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Here are a few guidelines regarding what can or should be represented in the various sections of your Common Application Form (CAF).
What can I list under "Peer Reviewed Journal Articles/Abstracts"?
What can I list under "Peer Reviewed Journal Articles/Abstracts (Other than Published)"?
-AT.
What can I list under "Peer Reviewed Journal Articles/Abstracts"?
- Articles that have been published in a peer-reviewed journal.
- Abstracts that have been published in a peer-reviewed journal. (This is rare, but generally some academic societies have their abstracts published in peer-reviewed journals. For example, abstracts from the International Society for Biomedical Research on Alcoholism World Congress, September 13-16, 2010 were published in a supplement to the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research. This is not a peer-reviewed venue in the traditional sense, so Still Kickin was right to express some reservations about this in another thread. If you were submitting materials for tenure, then you would not list this in any 'peer-reviewed' section of your CV. However, for the purposes of a medical student applying for residency training using the CAF, it is generally considered acceptable to list in this section.)
- For completed articles published in non-peer-reviewed venues (e.g., newspaper op-eds, Harvard Business School case studies), see below.
- For abstracts that have been 'published' not in peer-reviewed journals (e.g. conference abstract CD-ROM, conference program book, etc.) see below.
What can I list under "Peer Reviewed Journal Articles/Abstracts (Other than Published)"?
- Articles that have been accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal.
- Articles that have been conditionally accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal.
- For not-yet completed manuscripts that have been submitted for publication, not yet been submitted for publication but are intended for submission, etc., see below.
- Posters that were presented at a regional, national or international research conference. Generally this means that a physical item resembling a research poster was created, and you stood next to the poster during the poster session to discuss the work with viewers.
- Posters that were presented at a medical school 'research day' can be included here.
- Posters that you presented at a regional, national or international research conference, even if you were not listed as first author, can be included here.
- Posters that were presented by another member of your research team (i.e., not you) at a regional, national or international research conference, even if you were listed as one of the authors -- even if you were listed as first author -- should not be included here. A listing belongs here if you were the one who did the talking.
- Presentations given at a regional, national or international research conference. Generally this means that you delivered a presentation from a podium in a lecture hall.
- 'Grand Rounds' presentations (that were explicitly labeled as such) delivered at an academic medical center or community hospital can be included here. This is a nod to medical tradition, as 'Grand Rounds' presentations are typically afforded a greater degree of prestige and visibility the medical field (rightly or wrongly so).
- Other teaching presentations delivered in a relatively high-visibility setting (e.g., a presentation on ACLS as part of a training course for para-medical professionals, CME talks, a 'brown bag' seminar at a Department of Economics, etc.) can be included here.
- Presentations delivered to your hospital ward team during routine clinical care, in a journal club setting, etc. are generally not included here.
- Significant publications that do not belong in the other categories can be included here. For example: books, book chapters, newspaper op-eds, the American Journal of Psychiatry's "Electronic Edition for Residents", etc. If it seems weird to you that a full-length book is downgraded in the eyes of science, then that is generally an accurate description of perceptions in the field. A book is not peer reviewed and carries less weight in the academy then a body of peer-reviewed journal articles. For example, the 'intelligent design' movement is typically denigrated because it has not published in a peer reviewed venue (even though its proponents have published many very widely read books). As another example, Samantha Power won a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award for her book, 'A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide', but her academic appointment is 'professor of practice' because her body of work has not been published in peer reviewed venues.
- This section includes all research experience. It would be appropriate to highlight work that has led to publications in any fora (peer-reviewed or not) or awards. For example, "Under the supervision of Professor XYZ, I studied the year-end transfer process of resident continuity clinic patients and the impact of a caseload construction algorithm on physician workload. For this project I conducted the chart review and implemented the statistical analyses. This work was presented at Conference XYZ (see below) and has been submitted for publication in Journal XYZ." Note here the explicit reference "see below" avoids the appearance of double-counting.
- If you were an author on research that was presented in abstract form at a conference, either as a poster or oral presentation, but you were not the presenter, then you can list the research under 'peer reviewed journal articles/abstracts' if it was published in a peer reviewed journal. If the research was not published in a peer reviewed journal (either as a full article or as an abstract), then you should not list it in any of the categories above. It would be appropriate to describe your involvement in the research project in the 'Research Experience' section.
- If you were an author on a draft manuscript that is intended for submission to a peer reviewed journal, or has been submitted for publication in a peer reviewed journal, or is currently under review at a peer reviewed journal, but has not advanced further in the publication process (e.g., revise and resubmit, provisionally accepted, accepted for publication, in press, etc.) then you should not list it under 'peer reviewed journal articles'. It would be appropriate to describe your involvement in the research project in the 'Research Experience' section. For example: "Under the supervision of Professor XYZ, I studied the modulation of working memory performance in healthy volunteers with non-invasive cortical stimulation. I also regularly performed clinical assessments in the lab's clinic. We have completed a draft manuscript, "The modulation of working memory performance in children with autism", and by September we plan to submit it for publication in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders."
- Some program directors have been known to ask for any publications listed in your CAF. Therefore, if you do not yet have a draft manuscript available, then you should not describe it as a 'draft manuscript' in this section.
- In general, you should only include listings that you are comfortable representing as your level of involvement in a particular category.
- Be conservative in your category assignments. If you are perceived by residency application reviewers to be 'upselling', that will reflect negatively on your application.
- If you are generally curious about a category assignment, search the SDN forum archives to see if your situation has been described by another applicant in the past. If your search of the SDN forum archives does not yield any fruitful answers, consider posting a question on the SDN forum.
- If you are considering posting a question on the SDN forum because you just want to see how much upselling you can get away with, then please do not post your question.
- If you gave a (poster or oral) presentation at a conference, and the abstract corresponding to your presentation was subsequently published in a peer-reviewed journal (e.g., abstracts from the Annual Scientific Meeting of the Research Society on Alcoholism), then you can list in more than one category: (a) peer reviewed journal abstracts, and (b) (poster or oral) presentations.
- If you gave a (poster or oral) presentation at a conference, and the abstract corresponding to your presentation was 'published' in a non-peer reviewed venue (such as the conference program book or CD-ROM), then see above: this would not count as a 'peer reviewed' publication, and you should not list in more than one category. (If this seems like a capricious function of the academic society's decision about whether or not to commission a journal supplement, it is. If you feel like this is 'unfair' because you don't get to list your work in the 'peer reviewed journal abstracts' section of the CAF, then get over it. Life is unfair.)
-AT.