Can I Include My Wikipedia Page?
How often have you seen this old chestnut used when discussing hiring managers?
"They can't read, but they can certainly count."
Simple translation: When choosing between two similarly-qualified candidates, scuttlebutt suggests that the person with the most publications will advance to the next round of interviews. Of course, this begs another question...what counts as a "publication?"
Ask five scientists, and you'll get five different answers. Certainly, anything peer-reviewed merits inclusion. Ditto invited submissions, books, patents, reviews, or essays. But here's where the boundaries grow fuzzy.
Can you include anything 'scholarly' on your CV to pad the stats?
[Insert embarrassing admission here]: I'm the guy who clicks on the "Show CV" link on faculty webpages. I find a strange (masochistic?) pleasure in comparing my career, such as it is, to those in similar age brackets or research areas. Certainly, these are folks who've played the game and won, so what do they choose to include? Here's a partial list:
Abstracts
Publications "In press," "Accepted," "ASAP," "Proofs," "Submitted," "In Preparation"
Book Chapters
Conference Proceedings
Foreword / Introduction / Prologue
Afterword
Newspaper or magazine articles
Poetry
Plays
Book reviews
Perspectives
Research Summaries / Synopses
Blogs / Tweets / Comments
I'm sure I'm missing some; please suggest any others you've seen in the Comments section.
The simplest way to avoid any ethical boondoggles? Maintain separate lists of publications by type, or simply list "peer-reviewed" vs. "not." Will you be hired over the person who lumps 'em all together?
Wish I knew.
