In our most recent "how can we help you?" thread, a PhD candidate writes:
I am going on the job market this year, and recently had a paper accepted at a conference that, in practice, publishes all its proceedings in a journal. However, the paper is not yet officially accepted in the journal since it must first go through another round of review, and I doubt the review process will finish before I have to submit my materials. Does anyone know how I should put this on my CV?
I'm glad this reader asked this question, as in my experience these are very important things to get right, but also things that a fairly substantial proportion of job-candidates get wrong. Indeed, based on my own experience and past discussions, it can really irritate (or even offend) people if you list things on your CV incorrectly, particularly if the error makes you look as having a tangible accomplishment that you don't yet have. Errors like these can come across as positively deceptive, which is the last way you want to look to a hiring committee. How then should one list different kinds of things on your CV?
Let's begin with the present case. One reader submitted the following response to the OP:
Do not list it unless it is officially accepted. There is a reason it has go through peer review. But such things do fall through sometimes.
This is exactly right. You should only list a work as 'forthcoming' in a CV when it has passed every round of peer review and has been formally accepted. So, in the OP's case, even if the peer-review process after the conference is mostly pro-forma, they should at most list the paper as 'under review.' The same goes for book manuscripts. I've seen first-time book authors list books as 'forthcoming' merely as a result of having the manuscript under contract. This is misleading, however. Even if a book manuscript is under contract, there is virtually always a 'clearance review' of the final manuscript where the manuscript is sent out for review to a referee or two to make sure that the final manuscript is publishable. As with articles, you should only list a book as 'forthcoming' once it has passed every round of review and you have been informed by the editor that the book has been accepted and will head into production. If you have a book under contract that hasn't been formally accepted, the proper thing to do is to list it as 'under contract.' Finally, there are similar issues with book chapters. Don't list a book chapter as 'forthcoming' simply because an editor of the volume has commissioned you to write something. At that point, you should list the chapter as 'commissioned', and only list it as 'forthcoming' once it has passed every round of peer-review and has been officially accepted.
What other kinds of errors do candidates make on CVs? I'm really curious to hear from readers here, as I expect some examples are slipping my mind. But here's one case: listing articles that are merely under review under the heading 'publications.' My sense is that even if you list the piece as 'under review', this may be a real faux pas. A paper that is merely under review doesn't belong under your 'publications' heading, as that just makes it look like you are trying to pad your CV to give the reader the visual impression that you are more published than you really are. Similarly, here's here's a more borderline case that I think is probably important to avoid: listing book reviews alongside journal articles under 'publications' (especially if you don't clearly indicate which things are reviews and which things aren't). In my view, book reviews really don't belong under the same heading as journal articles. They should be under a distinct heading, 'Book Reviews', so that (again) you don't look like you are trying to pad your publications list. Further, some journals give book reviews titles that make them not look like book reviews. You want to look honest to readers of your CV, and the easiest way to do this is to list articles and reviews under separate headings. Finally, similar considerations go for blog posts and popular articles (i.e. in non-academic magazines, etc.). Don't list them all under 'Publications.' Instead, have separate entries for 'Peer-Reviewed Journal Publications', 'Publications in Popular Press', and so on. In brief, my sense is that honesty looks far better than coming across like you are trying to artificially pad your CV or somehow fool your reader. If you don't have many peer-reviewed journal articles, you need to roll with that and hope the quality of your work and rest of you dossier make you look like a candidate to interview and hire.
But these are just my thoughts. What are yours?
If it's the feeder conference for an Oxford Studies volume or something comparably fancy, you could just tell your letter writers to mention that it's accepted there. Everyone knows what this means, and if 1-2 letter writers mention it the committee will probably get the point.
Posted by: Postdoc | 08/31/2021 at 12:09 PM
There's a lot of issues with how people present publications. But most of them involve trying to present yourself as having publications that one doesn't yet. I agree with the advice that one shouldn't try to do that.
A different issue I have is with how people list teaching. There are lots of different ways you can be involved in the course: you might just be the teacher, or a teacher's assistant, or a grader, or any number of other things. I find it frustrating when I can't tell quickly how many class a person has been the teacher, since that's what they would replicate at my institution. I'm not sure if there is standard terminology here. But even just a quick note on a CV defining some terminology that's used on the CV would be good.
