Hello,

I'm a social sciences masters student and by internet searching have found a 3rd year PhD student in another country who is working on a very similar project to my planned Masters thesis. Is it acceptable for me to contact this person and ask to see their thesis, both as a way to ensure I'm not duplicating their work, and because it would be a useful source for my own research? Or would they think I was trying to steal their ideas? As this person has not yet completed or published their work, I'm wondering if it would be poor etiquette to ask them for this.

Thanks for your opinions.

Hey Sally

I don't think that it is significant whether or not you are duplicating their work. Not to be rude, but yours is only a Masters diss it does not necessarily have to be an original text (in fact some unis positively discourage this); and yours will be 20% of the length of theirs. It may be better to ask if they have any conference papers that you might access, although you cannot cite unpublished manuscripts without their express permission

I think there is no problem with contacting the person and asking for details of their work, although I would not ask for the whole thesis/work whilst the person is still writing up. It is probably worth finding out whether they have already published something (it might be in the "accepted" or "proof reading" stage and the person might be happy for you to have a copy of the paper and in turn you can properly reference their work). Alternatively, you can always tell the person what you are working on and ask them whether there is some overlap with their work? Good luck.

Thanks for the advice sleepyhead, I will ask about the conference papers.

The reason I'm concerned about duplication is that because its a two year Masters course, so we do a longer dissertation than is the case on most standard Masters courses, and I would quite like to publish some of it at the end. We're recommended to try and find an original topic (i.e. one that we could continue working on for a PhD).

And thanks for the advice Poppy. That all sounds encouraging, i'm glad its not a no-no to get in touch altogether, so I'll try what you suggest.

Hi again

How long it your Masters diss then, more than the usual 15-20k? That's really interesting if its the case, sounds like a great course. One thing though; I know you said that your Uni suggests 'continuing' your current topic to PhD level, but you are aware that you cannot use portions of your Masters diss as part of your PhD? If you are covering the same/similar topic you have to rewrite, in that sense you can 'build' on your work but not cover the same ground.

Although if you're publishing, I can completely understand that you'd want to check originality!!!;-)

Hi sleepyhead,

Yes, its 30,000 words, so kind of halfway between Masters and PhD length I guess. Thanks for letting me know about the restrictions on using Masters work for the PhD thesis, I didn't realise that!

thanks,

Sally

Hiya- I'm going through something very similar at the moment.

I'm a third year PhD student and a second year PhD student in the same department is doing a PhD very similar to mine. I regret giving her some of my upgrade work and helping her out with her work, as she refuses to reply to questions that I've asked her (she has contacts) and she has stolen parts of my questionnaire questions, used some of my work in her presentation (ie exact references) and is using exactly the same kind of design and methodology that I'm using. This student and her supervisors also want to get hold of my list of services that I've spent ages doing so that she can use my list as her sampling frame. Thinking about it, I don't think I'm going to share this list until I've submitted and hopefully passed my PhD.

I think it's ok to ask questions etc, but you might find people like myself who are now rather reluctant to share information.