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So, I'm about 2 months away from submitting my PhD Qualifying Report (QR).

I've spent the last 2 years (part time) doing a thorough literature review and writing significant amounts of software to analyse a relevant public dataset that is relevant to where I want to take my thesis and I believed hadn't been thoroughly analysed before. I'm about 2/3s of the way through writing a paper based on this analysis.

Now, to my horror, I found a paper tonight doing exactly the analysis I've spent the last year doing. I hadn't found it because it wasn't published in a journal, and doesn't seem to be indexed on Google. I found it deep inside a login-only area of the website of the organisation that owns the dataset.

So... Obviously, I'm going to email my supervisors in the morning to try and work out what to do but I guess my question is: is this salvageable? Is the work I've done essentially worthless as far as my QR is concerned? Obviously I've learned a lot, but I'm not sure if that matters for the QR.

Is my only option to pivot, pull 2 months of all-nighters and hope I can scrape through the QR on a different premise?

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    You can put in your thesis the following line: "After this work was (mostly) completed, I discovered that the same analysis was done independently in [...]"
    – Moishe Kohan
    Commented Feb 9, 2023 at 3:11
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    It might be useful to just go to sleep, wait for your adviser to respond, and go from there :-)
    – Wolfgang Bangerth
    Commented Feb 9, 2023 at 3:37
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    I'm assuming by QR you mean "qualifying review"? What in the UK is often called the transfer review or forst year report?
    – Ian Sudbery
    Commented Feb 9, 2023 at 13:44
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    It may be relevant what exactly the word "exactly" means here. Even though some part of this, even maybe the core part, may be the same as what you did, you may have arrived at it in slightly different ways, might have achieved some understanding that allows you to say additional things about it not said before etc. In that case you might get away with just mentioning that the report also has this analysis but isn't published, and you add the following things (...), still presenting the analysis yourself.
    – Christian Hennig
    Commented Feb 9, 2023 at 23:25
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    @DaveLRenfro - There you go
    – ScottishTapWater
    Commented Feb 10, 2023 at 16:14

2 Answers 2

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What you describe is fairly common. You can't always know what parallel research is going on while you do your own study. In "hot" areas of research it is much more common.

It may be that for the purposes of your degree, the advisor and the institution generally will judge that you are fine and that your work has value enough to let you proceed. It might not result in publishable work, of course.

It might also be that you have learned enough in what you have done so that you have enough that goes beyond what has already been done and still do something publishable. Your advisor can help with that judgement.

An outside possibility is to try to establish a collaborative relationship with the authors of the report you found. Perhaps together you can find a suitable advance that won't set you back.

But in the worst case, you will need to take up a different track. Hopefully the university will help in avoiding that outcome.

I know of a case in which two people, known to each other, finalized theses that were almost identical in ideas (not words). It turned out that they had worked completely independently of one another. It took a year of inquiry, but both were awarded degrees after it was decided there was no hint of plagiarism. Both their advisors were well known and known to each other. The problem they solved was considered very important at the time. The importance of the problem led to their independent interest in working on it.

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  • My concern is this wasn't parallel research, I just didn't find it in my lit search because of it being tucked away. That makes it feel far more like I've fucked up here
    – ScottishTapWater
    Commented Feb 9, 2023 at 17:06
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    No, it is lucky you found it at all if it hasn't been published. Relax.
    – Buffy
    Commented Feb 9, 2023 at 17:07
  • Alright, thank you... I've got a meeting with my supervisor tomorrow, so hopefully the only downside is going to be the hours wasted rather than it being catastrophic to my PhD
    – ScottishTapWater
    Commented Feb 9, 2023 at 21:16
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From the point of view of your thesis committee you might need to give them only original work. But from the scientific point of view you just stumbled by chance on a collaborator who actually already completed their task, so once you finish your analysis you can compare the results and methods, and hopefully write a great paper together. Maybe that is an argument you can put forward.

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