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Listing “selected publications” to avoid drawing attention to a low-ranked journal publication?

In our recent thread on whether publications in lower-ranked journals hurt job-candidates (especially for jobs at research institutions), a reader asks:

Say that a candidate has 15 publications in Various Tippy Top Journals, and 1 publication in No-name Low-Prestige Journal (say, because it’s on a topic that the top journals don’t care about). We’ve heard reported in this thread that that 1 outlier publication could actually hurt the candidate for some research jobs. From the perspective of appealing to premier research jobs, would it be smart for the candidate to simply leave that 1 outlier publication off their CV? Is there any reason not to do that? If they do make that choice, should they represent their CV publication list as “Select Publications”? Or does that not really matter?

It seems wild to me that a hiring committee would hold one outlier publication against a candidate with an otherwise stellar publication record. But, in any case, we’ve discussed leaving things off CVs before and I recall the general consensus being that it’s a big “no, no”–as CVs are supposed to be full records a person’s career accomplishments. Then again, if the CV is transparent in the way the OP suggests, listing “Selected Publications”, then maybe that’s OK?

What do readers think?

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3 responses to “Listing “selected publications” to avoid drawing attention to a low-ranked journal publication?”

  1. Charles Pigden

    I think this is a silly question. The idea that someone who had fifteen publications in top-tier journals would actually be *harmed* by slightly sub-par publication is utterly ridiculous. Hence there is no need develop strategies for dealing with this problem. (Also, how many young philosophers on the job market have FIFTEEN publications in top twenty journals? I am prepared to be impressed by examples of boy or girl wonders, but I suspect that such people are few and far between.)

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    1. Anonymous

      It’s ridiculous but true. The advice I (and others) used to be given shows as much, and that’s why the comments on that earlier thread broke the way they did. (And: many young philosophers have that sort of publication record… I was one of them [and not a ‘wonder’], although only had about 7-8 journal articles in the top twenty-ish journals back then. I had a top 3 PGR PhD… And I struggled for 5 years to land a TT job. (Sounds to me like you were one of those lucky ones who (maybe a long time ago?) got their first job without having to publish much, if at all.)

      Reply
  2. Anonymous

    I just want to say that if search committees are dismissing job candidates over something like “one publication in a journal I hadn’t heard of,” and if candidates are so concerned about this that they are considering leaving a major professional achievement (a publication!) off of their CV, then I think something has gone horribly wrong with both the discipline of philosophy and its job search process. I find the entire approach of assessing people’s worth as philosophers based on made up prestige rankings of mostly corporately owned publication venues to be inaccurate and inhuman. The celebrity culture in philosophy along with its strict social hierarches is simply juvenile. All the fixation on imagined prestige discourages people from doing actually virtuous research and leading virtuous lives. If someone doesn’t want to hire me because one of my papers doesn’t have enough fake gilding on the walls then I don’t think I want to work with them. /rant

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