articles here.
