Why independent researchers don’t work openly

These are all things that people have told me.

• It makes me feel vulnerable.
• It’s time consuming.
• It makes people feel entitled to more.
• It means people misinterpret my work.
• I don’t want to be influenced by outside opinion.
• It devalues my work.
• I don’t want anyone to steal my ideas.
• I don’t know how or where to share it.
• I don’t know how to make it interesting.
• It’s not worth sharing.
• It’s boring.
• People give me negative feedback.
• I’m not in the entertainment industry.

When I shared my little horror story poem, it seemed to outrage many people. And it was interesting to see the contrasting nature of some of the criticisms levelled against me.

On the one hand, I had some people telling me that independent researchers do in fact work openly— that no one was saying they don’t work openly.

And on the other hand, I had a queue of independent researchers lining up to tell me that they don’t work openly because working openly is a bad idea (because of one of the above reasons).

Unfortunately I can’t share those responses openly here because they were all sent to me within private messages and closed communities. I did ask though.

Now, there’s a very strong possibility that I am indeed wrong, because I am very stupid. This is known, and widely reported.

However, it can’t be that both groups are right at the same time. And they seem to be largely unaware of each other. So here I am introducing you all.

Anonymous group A, meet anonymous group B.

Despite all this, I am enjoying watching on and seeing several of my criticisers start to work more openly. I’m seeing people share more of their struggles, not just their wins. And I’m seeing organisations take steps towards figuring out the genuinely difficult challenge of “what it means to be open”.

Yes, I’m really pleased to see this because, like I said, I still don’t know.

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