Posted by: Tim | 08/31/2021 at 07:37 PM
To push Marcus's point about publications and book reviews into even more controversial territory: what about discussion/response pieces?
To be clear, I think that these sorts of things are valuable. But the difference between a discussion published in Mind and an article published in Mind is quite large. The difference is also quite hard to track on a CV. In my experience, some people clearly indicate when something is a discussion/response piece. (Sometimes it's obvious from the title.) But I've also seen people obscure that fact.
Posted by: Peter Finocchiaro | 08/31/2021 at 08:47 PM
Marcus is right, as usual. A few additional remarks:
I think the advice is different at different career stages.
Very early, when there are few items, you need at least three general headings--provided they aren't empty, in which case leave them out: Publications, Works on Progress, Conferences.
At later stages you can have categories for Books; Journal Articles; Invited Chapters; Books Reviews; Conferences: Refereed Paper; Conferences: Refereed Abstract; Conferences: Invited Keynote Addresses; Blog Posts; Podcasts: Host; Podcasts: Guest; Newspaper Op-Eds; etc. For me, the decision point for when I create a new category tends to be when I have more than one of a specific kind.
Provide a parenthetical remark in advance of each line item. The point is not to list bibliographic information but to communicate with your readers, so don't be afraid of providing detail especially for unusual cases. E.g.:
(accepted for print publication, expected in issue [#, date]; online as of [date])
(under review)
(response to R&R under review)
(invited chapter in preparation)
(refereed "Comment" paper)
(critical review)
(response to critics)
I have seen, but don't recommend, listing works in progress under Publications with (in preparation). Even with the right parenthetical remark, I think readers take it as padding, if not lying, to include a WIP under Publications. Accepted, Conditionally Accepted Pending Revisions, and similar official statuses seem okay to include in the Publications category rather than the Works in Progress category. Marcus is right that (under review) items are best left in the Works in Progress category until they have an official status change from the journal.
Definitely don't include conference presentations in the Publications category. For the Conferences category, use parenthetical remarks such as (referred paper) or (refereed abstract). Lately I've seen a few (refereed paper accepted but conference canceled due to Covid pandemic). Those still count, though perhaps not as much as if you had delivered the presentation. Ones like (refereed abstract accepted; presented via Zoom due to pandemic) definitely still count.
On these principles, my answer to the OP would be to list the conference presentation under the Conferences category as (refereed paper accepted for presentation; also under review for the conference proceedings). Then, in the cover letter, mention that most papers accepted for presentation at this conference are also later accepted for the proceedings with a separate round of refereeing. That's both honest and clear, two things c.v.'s should strive to be.
I think most readers think it looks bad when you list too many works in progress. I'd say not to exceed two or three, especially when your publication list is short or nil. You might want to include different projected works depending on the AOC/AOS of the position to which you are applying. But they should really be works in progress, i.e., you should have a completed draft or a well-worked-out sizable chunk written. Someone might ask you to describe that WIP during an interview, and having nothing to say will look especially bad. I.e., Works in Progress is not a place to list things you hope to eventually work on. It can't hurt here to include remarks like (first draft completed) and (completing final edits before journal submission). Where you plan to submit a WIP is a hope, not a fact, so don't mention it.
This doesn't come up in too many cases in Philosophy, but you need to make your contribution to any joint works clear. Make sure you agree in advance with your co-authors about the order in which names are to be listed (should match publication) and what percentage of the total was your effort: (First author; my contribution was 65%). It is very possible someone on the search committee knows or will call your coauthor(s) and a surprised reply from them will not be good for you.
Another commenter in this thread pointed out the sin of making your Teaching Experience category unclear. My advice would be to use subcategories and parenthetical remarks such as (teaching assistant under Prof. X; responsible for grading and leading two one-hour-weekly recitation sessions for a total of 62 students), (instructor of record; used a colleague's syllabus), and (instructor of record; designed this course from conception to delivery; converted from face-to-face to online instruction mid-semester).
