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What to list as peer-reviewed?

In our most recent "how can we help you?" thread, early careerist writes:

What publications count as "peer reviewed"?

Until recently, I had assumed that all and only papers submitted to a journal/volume and were (a) reviewed by a scholar, (b) whose identity the author didn't know, and (c) had a genuine possibility of being rejected at that stage were peer reviewed and eligible to be labeled as such on one's CV. It could also be double- or triple-blinded, but that wasn't necessary to peer-review.

However, a colleague's CV labels as peer-reviewed the following:
– invited papers to edited books, where someone read the paper and requested revisions.
– invited entries into books where the editor read the individual entries and the entire volume was sent out for review.
– the introduction to a volume they edited, which was sent out to a reviewer (and blinded), but where the volume was already under contract.

Is there a norm here? I was surprised, and now think I'm under-crediting my publications.

'Anon human' then added:

I’m very interested in the answer to early careerist’s question! Those all strike me as bad cases, but I think there are some cases that are particularly hard to figure out. (E.g.: if you were invited to submit a paper to a journal, it was peer reviewed by anonymous people, but the standard is to accept 98 percent of invited submissions, should someone list that as peer reviewed? Etc.

I'm curious what the norms here are as well. Unlike 'Anon human', it's not obvious to me that all of the cases early careerist listed are "bad cases." Invited papers to edited books could well be rejected if the reviewer(s) or editor(s) think they are not worthy of publication, so these cases seem to me legit cases of peer review (albeit not anonymized peer-review). Nevertheless, in my own case, I tend to play it safe in what I list on my CV. I only explicitly list my journal publications as peer-reviewed, as I don't want to run the risk of rubbing anyone the wrong way for listing other things that way. Since I take it everyone knows that invited book chapters are subject to review (but not the same kind as journal articles), I just leave it up to the person reading my CV to infer what they will about those cases.

In any case, I am curious about the norms here. What does everyone think? What kinds of publications are legitimate to list as peer-reviewed? Which ones are not? 

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15 responses to “What to list as peer-reviewed?”

  1. Paul

    I just make a distinction between peer-reviewed and BLIND peer-reviewed. None of the edited collections I submitted to were blind, but they were all reviewed with a very real chance of rejection (in several cases I personally know people whose submissions were rejected to those volumes). But edited collections and invited submissions are rarely blind, so I reserve that classification for typical open submission journal articles. This goes back to the question of labeling the CV which we have discussed quite a bit. For promotion purposes at my R2, there must be clear categories for pubs on the cv. So, I have clearly labeled separate categories: blind peer reviewed journal articles, peer reviewed edited collections, conference proceedings, and would add invited contributions if I had any lol. That way there is no guessing on the part of the person evaluating the CV…

    Reply
  2. anonymous

    What about: papers in special issues of journals that arose from conferences, where the submissions to the conferences were anonymously peer reviewed (and the papers were picked based on that); papers in journal special issues that are invited, anonymously peer reviewed, but extremely unlikely to be rejected; etc.
    (Re: the second thing, one of the things I’m confused about is how the invited/not invited thing intersects with the peer reviewed/not peer reviewed thing.)
    Also, if one only has something like 4-8 publications, it starts looking weird (I think) to have more than 2 categories on one’s cv, so one has to make choices here.
    Thanks!

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  3. Grad Student Soon to Be on the Market

    I have a related question, if I may. I won a graduate student essay competition held by an academic press. My paper was published in their journal as a result.
    I don’t know how they went about deciding which paper won: whether they sent it out for review, whether the editors collectively reviewed the pool of applicants (and whether that was a blind review), whether some individual editor had sole discretion, or some other method.
    Does this publication count as peer-reviewed? If not, how should I list it on my CV? It’s not an invited piece or a chapter in an edited collection. Should I just list it under a vague heading of “other publications”? Any guidance is appreciated.

    Reply
  4. not much help fellow grad student

    I am interested to know the answer as well, as I have a bit of everything on my CV:
    -blind peer reviewed journal article, unsolicited submission
    -unblind(?) not blind(? how are we even supposed to refer to this?) peer reviewed journal article, invited submission
    -blind peer reviewed journal article, but special edition related to conference
    -invited chapter in edited volume, not blind peer reviewed
    -chapter in volume of conference proceedings, blind peer reviewed
    Seriously I have no idea what to do with all this. Until now I have been dividing them up into blind peer reviewed and not, and then including little descriptors underneath in italics to indicate other stuff (e.g. invited submission)
    Maybe this calls for asking on a Fb or daily nous thread? Given we are pretty much all early career here, it seems like we need some outside advice.

    Reply
  5. Amanda

    There is not an answer to this question. People will disagree, and there is no set method to resolve the disagreement. Reasonable arguments could be made on both sides. Some search committee members won’t care much either way, others will be very offended anything that is not a journal publication is called peer review. I think what is interesting is that people assume there is some answer to this, as though the answer would somehow be more clear and objective than answers to questions like, “What is kindness?” or “When is it wrong to lie?” This is one (of many) reason why I don’t separate publications.

