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Listing submitted papers, etc. on a CV?

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

CV question: do you list submitted papers or posters to conferences, or ongoing session planning for a future conference, on your CV?

Maybe just adding it to the list of papers/posters presented and sessions organized, with a note that its still just a submission or in progress or by a separate section "Conferences Submissions" (or something like that?

I ask both because I am cleaning my CV for the end of year filing at my PhD program and for an application to an academic society.

I have to confess that I find it a bit strange when people list submitted pieces on a CV. If you're on the job-market and have a revise-and-resubmit to a journal, then I can understand listing that, as a committee might see it as relevant information. But merely submitted stuff (including conference submissions)? I guess it's hard for me to see what probative value that has, at least for the job-market. But maybe these things are relevant for an "end of the year filing" within a PhD program? I've never heard of this before, but I guess in this case it might show that you've been productive in the sense of getting things out for review. And maybe the same is true for things like applications to academic societies? As for session planning for conferences, I think that seems like something one can list for service, as it shows you're being active in the profession.

What do readers think?

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13 responses to “Listing submitted papers, etc. on a CV?”

  1. Incoming Job Market Candidate

    The incoming job market folks at my program just had a big meeting with our placement director and some faculty, and here is what we decided (I’d love to know if others agree/disagree!):
    -If you list an R&R (which is fine), it should not be under “Publications” but rather a separate “In progress” section.
    -Do not distinguish between “under review” and merely “in progress”. Rather, only list those papers for which you have a full draft available, and that you would be happy to send to a member of a search committee.
    -So, ultimately you should have two sections of the CV for papers. One for accepted publications (a conditional acceptance would be okay here), and one for “In Progress (drafts available upon request)” where the only further distinction one would make on this section is whether you have already received an R&R.
    -You should only have one section for Presentations, and any conference submission that has not yet been accepted should be listed under “In Progress,” and only if there is a corresponding paper already finished that you would be okay sending to people (versus merely an extended abstract, outline, or slides that will, someday, be turned into a paper).
    -There was less agreement about whether you should also list the journal at which the R&R is at- though I believe slightly more people thought any journal worth submitting to is worth listing on your CV as an R&R, and that the benefits of doing so outweigh the risks of compromising anonymity
    -We did not discuss future but accepted conference presentations during the meeting, but as far as I know the standard is to list them as “expected.” So if you get accepted to the Eastern APA this month, you could list that as “Eastern Apa (exp. Jan. 2026)” similar to listing a journal article as forthcoming.

    Reply
  2. Andrew

    On submitted pieces generally — not necessarily conference submissions — listing submitted papers on your CV gives you a place to link to the Arxiv version. In a lot of disciplines, including some parts of philosophy, people are starting to take preprints more seriously, worrying less about whether something has gone through the journal system yet and more about whether it is (1) a finished piece of research, and (2) interesting and good. In many fields, preprints don’t just go on your CV, they often go straight into the same list as all your published papers (e.g., this is normal in neuroscience and comp sci). I don’t think this is a bad norm, especially if it’s weakened so we put preprints in their own section like philosophers do.
    Putting submitted/commissioned/in preparation papers on your CV can also help show that you do, in fact, do serious work on whatever you say you do in your cover letter. If you’re early career and have mostly just published your work on X, but you describe yourself as doing X and Y, listing submitted/in prep papers on Y is a natural way of showing that you are doing that work. And even aside from how you pitch your research, if you’re early career and waiting to hear back from journals, your publication record just isn’t a great indication of the research you do: it’s a bit random which of your work has been accepted yet and which hasn’t, and your publication record lags 6-18 months behind your finished research — a big deal if you’re only 2-3 years into your career. So I tend to think the submitted/in prep section is useful to show the topics you work on and the breadth of your work in a way that published/accepted papers often don’t.
    I’m a lot more confident in the first paragraph than the second. I’m curious what folks who have been on hiring committees think of the second. Also, this is largely about Marcus’s reaction, and doesn’t really speak in favor of listing conference submissions (at least in a field like ours where those are not a unit of research the same way a paper is).

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  3. Bill V.

    It is sometimes useful to list submitted papers on a CV, even conference proposals, especially if you don’t yet have many published papers. It can go some way toward supporting a claim to have an AOC or to show that you have an active/promising research program.
    Crucially, submitted items belong in the Works in Progress section. I am firmly in the camp that says you should not mention the journal to which you have submitted; for conferences, it matters less.
    Provide info to explain the status of each item. E.g., (article under review), (revised version under review), (invited chapter, under review), (in progress; abstract of abbreviated version submitted for conference), (co-authored with X and Y; my contribution was 45%; under review), etc.
    Two related thoughts: (1) An overly-lengthy Works in Progress section, especially when there are few/no published works, looks a bit off. Two or three entries is plenty to show that you are actively working on things. (2) Conference presentations count for very little anyway (posters even less), so merely-submitted conference contributions count for almost nothing. Which is to say, don’t sweat it too much.

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  4. Karl

    What Incoming Job Market Candidate said seems quite right to me. I’d add (because this needs to be explicit) that under no circumstances should one name the journal that is reviewing your paper until they explicitly express interest in publishing it somehow. A CV that says “‘An empirical and philosophically rigorous proof of mind body dualism’ under review at the Journal of Philosophy” screams that the author is unaware of professional norms.

