Privacy in academia?
Privacy in academia?
Hi everyone,
I've been checking this forum but I have not managed to find duplicates (I'm using Summit for Lemmy). If that's the case I'll remove this post.
I'm about to start a PhD. I've been told I will be required to partake in publications and other shenanigans. I am not against it, but I'm very concerned about having my full name flying around the internet, as I've always been hesitant of sharing any of that information (real name, pictures, etc).
Ultimately, I only care for potential employers to know that it's actually me the one who has written this or that, which I would happily disclose in private.
What's the usual stance in this situation?
Part of being an academic is being available to discuss your publications. Your full name will not only be flying around the internet but recorded permanently in libraries and journals.
Science is about collaboration, and standing behind the work you do, publicly. You will find it extremely difficult or impossible to get your PhD without being known to the academic community.
I think you won't find many anonymous scientific papers held in high regard.
OP wants to be Satoshi Nakamoto
Yep, part of evaluating a work is knowing whose work it is. I'll read a paper on, say, lung cancer by SirTobaccoLobbyist differently than one by DrCancerResearcher. If I don't know whose work it is, it's very hard to contextualize.
In fact anonymous review is an important part of the scientific method, precisely because work shouldn’t be judged by its source
Another commenter mentioned going by a pseudonym, which is pretty much what I had in mind - I've always been grown up on the idea of not disclosing your full name nor your physical location, but many universities' websites not only shows the full names of their profs, but also their coordinates and their office hours.
There's a publicly available record of where and when someone is readily present, for better and, especially when it comes to preserving one's safety, for worse.
Let me make this point clearer: would you publicly disclose where you live or where you spend most of your time? I hope you see some of my concerns now.
I trust this is the right place to find like minded people and maybe find a solution, not to argue about what an academic should or should not be.
I'll say it straight forward, if you are considering an academic career you are just shooting yourself in the leg with this. It is already hard to make it in academia, using a pseudonym and expecting people to believe you or check additional proof it is actually your publication is not going to fly.
If you already know that you won't stay in academia but go to industry it might not be much easier. People won't care as much about publications but they still look good on your CV.
Ah, also just doing a PhD might make you end up in some publicly available database where your thesis will end up in. And I strongly doubt any reputable university would give you a PhD under a pseudonym.
A huge part (maybe the most important one) of academic work, is to argue why your ideas are worth listening to and discuss and present them. This is not the same as writing fiction where you can just use a pseudonym, people will be looking you up to see what kind of educational background you have, which university you got the PhD from etc. No place worth having a PhD from is going to let you use a pseudonym, let alone hire you under a different name than your legal name.
I'm sorry, but if using your real name is a deal breaker for you, even with an employer (I.e. the professor example you're giving), you're very unlikely to succeed with this.
Hey fam, I don't fully share your perspective, but I respect it. Here are some thoughts:
- as a student: if you want to be a leader in your field, you really should publish, and get your name out there, and talk to people, etc. However, if that's not important to you, then (usually) you only really need to "publish" your dissertation. This may vary by field and university, and will greatly depend on your advisor. In the US, a younger faculty member will want their students to publish a lot (to increase their own prestige), though a more senior faculty member may not care as much.
- I haven't heard of people publishing under pseudonymns. But you could do something like: if your name is "John Paul Jones", and you're usually known as "John Jones", then maybe you could publish as "Paulie Jones" and then go back to "John Jones" again after graduation.
- in security they say "define your threat model"; what threat is it you're defending against? Is there a threat that can take advantage of the fact that you are currently a student at XYZ university? I decided that risk was minimal. Is there a threat that can take advantage of an email that you published in a paper? I decided the risk of phishing attacks was real, so I used an email address that I only accessed on a "non-work" computer. etc.
- once you graduate: a lot of people here are talking about "academics" and it sounds like they basically mean university-based researchers. But universities aren't the only places where research is done. There are many industry labs that don't publish, or only publish internal documents. Likewise in the US there are government-funded labs that conduct research that is not circulated; if you're from .nl there may be the same in Europe.
- similarly, you can use your PhD to get a good non-research job in industry or the government. A lot of times this involves understanding cutting-edge research well enough to apply it or analyze it, and keeping up with the state of the art. (i.e. you have to be able to understand research, though you're not doing the research yourself.) These usually do not involve publishing.
Anyway good luck with the PhD!
I understand the concerns of privacy, but working in academia means that you give up some of the privacy.
Yes people will have your real name and they will know what college you work at and if some crazy person decides that they want to stalk you on campus because you're woke or part of the deep state turning the frogs gay with chemicals they'll be able to easily do that.
You're gonna have 100s of strangers in your classes during the year. You're going to tell them exactly when you're going to be in your office for office hours.
If you are unable to handle that I doubt academia is for you.
Academia is about furthering human knowledge especially a PhD. There are sacrifices involved; your privacy is probably one of them.
Seems normal for academia. What I would suggest is a very clear wall between those and any social media accounts and online profiles where it makes sense.
If there's really just your name associated with research publications online, your in an exponentially better situation than most. Getting published is a process too, it's not just submit and it's online. This being the case, I'd say it isn't a very big deal for privacy. However, I'd wonder if you could use a pseudonym in a publication. Probably not, but it'd be worth checking out.
You can not. You can choose whether say your middle name is there or not but at minimum your first and last name are there. You'll also be in society databases. Name changes from marriage are still clunky and many women remain under their "maiden" name for publications though now with orcid all your stuff getting linked together is a lot easier.
Certain pay for publish journals you could probably get away with a pseudonym and fake credentials but then you're not doing good science.
Ok, good to know. But aside from knowing you're a researcher, what other info could someone get after seeing you credited as an author? I'd think as long as you practice solid online privacy, the only thing someone could learn is your specific field of study. Do you use a tool like Optery to remove your name from data brokers? Is Lemmy your only social media account? If you said no to either of these, maybe start there to help reduce your online footprint.
As soon as you share the into with a potential employer that it is you, you lose the privacy. You have to assume it's publicly known. It's not worth the effort.
If you do your research everyone knows you spend most of your day researching anyway. At least your supervisor will know who you are. You will want to talk to others and tell them "I'm currently research xy. I wrote this idea, what do you think about it?" Etc.
You should do the phd because you are intrested in the topic, not to gain some degree.
You can write your good papers as an anonymuous person. If they are very good, people would cite you. People will want to invite you.
I don't know about usual, but there is a huge wall between private/ personal and public/ professional for me. Nothing personal ends up under my own name if I can help it. Basically, I'm using my name as if it were the name of a business, and I use an alias or nickname otherwise.