Thread by @random_walker

Getting scooped is a fact of life for every researcher. It feels like being punched in the gut. After decades of being terrified, I’ve learned that there are many things we can do to reduce the risk. More importantly, getting scooped is not nearly as big a deal as I thought. 🧵

Looking back, 3 of my 5 most impactful/most cited papers were actually scooped before we published them! In none of those cases did my fears come true. Being scooped didn't seem to negatively affect those papers at all. There’s research that backs this up:

If you get scooped, the thing to do is pivot. A paper is a complex and multifaceted exploration of an idea, so it’s exceedingly unlikely that two papers will have exactly the same set of insights. In most cases you can reframe your paper to emphasize what’s distinct about it.

I’ve found three good ways to reduce the risk of being scooped. The first is to work on something that’s far from the mainstream of your community, like solving a problem that your community hasn't even recognized as a problem worth solving.

Obviously, this has its own downsides. You need to be sure you know something that others don’t, and not vice versa. And when you're done, you’ll need to work extra hard to convince your community of the paper’s importance. It’s best not to work only on this type of paper.

The second strategy is to complete papers faster. This doesn’t mean doing shoddy work. Sometimes we slow down at the end because we run out of steam, or we can’t bring ourselves to call it done and submit it because of perfectionism. We can train ourselves to avoid those traps.

I’ve noticed sometimes I try to stuff too much into one paper. By recognizing that what you thought was a paper is actually a series of papers, you can get the first paper out sooner. And please, release a preprint. It *decreases* the risk of being scooped.

The third way is to network and be better connected in your community (which is good for many reasons). In my experience, researchers who trust & respect each other, if they realize they are working on the same thing, will *usually* decide to cooperate rather than compete.