Recently I was talking to a friend about the exercise routine another friend is using to recover from a serious illness, which involves a lot of walking. My friend said, “He should try bricking.” 

I asked what bricking was, and my friend said, “You put a brick in a rucksack and wear it while you’re walking. After a while, you add another brick. It’s really good for strengthening your legs and core.” 

I was intrigued so I did a quick search online. 

“You mean rucking,” I said. 

“Rucking?” he said. “Sounds a bit rude. What’s rucking?” 

“What you’re talking about – putting weights in a backpack and wearing it while walking. It comes from military training.”

“It’s called bricking! I invented it, 30 years ago!” my friend said, in mock indignation.

This conversation reminded me of a Guardian column by Julie Burchill which made an impression on me when I first read it almost 25 years ago. Julie was pleased with herself for inventing the phrase “They married in Hastings and repented in Leicester”. While I can’t find that column, I have found a follow-up article from 2000 in which she acknowledges the readers who wrote to tell her that “her” phrase was not original.

The Bible tells us that “there is nothing new under the sun”. Although there are debates about the origin and authorship of the Bible, nobody contests the fact that it was written a very long time ago. So, this concept is evidently not a recent phenomenon. But why is it relevant for research and scholarship? Because when one of us has an idea, which feels like a good idea, it also feels as if we are the first person ever to think of that idea. But clearly, we may not be.

I see this in the creative research methods literature where there are examples of people in separate parts of the world devising the same method as each other and each claiming its invention. Which is fair enough because they have both – or all – invented it. But in Euro-Western cultures, people regard these kinds of ideas as the property of the person who had the ideas, and this leads to all sorts of problems.

So, if you have a good idea, it is important to check whether you really are the first person to have that idea. Look online, use all the search terms you can think of, and try your hardest to make sure nobody else has had the same brainwave. This is not a fool-proof process. I only can read the English language so I can’t search for work in other languages. Also, people use different terms for the same thing which makes searching difficult. I see this often where people in separate locations who have coincidentally devised the same method, each call it something different. But if you check as best you can, then you have done all anyone could ask of you.

Photo by Alexander Suhorucov