Blowing up your publication list and CV with trash How to become a successful scientist. » Survival Blog for Scientists

Blowing up your publication list and CV with trash How to become a successful scientist. » Survival Blog for Scientists:

Blowing up your publication list and CV with trash

Tags: cv, Impact factor, list of publications
Posted in Tips

Having 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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. List of popular papers. With all the authors and with the number of published pages.
4. List of invited talks at international conferences, with the names of co-authors if applicable.
5. List of invited individual talks delivered at scientific institutes.
6. List of contributed talks to international conferences, with the names of all other co-authors and in the correct order.
7. 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 ScoreThere 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.

Related posts:

1. Software, like EndNote, for managing references is basically trash
2. Every scientist should have a Researcher ID
3. Email Inbox is no to-do list
4. Where to publish an article?
5. Applying successfully for a PhD position by email