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Miscellaneous CV questions

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

I have questions about miscellaneous things for a CV.

Should conference panel moderating go on a CV and, if so, where?

Should academic journals or articles which are reviewed by the editorial board, but not external blind reviewers, go under the same heading or a different one from blind-peer review articles?

Is it still normative to include personal contact details on a CV in addition to institutional contact information?

I've seen some people put conference commentaries on CVs, but to me that and conference panel moderating seems like "CV padding" to me. Maybe if you don't have much on your CV, it makes sense–but I suspect it's not going to help anyone much. On the second question, I'm not 100% sure, but different categories seems nitpicky to me. As long as you're clear about the actual peer-review processes, say in annual reviews or tenure and promotion files, it seems to me okay to place anything that had peer review (anonymized or not) under a category of peer-reviewed publications. When it comes to contact information, I don't know.

What do readers think? Also, if you have any CV questions yourself, please feel free to ask them and discuss in the comments section below. It could be nice to have a discussion of "all things CV" in one place!

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10 responses to “Miscellaneous CV questions”

  1. frustrated

    A slightly tangential issue:
    make it easy to find your e-mail on-line. I am invited to do all sorts of things, and I decline many offers … I am sometimes looking to recommend someone whose work I have read (but do not know), as a substitute, to referee a paper, present at a workshop, contribute a book review or a paper on a panel at a conference. If it takes more than two clicks to find your e-mail then I will give up. It is surprising how hard people have made it to find their e-mails

    Reply
  2. Marcus Arvan

    @frustrated: I’ll second that. It’s a problem that I run into all too often with the New Work in Philosophy substack. I’ll see an interesting looking paper on PhilPapers, want to reach out to the author, and find it way too difficult to actually track down a working email address.
    If you have a PhilPeople page, register your email! And, if you post paper preprints in their PhilArchive, make sure your paper has your email address in it. I actually find it surprising how many papers don’t include any contact information.

    Reply
  3. Tim O’Keefe

    I’d have to look at people’s CVs more widely and systematically to confirm this, but my own vague sense is that lots of people do include commentaries on others’ papers on their CV (I do), and I don’t think it would, or should, be considered padding. It’s not at all a big deal, but reading a person’s paper carefully, coming up with a thoughtful set of comments, and then going to a conference or colloquium and presenting them takes a decent amount of time and effort. For me, it takes at least as much time as peer reviewing a paper for a journal–actually a fair amount more in most cases–and I note my peer reviewing too. Both of these activities aren’t going to count for much for P&T purposes (or for getting hired), but they’re legit, and they ways of being active and contributing to the profession. But I wouldn’t put down moderating a panel in my CV, because that really is pretty trivial–it’s just a matter of showing up, introducing the speaker and commentator, and (maybe) helping to call on people who want to ask questions.

    Reply
  4. Trevor Hedberg

    I’ll echo Tim’s remark that conference commentaries are a common CV inclusion and that I do not consider them “padding” in the typical meaning of that term. I agree that they are usually at least as much work as peer reviewing a journal article and that both are appropriate to include on the CV. Commentaries should, however, be appropriately labeled as such and not just lumped in with other types of conference presentations.
    Whether or not to list the panel moderating is likely a judgment call. I do have a short section on my own CV where I list conference chairing as a subsection under professional service. If properly labeled, I don’t think it hurts to list something like that — it’s further evidence of participating in the scholarly community. But I also don’t think it will make any difference for job applications, promotion, etc.

    Reply
  5. Gauche is a nice word actually

    Other job market candidates in my AOS list job talks in their CVs as invited presentations. Should I? I think it is kind of gauche to be honest, but I don’t want to harm my possibilities either…

    Reply
  6. David

    To “Gauche is a nice word actually:”
    I agree, that practice smells wrong. Job talks aren’t strictly invited, since the person being considered for the job is applying for a position–which eventually elicits the “invitation” to do the job talk.
    I’d email the dean or departmental chair at my own university to ask how the viewed this practice before putting job talks as Invited Presentations on my CV.

    Reply
  7. grymes

    CVs are by their very nature gauche. If you’ve been invited to give a talk, list the talk.

    Reply
  8. earlycareer

    should we organize publications by type (journal article vs. book chapter) or whether it was peer-reviewed vs. invited? The latter doesn’t seem as straightforward because many invited pieces are also peer-reviewed but I get the sense that that’s that philosophers really care about…

    Reply
  9. Frank

    Are “conference proceedings” only those publications which exist only as proceedings for some conference? Or are published books which compile conference proceedings and journals which include a section of an issue for conference papers also “conference proceedings” on a CV? These latter two seem to also be able to filed under “journal articles” or “book chapters.”

    Reply
  10. voice

    Frank
    Conference proceedings is a genre – popular in computer science and other fields that move very quickly. There is no real equivalence in philosophy, though Philosophy of Science publishes the proceedings of the PSA biennial conferences (so they are proceedings of sorts). With the latter, you should probably list it under journal articles but do not try to hide the fact that it is a PSA proceedings, rather than a regular issue. And special issues of journals based on conference papers are journal articles, but it is worth noting if it is in a special issue. Generally, this back door way through a conference is an easier way to get published (lower rejection rates). If you are on the market, and you are seeking to be competitive for the more selective jobs in the field, then the best thing you can do is place articles in high ranked journals. So for jobs in philosophy of science, it is good to have papers in BJPS and PhilSci.

    Reply

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