Blowing up your publication list and CV with trash
Posted in Tips for junior scientistsHaving been a member of so many committees in which the quality of various applicant-scientists were compared, I think, I know how to read a curriculum vitae and a publication list.![]()
Please, do not try to magnify your publication list with trash as unrefereed papers and conference abstracts. It is pollution that will irritate the committee.
A serious applicant will lists the following items separately, when applying for a job or applying for promotion:
- List of refereed papers. With *all* the authors and also in the order in which they appear in the journal. In case of an extreme long list (more than ten), say at least how many co-authors there are . In addition report the number of published pages each article entails.
- List of conference proceedings, if they cannot be classified as peer-reviewed. Again with all the authors. And again state the number of published pages for each item.
- List of popular papers. With all the authors and with the number of published pages.
- List of invited talks at international conferences, with the names of co-authors if applicable.
- List of invited individual talks delivered at scientific institutes.
- List of contributed talks to international conferences, with the names of all other co-authors and in the correct order.
- List of posters, with the names of all other co-authors in the correct order.
Mixing
Some applicants are so stupid to think that they are smarter than committee-members and that they can pollute their list without anybody in the committee noticing it. I have spent evenings in cleaning up dirty publication lists of applicants. Finding out what journals publish only two-page articles. Reviewers get irritated when they have to do the counting themselves because the counting of the applicant cannot be trusted.
High-impact
Applicants are proud of an article in Nature or in Science, and rightly so. But you do not have
to rub it in. The committee will spot them easily. Do not partition your refereed publication list into several sub-classifications according to your own feeling of importance of journals. For one thing is sure, you can insult a committee-member by doing so.
Citation Score
There is no need to put your citation score in your CV. Not per article, and not your h-index. Let the committee do it. Various institutions have different ISI subscriptions. They might want to correct for self-citations in a different way than you have done. Etc.
However if your name has problematic prefixes, like “Van Beethoven”, check the ISI. They have changed over the years from “Van Beethoven” to “VanBeethoven” and “Beethoven V”. So if your name has changed over time in the database of the ISI you should tell the committee.
Discussion groups
I still see regularly discussions on internet fora on how to “embellish” one’s publication list. With people requesting advice regarding how to masquerade a weak CV. If there is one strong point about a weak CV it is that the person connected to it admits it is a weak CV.










1 Sep 2008 20:29, Allard Mosk
The “Number of pages” is a piece of information that is more often than not missing. It can be very useful: if you have a lot of short papers on your list, but a few long ones, showing the number of pages can help to make clear you’re not into producing “least publishable units”.
19 Sep 2008 14:30, Otto Muskens
Concerning the invited talk list: there is huge variation between countries and even individual groups wether a professor lets a junior scientist go to invited talks or he himself presents the work. To my opinion this gives a strong bias to the list of invited talks.
How to handle this in your CV? Currently I put all invited talks in which my name was in the abstract even though my boss gave the talk (several times I was even put first author). Is this ok or does it count as CV pollution?
Secondly, I have some skepticism concerning the importance of invited talks since a lot of these are given out of habit to the big shots in the field or out of political/personal reasons by committee members.
23 Sep 2008 14:55, Klaas Wynne
To reply to Otto: yes, I do think that adding invited talks you have not yourself given is CV polution. Big shots get to give talks, and their talk-count is a measure of their big-ness. Nothing wrong with taht type of counting. Of course, you really should be given a chance to give a talk yourself.