Posted by: William Vanderburgh | 08/31/2021 at 10:29 PM
Some discussion of this topic with specific reference to notes/discussion pieces/replies: https://philosopherscocoon.typepad.com/blog/2020/03/potentially-deceptive-cvspublication-lists.html
A small additional point, which is of little practical importance but which may provide moral support: I agree 100% with Marcus and others that it is important to be very clear, that mistakes here can look like attempts to deceive and can make people very angry in ways that harm you, etc.
But, when I see these sorts of mistakes on a job candidate's CV I don't care. I assume it's an honest mistake rather than some attempt to deceive me. And many others are (I assume) like me. (I actually haven't checked, but I would be very surprised if I am the only person in the profession who doesn't fly into a rage about these things.) And many people don't even register these things as mistakes, since the norms are not 100% ironclad.
Of course, you're applying to a department, not to me or others who agree with me, so you still want to be careful so as not to enrage those who feel like you're trying to deceive them. But if you've made any of these mistakes before, don't think that everyone who looked at your CV now thinks you are a deceitful nogoodnik!
Posted by: Daniel Weltman | 09/01/2021 at 02:53 AM
While I completely agree with Marcus, I would like to point to another important criterion for a successful CV: a CV should give a clear and lucid overview of your accomplishments. I am inclined to bring this point into the discussion, since one can also overdo the specification of the status of an item on the CV. And you should not have a heading for each of your items, if the differences are minimal (to be clear: published/under review, forthcoming/commissioned; article/review, peer-reviewed/invited talk etc. are big differences, in my opinion). A CV can get confusing, if you have too many subcategories. I would also discourage applicants to inform the committee about the status of each publication in the cover letter. The cover letter should outline why you are a good fit for the announced position, hitting all the boxes of the ad (mostly, research, teaching, and service). The CV should tell me whether a paper is accepted, under review, or published.
Posted by: RecentTT | 09/01/2021 at 09:10 AM
Huh, interesting. Many people seem to list papers accepted at Oxford Studies volume as "provisionally accepted" or "forthcoming pending final review" or so on. Does that strike you as similarly duplicitous?
Posted by: Another PhD | 09/01/2021 at 12:46 PM
Another PhD: I think that's entirely fine. The important thing is to be clear about the actual status of the manuscript ('provisionally accepted' or 'forthcoming pending final review are both very different than simply listing the paper as 'forthcoming').
Posted by: Marcus Arvan | 09/01/2021 at 02:50 PM
Marcus and others
Personally, if I am on a hiring committee I would read "provisionally accepted" as NOT accepted, as there is no grey space between ACCEPTED and not. What I mean is that anything less than an acceptance may in fact not be published. I experienced this, in an awkward way, with someone who was invited to contribute to something. But a review by referees made clear this paper was not going to be included - despite the invitation.
Posted by: hmm | 09/02/2021 at 07:48 AM
Thank you for the very insightful discussion!
I am wondering: what about invited contributions to edited volumes? These typically undergo peer-review by the editors, but I suspect it is extremely rare to get rejected. Do you think invited papers should be listed separately, or is it ok to list them alongside the other peer-reviewed articles?
Posted by: Damian | 09/02/2021 at 08:17 AM
Just advising everyone to be careful and explicit with how they list manuscripts and articles. The early stages of the two searches on which I've served were "whittling down" stages, where we were looking for excuses to discard applicants. Listing an only conditionally or provisionally accepted publication along with the full-blooded ones is misleading, so it is a good reason to toss a file.
Posted by: Conrad | 09/02/2021 at 03:50 PM
@ Peter Finocchiaro - having a section for "responses" seems appropriate if this is something that in your sub discipline is common (especially in some applied fields in which it is very common) and you would do more than one time. If creating a whole section on the CV for a single reply paper then perhaps simply putting in brackets (reply to [title of paper or name of author]) would be best. But I agree about not over-selling a short reply. That said, I trust interested readers of a CV would be able to distinguish a couple page response essay from a multi-page original essay if they looked at the details and those details matter to them.
Posted by: Assistant Professor | 09/02/2021 at 08:52 PM