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  5. Daniel Weltman

    Agree with the stuff Incoming Job Market Candidate says. I’ll just add that it is of course totally fine not to list anything except accepted/published stuff. You don’t need an in-progress section if you don’t want one. Your research statement will list in progress stuff and the chances of someone skipping your research statement and only looking at your CV and assuming you have no in-progress stuff because it’s not listed is minuscule, while the chances of (mildly) pissing someone off because they think you should only list accepted/published stuff on your CV is greater than minuscule. Meanwhile the chances of both things are so small that it’s not worth sweating it one way or the other.

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  6. spend your time on your dissertation

    This is too trivial to spend more than 5s of your time thinking about and any time whatsoever worrying about.
    List whatever you like, just make it clear and don’t do anything misleading.

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  7. Bill V.

    IMO, FWIW, given the extremely low acceptance rates at the top-ranked journals, in the range of 2-10%, saying “I’ve submitted this paper to [top-ranked journal]” is very much like saying, “Almost certainly, this paper won’t be published in [top-ranked journal].”

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  8. Incoming Job Market Candidate

    I laughed out loud at Bill’s comment above – so true! Our placement director would be absolutely horrified if any of us listed an article as submitted at a specific journal.
    Tbh, he was even hesitant about us listing R&Rs, given the potential awkwardness of a post-R&R rejection. I think that speaks in favor of only listing an R&R that seems highly likely to be ultimately published, versus one where really major revisions were asked for or one of the reports was much more critical than the other.

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  9. Tim

    I think it is useful to list papers in progress. It gives a sense of the volume and topic of research the job candidate is likely to do in the next 1-3 years.
    Speaking personally, I always chuckled when I saw a job candidate list that certain papers had been submitted or were under review. There’s no special status attached to submitting a paper–anyone can do that. If someone listed both papers in progress and under review, it made me wonder if they naively thought there was a special status to submitting!

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  10. Caligula’s Goat

    Incoming Job Market Candidate gets it right with the first post. There isn’t a difference between papers that have been submitted and those that are listed as in progress. They should all be added under one section “In Progress.”
    All I can add that I hope is useful is that:
    1. Anything you list on your CV is something you should be ready to share. Do not list a paper as “in progress” unless you’re willing to share what you have with a committee. In other words, things listed as being in progress should be actually “in progress” and not just “I could write a paper about this someday and I’ll list that to pad up the CV.”
    2. In my view (highly ranked SLAC without a grad program) conference presentations don’t matter very much unless you don’t have any publications. The earlier you are in your grad program the more they tend to count (e.g., a 5th year grad student testing out the job market waters with zero publications but three APA talks may be competitive for certain places in a way that the same person in their 7th year with the same profile wouldn’t be). A long list of conferences without any publications may even sometimes work against you.
    3. The further out you are from the PhD the less it matters that you list works in progress. If you’re five years out from the PhD and you haven’t developed a steady publication record that would get you tenure at the institution you’re applying to a job at then it’s really unlikely that having works in progress will help.
    Good luck out there everyone!

    Reply
  11. Regional campus prof

    4-4 load regional campus person here, fwiw. I have been on a couple search committees recently and I would just reiterate the importance of clearly distinguishing actual publications from other things (whether an R&R or a draft). When there is fudging on this point, it makes me wonder whether the person is either being less than honest (in which case, hard pass) or really doesn’t have a clue how things work (not as bad, but not great). Either way, it’s very annoying. I wouldn’t expect a works in progress section; I’d assume you have some projects going, and we can talk about that in the interview if you get there. For us, conference presentations are a plus; to get tenure here, you don’t have to have a ton of publications, but a steady pattern of conference presentations (even if not fancy ones) is viewed very positively as an indication that you’re active in scholarship.
    Tl;dr Please be clear; we are busy and tired!

    Reply
  12. Academic migrant

    Related question. Let’s say I am applying to a more senior position. I have already a tt position in a respected place, plenty of publications, a significant number of these are in excellent journals (for my specialty), and an edited book in a major academic press. But I have also a book contract (one of those Cambridge Elements) with a major scholar in the field. How do I put a book contract in the cv, especially these Elements?

    Reply
  13. Charles Pigden

    I will repeat what I have said elsewhere. I am not sure whether you should list papers under review, but IF you do, you MUST clearly distinguish them from actual or forthcoming publications. There are few things you can do on a CV that are more calculated to annoy your readers than to force them to sift through the damned thing distinguishing real achievements from mere aspirations. I am inclined to think that if you are VERY early on in your career with (say) zero–to-two- publications, It is worth listing your ‘under reviews’ in order to make the point that you are a research-active scholar. But once you have a few genuine publications under your belt (especially if they are in good venues) I think that it is better to leave them off. For the reasons outlined by Allen Wood on his blog, short punchy cvs in which the candidate’s real achievements jump out at you, are much to be preferred to long boring screeds full of aspirational blather. Remember search committee members are LOOKING for reasons to eliminate people (since they sometimes have hundreds of applications to work their way though before arriving at their top ten) and a CV the either wastes their time or creates a suspicion of dishonesty will send you to the bottom of the pile. For the same reason papers should be clearly distinguished from presentations.

    Reply

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