FemaleScienceProfessor wants to know: What would you do if you found out that another team was working on the exact same research project you were, though neither of you had yet published any papers or abstracts on it? Would you contact the other group to let them know about the overlap, and possibly offer to share resources, or would you do nothing at all in order to keep your data and ideas confidential until it was time to publish? FSP says a third party recently contacted her group on behalf of another researcher whose group was working on a similar project to hers. "So we contacted him, and subsequent communication has been very friendly and interesting, with a bit of territory marking, but nothing too extreme," she says. "In the end, it will be particularly important for our students that our groups are now in communication and discussing complementary versus overlapping research efforts." A key factor in deciding whether to communicate, she adds, was her perception of the other group, particularly whether she thought it possible to have "open, sincere, constructive discussions about our subparallel research."
Daily Scan asks: If faced with this situation, how would you decide whether to reach out?