Just a quick link today, from the quite professional blog site Dissertation Reviews, which is devoted to providing non-critical reviews, i.e. summaries, of East Asia -related dissertations.
Back in January, they posted a nice, reassuring post about the worry of being “scooped” – finding out that someone else, someone more prominent and experienced, and quite possibly further along, is working on the same topic you’ve been working so hard researching, and omg if they publish before me omg what am I going to do!?
Answer: Chances are, you don’t need to worry. Chances are their sources, approach, scope, or conclusions are quite different from your own, and actually it can be quite nice to have someone to talk to about the subject.
Neat!
Thanks so much for reading!
Turns out I have been “scooped.” However she only focused on Bali and she wont be published till I publish so… all is well in the world and in fact I can hopefully learn from her to produce a better dissertation. what. PS: this is Tbaum if ya haven’t guessed.
What!? Oh no! But, it sounds like your focus is different enough – or at least can & will become different enough now that you know what she’s working on – and especially if she’s not going to really beat you to publishing, then that’s great! :)
And then, after the degree is over, you’ll have her research to work off of, and you can each know more so what has been covered and where to go from there..