You probably know the feeling—that anxiety spike that happens when you stumble across an article or book on your exact topic. This recently happened to two of my clients, one working on a journal article and another editing a book chapter. Crawls of Google Scholar revealed new publications that, they worried, would require them to completely rewrite their manuscripts.
Thankfully, after reading the newly-discovered publication, both clients breathed sighs of relief that their own manuscripts could still stand on their own.
What to do in this situation, when you happen upon a publication that seems identical to your project? How do you know if you need to fully revise your own manuscript or if you’re in the clear?
Below, I outline six steps for reviewing the publication to assess how similar it really is to your work.
First, consider the discipline. If you’re in different fields, you’ll likely be asking different questions—even about the same topic.
Second, look carefully at the topic of the other piece. Is it really examining the same subject that you study, or is it slightly different? Perhaps you both are literary scholars asking the same question about Author X—but with a focus on different literary works.
Third, review the other scholar’s methodology. What sources are they using? How are they collecting their data? Maybe you’re both in the same field but you’re using archival sources while the other scholar relies on ethnographies.
Fourth, consider the scope of the other work. Perhaps they’re analyzing a different subset of data than yours. Maybe they’re studying a smaller period of time—or a larger geographical area than you.
Fifth, identify the questions the author is asking. Are they the same ones you’re asking—or dissimilar?
Finally, note the other author’s argument. Is it the same or similar to the argument you’re making? Or is the argument different—perhaps because they’re considering different sources or asking different questions.
Using these steps to analyze the other piece may reveal that your projects are, in fact, quite different. The other publication may actually help your own work—to establish a case for the importance of the subject or to provide background context that you no longer have to write. In this case, it’s still important to cite the other scholar—to recognize their work as parallel or foundational to yours. But you don’t need to be afraid that you’re replicating their work or their argument.
Sometimes, however, you will find that your own in-progress project is not as unique as you once thought. And you will need to do serious work to revise your manuscript. In this case, you don’t necessarily need to scrap the entire piece! So don’t despair. But you will need to identify areas of your study that diverge from that of the other author. Perhaps you have a section on a sub-topic overlooked by the other scholar. Maybe you can narrow the scope of your manuscript to ask a more specific question than those considered in the other text.
If you find yourself in this situation—with a publication that seems oh so similar to your own manuscript—that a deep breath and go through the above steps. You manuscript may still be able to stand on its own! And if the other scholar has anticipated your work, this means the topic is relevant to the literature. So feel your feels and see how you might add to the literature with a unique intervention of you own.
Knowledge production is full of unexpected turns, but you’ll get there. You really will!