Hi Rachael,

stay cool. If your area is in the picture, it is not surprising that someone else produces something similar. As you do not know what other people are doing, this cannot be influenced by you.

Regarding the actual research, obviously you can still complete and publish that, quoting that recent article (and other papers) regarding what they found and how this is in line or constrasting what you have found.

If you wanted to publish mainly on the literature review and exactly that has been published by this other person, then, I am afraid, it will be more difficult to publish that, especially in that same journal.

Exactly,

as part of your research protocol you have probably indicated that the interviews would be confidential and that you would take good care assuring that only you / other researchers would have access to it. It would be hard to sell to anyone if that data then, all of a sudden, would be freely available on line!

Hi Bilbobaggins, Sneaks,

yeah, you are right, I cannot imagine that someone really would like to read all the boring stuff I have written (unless he / she would have a sleepinng problem).

I was more thinking about sensitive material, like for example personal confidential data, classified documents etc. For instance if you would scan in your passport and E mail it to yourself, would a hacker then be able to "find" it and use these data?

Hi Walminski..

to me it seems a lot, a literature review of a hundred pages, do you not think so ? How many pages / words do you think your whole thesis is going to be?Obviously you can always still summarise the review. My gut feeling would be that if your theoretical framework is about 7 pages, that the literature review should be something similar, perhaps 7 - 15 pages?



:-)

Good show Bug!

If you speak very fast try counting 1,2,3 after a sentence, new sentence 1,2,3. Makes you slow down and relax.

Have a nice weekend.;:-)

Hi sneaks, other fellow students,

had a similar problem a few days ago: "hardware malfunction, call your hardware vendor for support". Really scared me as I had thought I had lost all my files. Luckely it started again (do not know what I did, or whether it was actually me that got it going again!) and now have these files secure on DVD as well.

Perhaps a bit paranoid but I have heard that if you have files on your E mail account it is like "hanging them on a notice board". For me it is hard to imagine how someone else could get access on them, but I'm not an IT expert. Any views on saving important documents on your E mail account?:-)

hi Emmaki,

obviously everything can be done, yet I think it is a matter of being aware beforehand where you are letting yourself into, how much frustration you can deal with and how much time you have available.
My interviews were in an other language as well, the researchers worked in that language and then quotes which were used in the main article needed to be translated by an official translator. Again perhaps something to check before starting translations yourself and then finding out that was either not required or not permitted.
:-)

Hi Aggie01,

I am not sure how that would work in practice; in the publication, by definition, there will be one name that is printed first, the first author, then the other etc.
In your situation it sounds that you would be the first author, the other student could be the second (presuming any other co-authors, professor etc. are happy regarding this).
I would assure that I would be the first author, the others, as long as they are involved, is a matter of negotiation.
:-)

Hi Joyce,

just send it off, it will come back anyway with remarks, thus no use to keep on changing it.

Look at the type of feedback you get: if it is about major principles, then address these and be happy that you have not wasted more time on finetuning minor details before sending it. If the feedback is only regarding minor issues, perhaps even style and grammar matters, then you know that you are on the right track, can quickly make changes and complete it.
:-)

Donzy, Sue,

one can debate about how many interviews are enough, probably depends on the field you are in, saturation etc.
However I do think that one should not think too lightly about doing 30-40 interviews, especially not with professionals. There may be all kind of hurdles, for example finding managers and getting access to the ones who want to be interviewed, setting dates, travelling to the managers and last, but not least the transcribing. The latter takes a long time!!

Hi Donzy,

it is also useful to think now, thus before your interviews, how you are going to analyse them. A lot of researchers use "grounded theory" (Glaser and Strauss) and this means that you need to transcribe, analyse, transcribe etc. Most would have a second independant researcher to do the same thing. All issues to think about before starting to collect your data.

And, as Sue mentioned, 30-40 interviews means a lot of transcribing!:-)

Well done, Sylvester, her you go some cyber bubbles:-)

However you mentioned that you still have about another 6 months to go, thus plenty of time to send in some more messages!

Hi Phdnewby,

perhaps you could try googling "Journal Impact Factor".


Rick

:-)

Hi Phdnewbie,

as mentioned it strongly depends on the journal. I think the good ones really indicate what their turnaround time is. However unfortunately I think the shorter, the less chance of getting published (but at least one can then send it do another journal). Problematic is, as you know, that one can only send a manuscript to one journal at the time.

:-)