Depends on the climate of the field you're in, and where you're at in your career. There are fields where entire research groups routinely harvest preliminary ideas from graduate student publications, and then finish them and rush to publication before the student realizes what's happened.
I'd say, grad student owes nobody anything until they finish, because they're bearing the greatest risk of losing priority, and the openness of science is being used against them. Nothing lost by waiting until they have their degree in the bag before sharing. Then clean it up and use it as part of your portfolio. Or append it to your thesis. Advancing science after you've secured your career is a fair compromise.
I love open source and open science, but also look back on my own graduate studies, and I chose a topic that was protected by virtue of a large capital investment plus domain knowledge that was not represented by code. Also, my thesis predates widespread use of the Internet. ;-)
> There are fields where entire research groups routinely harvest preliminary ideas from graduate student publications, and then finish them and rush to publication before the student realizes what's happened.
Can you provide a source, or example of this? What does the Amazon of academia look like?
Biology, and synthetic chemistry. Unfortunately all anecdotal. I live near a major research university, have lots of friends who are involved at all levels, and relatives who are even closer to it. It tends to be in areas that require minimal capital investment to pivot into a new study. Also, the student pursuing the original idea is hampered by their own emerging skills. "My student's thesis just got scooped" is something that every professor has experienced or knows about.
My field, physics, much harder. Building my experiment required a bunch of expensive equipment (maybe half a million in today's dollars), gear that I built myself, the technique of operating it, and so forth.
My career, much harder. I work in business. You learn about my ideas when a patent comes out. ;-)
I can attest to this. I myself am victim of this. My undergraduate thesis was plagiarized by two other papers. Code was 80% the same, they just added some trivial things. No citing of my work at all.
Look at my other comment for more explanation - if you are working under less known advisor, or at less known university, there is a high chance that this will happen if your work is good.
This kind of thing is best done after the thesis is in the bag. A student is racing against the clock. Grad study has many kinds of hard failures. At the most extreme, your advisor could up and die. The focus has to be on finishing. That's how you get out.
Matter of fact, I did, even with help of my advisor. The journal did not take any action (it is Q1 open access journal), since they come up with all kinds of mental gymnastics why it is not copied (which boiled down it is NOT 100% the same).
That was for the first occurrence. For the 2nd one, we just did not bother because it hurts my advisor's reputation as well. It is not in the interest of journal to admit the mistake once they made it -- they will fight you about it and try to keep their reputation/image up.
I'd say, grad student owes nobody anything until they finish, because they're bearing the greatest risk of losing priority, and the openness of science is being used against them. Nothing lost by waiting until they have their degree in the bag before sharing. Then clean it up and use it as part of your portfolio. Or append it to your thesis. Advancing science after you've secured your career is a fair compromise.
I love open source and open science, but also look back on my own graduate studies, and I chose a topic that was protected by virtue of a large capital investment plus domain knowledge that was not represented by code. Also, my thesis predates widespread use of the Internet. ;-)