Re: Invitation to collaborate on thesis/article writing

On 2017-04-11 14:28, Atilla Elçi wrote:
> Hi,
> Although I sympathize with the cause of this initiative of
> self-publishing, I nevertheless have an intriguing question, call it
> itching feet!

:)

> A thesis being a formal document eventually officiated by the respective
> defence jury, what would the opinion of jurers be when faced with a
> manuscript already in public domain. I can think of two issues, one in
> relation to novelty aspect and the other being officiation of the
> document. Novelty aspect relate to likely case that may come up if parts
> of the made-public thesis work gets reworked and published by others
> before the thesis is finally complete. In such a case, novelty aspect of
> the thesis will become questionable. The officiation aspect obviously
> relates to recognition of the "thesis" nature of the writeup by a jury.

I assume that each field/community have sufficient checks and balances
to account for the originality of the work, and whether it gets the
credit it deserves. It depends whether the original parts of a thesis
can be shown to be prior art. Not to mention that the nuts and bolts of
the thesis (i.e., supporting data and other publications) would most
likely belong to the original author. I think the likelihood and the
window to accomplish such feat by people that rework the remaining parts
of a thesis, then proceeding to game the "system" through their own
institution is rather small. Is this a real-world situation or an
exercise to investigate the possibilities?

If the said jury acknowledges the work that's published online as
"official" (of some sort), then is that sufficient grounds to skip the
whole ordeal and have the institution reward the academic?

It is up to the institution to decide whether some piece of information
online (lets say self-published at personal website) is of any value. If
the work is published by any "official" body (whether that's a
third-party publisher or another academic institution), then it is
simply up to the institution to decide if they want to reward the
academic or not - usually not, because in this day and age, a DOI/ISBN
for instance is the right elitist currency in contrast to the anarchic
"blog post". Most institutions still want their academics to have
peer-reviewed works (which is obviously good and important) but 1) that
are published by some third-party company/journals to count for
something 2) insist on forcing said knowledge into two-dimensional space.

I think the potential issues you raise are at odds with how academics
use online resources today. The question is, should all work be hidden
from public until it is 1) complete, 2) defended, and 3) published
through an academic institution/library?

Must academia be the ultimate intermediary between a person and the
knowledge they want to share with the rest of humanity? Is there any
room to make use of the Web and embrace its qualities in 2017?

> Am I on the wrong foot here?

I don't think so. All interesting.

> PS: A side issue: in some traditional universities here in Turkey I hear
> that the jury requires the thesis work to be not-published (made public)
> before the jury defence meeting; otherwise rejecting the thesis as being
> "not fresh/original" :)

Is that the complete thesis or any part? Does that mean those
institutions do not want their academics to use any online
tools/services which could potentially reveal parts of the their work
(regardless of size or importance)?

If the thesis is printed and read aloud in a public square prior to the
jury defence meeting, does that violate its freshness? :)

-Sarven
http://csarven.ca/#i

Received on Tuesday, 11 April 2017 14:50:32 UTC