Is it ethical to get some help from Stack Exchange for my research as a PhD student?

Question

As a PhD student, I am expected to do research on my own, possibly assisted by my supervisor or colleagues. Like any researcher, I sometimes spend days looking for a small piece of information, sometimes just a single sentence, that answers a question whose lack of an answer was preventing me from moving forward. Sometimes, it was enough to stumble upon the right article after several days to get the answer directly, so it didn't require any real research work, except for browsing the internet.

What is absolutely wonderful about Stack Exchange is the ability to simply ask such a question and get the answer, without doing anything. Without doing anything ... That's not really true. It's not even true at all! Asking a question on a specific subject requires quite a lot of work, which in my opinion can be summarised in a few steps:

1. Research to see if the question has a direct answer to be found (a few hours of research via various articles, or even a few days)
2. Establish a developed context so that anyone with basic knowledge can access the question
3. Formulate the question in the most understandable and educational way possible (this step is not so obvious: putting words to a question is not easy and requires serious knowledge of the subject!)
4. Pay attention to the comments and answers to either edit the question and improve it, or to judge whether the feedback offers us a real answer to our question or not. In the latter case, it is then necessary to state how the answer does not answer the question.
5. Once a tangible answer has been received, do some research to verify it and then accept it as the official answer to our question.

All this work is, in my opinion, absolutely necessary, both out of respect for the people who are going to read the question and try to answer it and for oneself in order to obtain the much-desired answer to our question. But despite the work that I believe a serious question should represent, I can't avoid feeling uncomfortable when I ask a question on Stack Exchange and the answer unblocks my research.

Is it ethical to use Stack Exchange for research, following these steps carefully?

I would like to make it clear that I have no intention of making the people who answer my questions work for me. When I ask a question on the site, my only goal is to get an answer that helps me get unstuck, not to expect someone to do a scientific research job for me. I see Stack Exchange more like an interactive service that tells you what has already been done.

Answer 1

Yes, it is ethical to seek, accept, and use help in a dissertation. The only difficulty in accepting help from others, and especially on sites like this, is giving acknowledgement to those who provide critical help (insight) into your work, since many of us are anonymous here.

But students have, since time immemorial, sat around a table (mead, tea, coffee, ...) and chatted about issues in research.

The general issue is one of plagiarism, if you attribute something to yourself that came from another. In mathematics a conversation of a few minutes can be enough to earn an authorship position. The same is likely true in other fields.

But "research" doesn't need to be just archaic texts retrieved from dusty library shelves or the 75th page of a Google search.

Of course your personal contributions to a dissertation need to be sufficient to convince advisors and reviewers of your advance of the art and science of your field.

And, asking the right question can be an important element in research.

Answer 2

I would say, yea it’s ethical with acknowledgment. When I was in grad school, we had a large, rolling dry erase board in our “lab” (cubicle area) that I would write equations on about my dissertation subject and sometimes a better mathematician/engineer than me would wander over and ask what was going on. So, I’d have to erase the board and start over and explain. Usually, about halfway though, the lightbulb in my head would turn on and I’d have the solution. I’d continue the explanation until I got past the part where I’d been stuck and applied my new idea. If the watcher agreed, I’d keep going until we got to an end. Then I could go off and start implementing this in code. Sometimes we’d find an error and I’d have to backup and start some part over. The positive moments often led to acknowledgements or coauthorships in a resulting paper. Others in the lab would do the same.

You can think of SE like that whiteboard, but maybe more critical. You can put things here (in the form of a question) and see if it’s a reasonable question and maybe get some guidance on it.

Answer 3

I think the more general issue is citing a source as supporting evidence when it hasn’t gone through peer review. While the stack overflow process suggests a type of peer review it is not required and referees may have no formal affiliation. So, YMMV.