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  6. ashley

    My c.v. just lists my papers and where they appeared, leaving readers to draw their own conclusions, I guess. That is, they’re all just listed as publications. Is that bad? No one’s ever said anything to me about it.

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  7. JR

    Maybe we should separate publications but not on the basis of peer-reviewed/not peer-reviewed. Perhaps just make categories like: “journal articles” and “articles in edited volumes”. The reader can itself decide how much value give to papers in the latter category.
    And surely there are further categories (that does not have much weight) such as: “book reviews” and “editorials”.
    Of course if one is asked to list peer-reviewed papers this suggestion does not work.
    I am not sure why people are obsessed with peer-reviewed papers anyway. Suppose your favourite article by your favourite philosopher turns out to be peer-reviewed but not blindly. Does this make the article less good? Isn’t the purpose of the peer review to make sure that decent quality is met? If people think that the article X is great (and thus the decent quality is met), does it matter if you found out it wasn’t properly peer-reviewed?
    Is your paper in an edited volume somehow better if it was refereed by external experts rather than the senior editor of the volume? (assuming this does not actually have any effect on the quality of the paper). If you want to say that the paper was refereed blindly, do not publish in edited collections?

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  8. JR

    Another point. Articles in Philosophy & Public Affairs are valued high. But papers published in PPA are not double-blind reviewed by experts outside the journal. The papers are reviewed by the editors of the journal (double-blind, though they say). Likewise, discussion pieces in Ethics are (double-blind) reviewed by the editors of the journal.
    No-one thinks that papers in PPA or Ethics are no good in CV, even though an argument could be made that you are not allowed to put them under peer-reviewed since peer-review means the paper is reviewed by scholars outside the journal.

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  9. forever postdoc

    Just to reiterate Ashley’s question, it would seem safest in my mind to remain agnostic on all these disagreements and simply list ‘publications’. I would, I guess, take some stand in that I would limit that to academic publications and have book reviews in a separate section. But all this peer-review/non peer-reviewed/blind/non blind/double blind/invited stuff can get determined based on where it was published if the reader of the CV has a strong view on this stuff. Doesn’t this make the most sense?

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  10. NK

    I just want to second JR’s points/questions (as I understand the relevant parts of them, anyway). The significance of these distinctions (peer-reviewed vs. not, in particular) rests entirely on the fact that we’ve reached a point, in our profession, where we (think we) need a proxy for quality. So, in a certain sense, the answer to JR’s first set of questions is something like this: “I want to know whether X’s work is better or worse than Y’s without reading/understanding any of it. Because peer review gives a guarantee of quality that mere publication (in non-peer-reviewed venues) does not, I can use peer-reviewed articles – but not non-peer-reviewed ones – as a proxy for quality. That is, other things equal, the more peer-reviewed articles someone has, the better a philosopher I can assume they are; not so, however, for non-peer-reviewed articles.”
    It seems to me that we should be resisting the use of such proxies. Instead, we’re all wasting a bunch of time trying to figure out exactly which proxies other people (e.g., hiring committees) are using (and which they should be using, and how they should be using them), so that we can optimize our publication strategies. Meanwhile, our entire profession is burning down around us.

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  11. Chris

    I agree with Ashley and forever postdoc: just list them all under “publications”. That is easiest and standard, at least in many contexts.
    There are at least a few possible audiences for your c.v.
    1. students and the public at large: they won’t care about any of these “peer reviewed vs. sort of peer reviewed” distinctions. They just might be looking for an interesting title to read (this is probably the smallest group of your c.v. readers!)
    2. Faculty in philosophy who might hire you. They will typically have some idea about what “peer review” means at the journal Ethics vs. in an anthology with Cambridge vs. a “critical notice” etc. You don’t need to try to categorize exactly what sense these are and aren’t peer reviewed on your c.v. Hiring faculty will make their own judgments about these. Different faculty might care more or less about different kinds of publications, just like they disagree about the value or importance of conferences, etc.
    3. The third possible audience are other academics (usually non-philosophers), who will have to make sense of your c.v. for the purposes of tenure and promotion. Many universities have explicit categories that they want you to put your publications in (invited or not, peer reviewed or not, anonymously etc.) IF they care about these, then you can divide them up in the ways they request. But I don’t think you need to do this for (2).

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  12. Craig

    Just to indicate proportions, I’m also with Ashley, forever postdoc, and Chris. In my version, I distinguish book reviews, but otherwise I don’t distinguish essay, anthology, chapter, peer-reviewed, etc.

    Reply
  13. Trevor

    One more endorsement of Ashley et al. I separate out book reviews but the rest is all together.

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  14. Amanda

    Most people put them all together (other than book reviews and popular publications). For various reasons, I think this is usually the best professional move. And given how much disagreement exists about “peer review” anyway, it seems silly to penalize people for doing this, especially when the professional norm is to list them together.

    Reply
  15. Amanda

    Oh, books and edited books are typically separated as well. I think the most common way to design a CV, provided one had all these types of publications, would be like this:
    Books
    Edited Volumes
    Articles/Book Chapters
    Book Reviews
    Popular Publications

    Reply

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