Dap, a few points I'd like to make about your situation:
(1) Eight years is not such a long time. There are researchers
who have collected a large mass of data and continue to use
it to generate publications many years after it was collected.
Indeed, there are cases similar to the one you describe which
I provide below.
(2) A number of years back I reviewed a pop psychology
book that relied heavily on the research of Yale neuroscientist
Patricia Goldman-Rakic (for background on her see her
Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patricia_Goldman-Rakic ).
One of the things that I found strange was even though
she had died in 2003, the book used articles with her
as co-author but published in 2004 and later. Indeed,
if one searches scholar.google.com for her as co-author
for publications after 2005, there are 33 hits (this might
be inflated by the inclusion of false alarms but these seem
to be few). One of her latest publications was in 2012
in a book chapter that can be read here:
https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=wbm2AgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA389&dq=%22P+Goldman+Rakic%22&ots=67WtBML1qw&sig=9iHYR2JIZ8sYT8QUeJ5i7m3XiCs#v=onepage&q&f=false
The obvious question is "How can a dead person be so
productive?" A more serious question is what are the
circumstances that allow her co-authors to include her
as a co-author long after she has shuffled off this mortal
coil?
(3) I was involved in situation somewhat similar to what you
describe below. During the 1990s I was involved in a
National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) funded research
project where we collected a shipload of data. One of the
research assistants on the project was in the clinical psychology
Ph.D. program at the New School and she wanted to use
some of the data for her dissertation. After getting approval
from the Principal Investigators (PI) to use the data, I agreed to
become a member of her dissertation committee to
"supervise" (i.e., do) the statistical analyses of the data that
was used and to make sure that she understood what
analyses were done and why. Well, she completed her
dissertation, passed the oral defense, and graduated with
a Ph.D. in clinical psychology. About a year later, she died.
Well, the question now is whether an article based on her
dissertation should be published, written by some combination
of me, the PIs of the original NIDA project, and her dissertation
advisor. There are, however, various problems. The dissertation
advisor left the New School and took a position at an Australian
university and has not expressed an interest in publishing an
article. The PIs of the NIDA research have also not expressed
any interest in publishing an article though they may change their
minds in the future (even I have papers presented at conferences
based on this NIDA data that I have not written up for publication
that date back to the 1990s but have not done so because the
PIs and I have parted ways and no one seems interested in
doing an article -- but one might be written one day nonetheless).
So, the research results still remain relevant but in "stasis".
Somebody may decide that we need to convert these assets
into publication but until that time, nobody's doing nothing.
I think that in your situation, if the family agrees, then the
dissertation
should be published in an appropriate form even though it
seems old. I have to ask whether the dissertation was submitted
to something like the old Dissertation Abstracts International
(currently Proquest Dissertation). If it was not, then it is a
"fugitive" document, meaning that it is very difficult to locate
and access if a researcher/scholar wanted to cite it. If this
is the case, then the argument for some form of publication
is strengthened in order to make the dissertation publicly
available. Even if it listed in Proquest Dissertations, the
text of the dissertation may not be available (I don't know
how they decide which dissertations are converted to PDFs
and made available -- nobody asked my permission to
make my dissertation publicly available; since I didn't
publish an article based on it, I don't really care that it is
available, however, I don't someone else taking the text
and incorporating it into a for-profit publication without
my permission).
Take care.
-Mike Palij
New York University
m...@nyu.edu
On Thu, 14 Jan 2016 02:24:14 -0800, Dap Louw wrote:
Mike asked a valid question: "WHY one wants to publish old
research data. Does one just want to get another entry into
their publications list (for tenure/promotion/academic reasons)?"
It speaks for itself that there can be such secondary motives.
However, Tipsters may (hopefully) find the reason behind my
question interesting:
I had this Sesotho-speaking PhD student from one of the
poorest regions in South Africa. He was the first from his
family to receive university training and most probably the
first in his geographical area to receive a PhD.
Two days before his graduation he totally unexpectedly
passed away. At one stage I asked his family about publishing
his results and they said they would discuss it with the family
(very important in their culture).
It is now about eight years later and his findings still have not been
published. I thought it would mean a lot to the family if it could
bedone.
So, yes, there is also an emotional colour to my question.
Another reason why I posted it on Tips.
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