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Listing engagement with your work in a CV?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

In a CV, should you/ how should you list the engagement of other philosophers with your work? (1) is there a clear/tidy way to note the number of citations that your paper has? (2) how to record more substantive engagement – e.g. a philosopher discusses MyView™ for a page or two, of their entire paper is a response to mine. It seems like peer engagement is good/‘impressive’ but not sure how/if to display it in a CV.

Hmm, I don't know. I have come across CVs where people list venues in which their books have been reviewed, as well as a CV or two in which people list some of their PhilPapers stats (e.g., a paper of theirs that is in 'top 1%' of downloads), but I'm not sure how wise the latter is and don't think I've ever come across a CV that notes the number of citations a paper has.

For my part, I just include a link to my Google Scholar page at the top of my CV. This seems to me to be relatively unobtrusive, while giving a reader who might have any interest in that sort of thing (e.g., in tenure/promotion decisions) an easy way to look it up.

What do you all think, and what do you do in your CV?

 

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7 responses to “Listing engagement with your work in a CV?”

  1. weird

    Strange isn’t it. I think engagement should be more important than journal reputation, but practice-wise, listing journals is totally ok, but listing engagement just feels weird and desperate.

    Reply
  2. cvcvcvcvcvcvc…v

    I’ve seen CVs which list citations and h-index, at the beginning of the “research” or “publications” section. Like this:(85 total citations, h-index = 5, based on Google Scholar). Seems natural enough to me, but maybe I spend too much time in science-land.
    If I were on a search committee reviewing CVs, I would probably roll my eyes if I encountered a lot of discussion about “substantive engagement” by others UNLESS it was something like:
    – an Author Meets Critic session at a conference
    – a special issue of a journal or a workshop dedicated to their work
    Another exception might be in the public philosophy realm: mentioning that your work was featured in a philosophy podcast, a newspaper, or something like that is definitely worth doing

    Reply
  3. SLAC Associate

    I don’t ordinarily include it on my CV, but for my tenure & promotion application I added to each entry on my CV a citation count for each of my papers, along with a couple bullet points mentioning the most notable of those citations. I’m not sure if that qualified as “weird and desperate,” but it seemed important to provide evidence to the non-philosophers on the college T&P committee that my scholarship has impact in my field. I’m less convinced this kind of data collection is needed for purposes of job applications being read by other philosophers.

    Reply
  4. AnonymousL

    I don’t think people should be worried about listing this information on the CV. It strikes me as self promotion in a way which is too fine grained. If you think that this type of engagement with your work is worth noting in a particular setting (like a job application or tenure application) then you can mention it in your accompanying letter. “It may be worth noting that my paper on X has been cited (12) times” or whatever. Note that some areas in the field cite more than others and so this information has to be put in context anyway.

    Reply
  5. Bill Vanderburgh

    I think SLAC Associate and AnonymousL have it. That’s great info to include in a tenure file or merit pay evaluation, but I don’t think it fits in a c.v. I’d add, it is valuable to contextualize those accomplishments for non-philosophers on the committees, with info like acceptance rates, average citation rates for that journal or the field in general, and similar.
    For a job app, if you want to highlight that your work gets engagement from others, I’d put that (briefly!) in a cover letter. The committee can look up your stats if they really care. I saw someone list all the places their book was reviewed in a cv, and it struck me as very strange–that’s info for a promotion committee or a publisher when you are trying to get your next book contract.
    I wonder if things are different in England, where so much more emphasis is placed on rankings derived from publication metrics?

    Reply
  6. Tim

    On my CV, at the top of publications, I list my h-index and i-index. (I don’t list citations, since those changes more frequently.) I’ve never received a complaint about it. And I like listing it, since it provides a slightly more quantifiable way of measuring the significance of my work beyond journal reputation.

    Reply
  7. sisyphus

    Out of curiosity, what is a decent h-index in philosophy?? I realize it will depend a lot on what area of philosophy as I’m sure a “good” h-index in metaethics will be a very different than one in philosophy of science. Still, I’d be curious to know what kind of stats might actually be impressive for someone who’s early-career.

    Reply

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