Distributing your work for free…
by Benjamin on April 24, 2009
When I started as a graduate student I was paranoid about publishing my material freely on the web. I mean, what if someone copied, scooped, plagiarised or even re-produced my work as their own, leaving me behind, un-cited, unrecognised and with little to show for my efforts?
Based on Seth Godin's work on marketing, this graph probably does a good job of showing the value of your ideas to yourself...
That is a long time ago, and I think I have learnt a very valuable lesson as I have slowly begun to make more and more of my work available on-line. And the idea is simple. The more people know about you, the more valuable you are, and the more people read your papers, the more you will be asked to participate in conferences, journals, books and public talks.
The day of the hallowed journal is far from over, but with internet search that is able to include .pdf, .doc and latex files, anyone working on a particular subject can go-online, and punch in their question. If your paper is on-line, it will be read and more often than not, the reader will contact you to ask how the work is going, ask you some questions, or simply take your work and cite you in their paper. Already you’ve made a connection with one author in your field, and you didn’t need a reference from a senior professor to approach anyone.
It’s happened to me on multiple occasion by now, suddenly I get an e-mail out of the blue saying “Hi Benjamin, I just read your paper on so-and-so and was wondering if…”. From there I have discussed my work with policy makers in the Netherlands, Academic economists in South Africa and India, consultancy companies in London and other students and academics from across the globe – a lot of people who I would have never been able to reach, would not know had an interest in the field, or simply had no idea about.
I am not saying, post any old paper on the web, and within a week you’ll have seven top people clamouring for your attention. No. That’s not how it works… Sadly.
However, if you have one, or more, well written (draft form is fine, but it has to be of a quality you would be happy to submit to a conference or senior professor), and available on your own website, plus you can drop it on the various econpapers databases, then over the coming year your work will slowly be read by people interested in exactly what you do, and that is the first step to being noticed. Don’t be afraid to put your work out there, front and center, distribute it for free if you can and start having people reading your work. Ultimately that’s what you want, right?
