I've just had a conversation with a friend who is preparing a conference presentation. She only intends to present one very small aspect of her PhD research and not give any indication of other themes or wider conclusions in case someone steals her ideas and publishes them before she has finished her PhD. It's never occurred to me to worry about this before. Actually, I'm usually too busy being terrified of standing up in front of an audience to think of anything else. Is this something you worry about?

I've heard conflicting opinions on this subject. If you get too paranoid, you're restricting your own opportunities to make your reputation, but it's also true there are some unscrupulous peers out there. Try and work out who you can trust in terms of collaborations for sure. Certainly people that will run off and try and claim credit for your work!

Hi Aisling

This is not something I've ever really thought about before either. I don't know if it depends on your field, but all of the sociolinguistics conferences I've been too have been quite small and friendly, everyone pretty much knows each other and so it's never even crossed my mind. I guess it could potentially happen, though :(

For me, I think life is too short to overly stress about something like that. (touch wood, of course!)
=D

It probably depends on the discipline. Plus it's not usually the ideas that's the key to success, but hard work, application and funding! I think anyway.

Thanks glowworm and DocInsanity for your replies. I can see how it might be a problem in some science fields but where your presentation is based on qualitative data from interviews and observations, no one else has access to that data, so I'll try not to worry about it too much!

I'm in the Humanities myself and this isn't usually a problem - it's possible that someone might follow a research lead thrown up in a paper, but we don't tend to present data directly at conferences (we do have data sometimes ;))

What I have seen a few times is people citing presentations in their own subsequent work. It's not remarkably common, but it is a thing - MLA even have citation guidelines for it. On a more informal level, people quite often ask for copies of papers they've enjoyed or been intrigued by, which (one would hope) kind of precludes secretly ripping them off.

Having given quite a few conference presentations myself, I can safely say that, were anyone to nick my work I'd hunt them down with a big stick*.

*send them a very strongly worded email.

I have an experience that isn't exactly conference specific but it's intellectual property related...

I was advised by my supervisor while in the first year of my PhD to meet with a student in his 4th year. We were looking at the same topic but from different disciplinary perspectives.

He was incredibly friendly and suggested some literature, conferences and key people in the field to get in touch with. He also sent me a report of some of his early findings. I thought this was all very nice of him.

He then asked if he could take a look at my 1st year progression report, which I had just submitted. I send him this and he responded with a HUGE list of suggestions and comments. I was a bit taken aback because I had never asked for feedback and the report had already been submitted. I should have found this helpful but instead it just knocked my confidence.

None of the above bothered me too much, it was a month later when I bumped into him at a conference and he said thanks for my report, it had "cleared a blockage in one of his chapters". Now I didn't mind him reading my report but he used one of my central original ideas to fill a gap in his own work and later when I read his thesis, I easily located the paragraph about my ideas. This was a little disheartening but I have no idea if I am even entitled to get annoyed about this. I'm still very much in the dark when it comes to intellectual property.

The moral of the tale is just to be careful....

GM x

That's quite a tricky area, GM. I have to say that where I was inspired by a discussion with someone, or they actually suggested something, that I have included in my thesis I have been very careful to credit them. For example, I had a very interesting discussion with Filippo Santoni di Sio about criminal responsibility and multiple personality disorder, and I've referenced this discussion. Partly just out of common courtesy. I also did a more general acknowledgement of people I'd had discussions with during my research.
We are all inspired by chats we've had with other academics, but I'd say he should at least acknowledge you.

GrumpyMule, I definitely think you have a right to be annoyed. I agree with DocInsanity that the student should have included an acknowledgement in his thesis.

I know someone who did a seminar presentation which included a diagram she had designed to illustrate her conceptual framework, and I guess she must have shared her slides with the seminar group because some time later she attended another student's seminar and saw her diagram displayed on the screen with no acknowledgement. So yes, we definitely need to be careful.

I think what my friend is worried about though is that if this kind of borrowing/plagiarism/theft happens to her, it will invalidate her whole PhD, and I don't think that is the case.