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How to list reviewing on a CV?

In our new “how can we help you?” thread, a reader asks,

When people referee one manuscript twice–first time as in its original version, and second time in its revised & resubmitted version–how many referring services do they count as having done in terms of their CVs? Can they put [Journal name] (X2) or should they put [Journal name] (X1)?

I don’t list the number of times I’ve reviewed for a given journal on a CV, but if I did I wouldn’t count reviewing R&Rs toward the number.

What do readers think/do?

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16 responses to “How to list reviewing on a CV?”

  1. Never seen it

    I’ve never noticed anyone listing how many times they had reviewed on their CV and I can’t imagine what it would e good for (maybe we SHOULD recognize service to the field. But I don’t ‘think we are doing so)

    Reply
  2. Michel

    I would count it. It comes as a separate request a d requires another reading. It’s usually faster, sure, but it’s an additional task.

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  3. Dan

    I don’t list numbers at all– it seems a bit ‘bean counting-y’–but think that, if one does list numbers, the number should refer to the number of papers not to versions of the same paper, so the number should remain 1 in the case OP describes.

    Reply
  4. Bill V.

    I think reviewing the R&R is widely thought of as just part of reviewing the paper: x1

    Reply
  5. Altos

    I agree with Michel, it is x2.

    Reply
  6. CW

    For my externally-facing cv (e.g., job market, school website), I just list journals, without years/numbers of reviews. For my internally-facing cv (used for, say, yearly review, P&T), I list everything, dates, numbers, and so on, with some explanation (e.g., initial review vs second read).

    Reply
  7. Committees know how reviewing works

    Reviewing an R&R is part of the same review process. You review *one* paper. If an R&R’d paper comes back as completely new, then the author did not do a good job.

    Reply
  8. Daniel

    I list # of times I’ve reviewed for each journal and unless little has changed, I list an R&R as a separate review. Basically I want to keep track for myself how many substantive reviews I’ve done because the ideal is that you do at least as many reviews as you receive. If I receive substantive comments on an R&R I count those as someone helping me out and something that I thus owe back to the profession at large, so I also count substantive R&Rs I do for other people’s papers as part of the service I do to the profession. So that’s how I track it on my CV, because that’s my record keeping.

    Reply
  9. postdoc

    I’ve been counting it as 1 paper = 1 review, even if I re-review that paper multiple times. I include counts mainly because I’m early career and I thought it might look good if well-regarded journals have asked me to review multiple separate papers. However, I now worry listing x2 or x3 isn’t meaningful if lots of folks are instead assuming that means I’ve done a single R&R. It would be nice if conventions like this were more standardized than it appears from the comments.

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  10. Tim

    I list both journal and number of times I reviewed. Just listing the journal has always struck me as prestige chasing, whereas listing journal and number tells useful information about how much service work a person does. My own internal standard is whether or not I have to write a report. If I get an RnR and just accept or reject quickly, then I don’t add it to the tally. If I get an RnR and end up writing another report regardless of verdict, then I add it to the tally. But I’m learning this internal standard might be out of sync!

    Reply
  11. grymes

    Here’s an argument. The reason I list the number of times I’ve refereed is that service is part of my job, and is taken into account in annual (and promotion) reviews. Reasonably precise bean-counting is incentivized because service is supposed to take up approximately 20% of my time/effort. If I review an R&R, that’s (usually) substantially more time/effort than if I just review an initial submission. So, I’m incentivized to write “(x2)”, to (honestly) signal that additional time/effort to my employers.

    A similar line of argument works for those on the job market, who wish to honestly signal the time and effort they have spent on service to potential future employers.

    What’s the argument on the other side? Why count “review processes” rather than (approximately) days in which you dedicated a chunk of time to service to the profession? Of course, I’d love to referee purely for the love of the game. (That is *mostly* why I do a lot of it.) But if I were reffing purely for the love of the game, I wouldn’t list it on my CV at all. (Ideally, I wouldn’t have a CV at all!) A CV is a bean ledger.

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  12. speaking for myself

    I have not thought about this too much, so just as an innocent data point:

    I do not list the numbers, only the journals. I think it is indicative enough to anyone reading the cv that I am doing my service part. But I don’t need it to be exhaustive and also, adding numbers does not make it significantly more evidence that I am doing good service. And would appear slightly tacky? I don’t know.

    Anyway, I don’t feel it needs to be as explicit as publications. They are so fundamentally different kinds of information.

    Reply
  13. Altos

    In defense of including the count on a CV: I think that, other things being equal, someone who has refereed quite a lot for a bunch of journals is doing better, along some dimension, than someone who has refereed only a little for those same journals. They have performed more of a valuable service, assuming they took it seriously and did a reasonably good job. And their feedback is more consistently valued by editors.

    In defense of counting the R&R as x2: I think the clearest rule is to list the number of *reviews*, not *papers reviewed*. This is what journals themselves do in their editorial systems. The R&R is a separate request, which reviewers are free to decline. (It is especially reasonable to decline if one did not recommend R&R in the first place.) And it sometimes takes just as long to read and provide feedback on a revision as on the original manuscript. I find reviewing multiple rounds to usually take significantly more work than just a single round.

    Reply
  14. Daniel

    I list the journals I’ve reviewed for and, with each journal entry, the year(s) I’ve reviewed a paper for that journal. And reviewing an r&r counts as a separate review, since the papers are often substantially new and I don’t find they take reliably less time to review. I list the years so that I can show that I’m consistently active reviewing and that several journals consistently come back to me with requests (and so I must be doing a decent enough job at it).

    Reply
  15. A review is a review

    Well be honest. If you say “number of peer reviews,” then give the number of peer reviews. If you say “number of papers reviewed,” give that.

    Because people don’t necessarily note the distinction, and the number of peer reviews is higher, listing the number of peer reviews is probably the more prudent thing to do.

    Another thought I just had is that someone who actually cares about the number would be incentivized to reject everything if they use “number of papers reviewed.” That seems bad. So maybe there’s a moral as well as prudential reason for using number of reviews rather than number of papers.

    Reply
  16. assc prof

    I treat it as a second review. After all, it’s more work than had I not done it (sometimes less than the original review, sometimes the same, sometimes more), and so it would be odd if it didn’t count for something. Also, I am often explicitly asked, whether at the initial review or at the R and R stage, whether I’d be willing to review revised versions. If the second review is just part of the first review, the request would strike me as odd (I’m not asked if, in addition to doing the initial review, I’m willing to submit comments to the editor). But all this is solved just by being explicit which one you’re choosing to use on your CV.

    Reply

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