Yeah, I’ve had difficulty accessing theses as well. My roommate tells me that the reason is that nobody wants to access them because they’re almost always just a set of previously published papers (in many fields you publish 3 papers and staple them together for a thesis). This suggests the alternative of finding the papers that make up the thesis. You’ll miss out on the introduction by the author, but they may be a lot easier to get a hold of.
That works sometimes, but not usually for the theses I seem to be interested in—for example, the iodine thesis has no preceding papers or else I would’ve found those first before running into the thesis.
I’ve given up trying to predict people’s reactions. Some researchers or post-grads, when I contact them, seem thrilled to answer any questions I have or provide unpublished data; other seem to completely ignore me and as far as I can tell, pretend the thesis never existed. I’ll give a recent Evangelion example: http://eva.onegeek.org/pipermail/evangelion/2012-October/007214.html
I reviewed a like >200pg PhD thesis which as far as I can tell has been neither discussed nor cited anywhere online; I excerpt it, praise and criticize parts, point out several specific problems which could be fixed in it or places where new material would add substantially to her discussion, submit it to Reddit where it gets 3 praising comments. Then I ping her on Twitter and… nothing in almost a month despite occasional tweets posted by her.
I don’t understand how she could not reply, if only to defend herself: she must have spent years working on the thesis, and given the lack of Google hits, I might be one of maybe 10-20 people in the world to ever read it. If I had spent years working on something and someone sent me such an email, I don’t think I could ignore it: I’d be prostrate with joy that someone knowledgeable read it carefully, or I’d be berserk with rage that they would dare do anything but praise it and would reply tearing them a new one. Silence, however, I simply cannot understand.
The end result of PhD programs is a degree, and finishing a thesis is instrumental to this.The thesis might end up a sunk cost labor of hate that you just want to forget afterwards, even if it did take years, if you mostly just want the degree. Don’t know how much this happens at PhD level.
A month is nothing. Especially if she only just graduated and is busy with post-thesis life.
If you take a topic seriously, if you’ve just spent several years making the effort to think about it and write about it at levels of rigor far beyond the casual standards of ordinary thought and communication, you may put off responding to someone’s questions, precisely because you don’t want to lower your standards again, and you don’t immediately have the time to answer properly.
Especially if she only just graduated and is busy with post-thesis life.
No, she was doing it while working as an ESL teacher and still working, according to her tweets. Has had time to continue low-quality anime blogging too.
you may put off responding to someone’s questions, precisely because you don’t want to lower your standards again, and you don’t immediately have the time to answer properly.
There is no proper answer to several of my criticisms: she is simply flat out wrong or sloppy. Evangelion is one of the few topics where I acknowledge few peers and fewer superiors, and she is neither.
in many fields you publish 3 papers and staple them together for a thesis
The bureaucracy involved needs a way to check that the phd candidate is doing decent work (preferably something more objective than the promoter’s say-so), and the scientific peer review process can be used for this purpose. Thus, phd candidates are often asked to produce some amount of papers and publish them (sometimes in journals with a specified minimal impact factor). Knowing how much work goes into the production of a paper, and how long the review process can take ( > 6 months is no exception), it would be unreasonable to also expect a fully original thesis. Ideally, but not always, the thesis expands somewhat on the previously-published papers.
Thanks for the second; there’s actually a surprising number of papers using MBTI in online education, it’s really annoying. I may have to look into converting MBTI to Big Five if I do a meta-analysis.
http://ethesys.yuntech.edu.tw/ETD-db/ETD-search/view_etd?URN=etd-0706111-230947
“An Exploration of Student Personality Type and Success in Online Classes”
(If anyone knows a general way to get theses when the obvious download fails, I’d appreciate knowing. They seem pretty hard to get.)
Yeah, I’ve had difficulty accessing theses as well. My roommate tells me that the reason is that nobody wants to access them because they’re almost always just a set of previously published papers (in many fields you publish 3 papers and staple them together for a thesis). This suggests the alternative of finding the papers that make up the thesis. You’ll miss out on the introduction by the author, but they may be a lot easier to get a hold of.
That works sometimes, but not usually for the theses I seem to be interested in—for example, the iodine thesis has no preceding papers or else I would’ve found those first before running into the thesis.
Interesting. It seems odd that they would publish only in as a thesis given that they have such a reputation for not being read.
I’ve given up trying to predict people’s reactions. Some researchers or post-grads, when I contact them, seem thrilled to answer any questions I have or provide unpublished data; other seem to completely ignore me and as far as I can tell, pretend the thesis never existed. I’ll give a recent Evangelion example: http://eva.onegeek.org/pipermail/evangelion/2012-October/007214.html
I reviewed a like >200pg PhD thesis which as far as I can tell has been neither discussed nor cited anywhere online; I excerpt it, praise and criticize parts, point out several specific problems which could be fixed in it or places where new material would add substantially to her discussion, submit it to Reddit where it gets 3 praising comments. Then I ping her on Twitter and… nothing in almost a month despite occasional tweets posted by her.
I don’t understand how she could not reply, if only to defend herself: she must have spent years working on the thesis, and given the lack of Google hits, I might be one of maybe 10-20 people in the world to ever read it. If I had spent years working on something and someone sent me such an email, I don’t think I could ignore it: I’d be prostrate with joy that someone knowledgeable read it carefully, or I’d be berserk with rage that they would dare do anything but praise it and would reply tearing them a new one. Silence, however, I simply cannot understand.
The end result of PhD programs is a degree, and finishing a thesis is instrumental to this.The thesis might end up a sunk cost labor of hate that you just want to forget afterwards, even if it did take years, if you mostly just want the degree. Don’t know how much this happens at PhD level.
My hypothesis would be ugh fields.
A month is nothing. Especially if she only just graduated and is busy with post-thesis life.
If you take a topic seriously, if you’ve just spent several years making the effort to think about it and write about it at levels of rigor far beyond the casual standards of ordinary thought and communication, you may put off responding to someone’s questions, precisely because you don’t want to lower your standards again, and you don’t immediately have the time to answer properly.
No, she was doing it while working as an ESL teacher and still working, according to her tweets. Has had time to continue low-quality anime blogging too.
There is no proper answer to several of my criticisms: she is simply flat out wrong or sloppy. Evangelion is one of the few topics where I acknowledge few peers and fewer superiors, and she is neither.
In that case, perhaps she agrees with your criticisms, but doesn’t want to admit to being wrong.
The bureaucracy involved needs a way to check that the phd candidate is doing decent work (preferably something more objective than the promoter’s say-so), and the scientific peer review process can be used for this purpose. Thus, phd candidates are often asked to produce some amount of papers and publish them (sometimes in journals with a specified minimal impact factor). Knowing how much work goes into the production of a paper, and how long the review process can take ( > 6 months is no exception), it would be unreasonable to also expect a fully original thesis. Ideally, but not always, the thesis expands somewhat on the previously-published papers.
I couldn’t access the first thesis.
Second thesis. Hmm… unfortunately, the author ignored the past two decades of research using the Big Five and relied instead on personality typing.
(I think recent theses from most US institutions are available from the ProQuest database. I don’t know any general way to get non-US theses.)
Thanks for the second; there’s actually a surprising number of papers using MBTI in online education, it’s really annoying. I may have to look into converting MBTI to Big Five if I do a meta-analysis.