A Guide to Listing Research and Publications on your Resume or CV

With there being only so much room on your resume or CV, space can get taken up very easily…

Making you wonder…

Should all my publications and research get listed on my resume?

It’s a big question with a simple answer.

If you’ve got work or papers that:

Then you most definitely should include them on your resume. You want your prospective employer to be able to see exactly what you’re capable of and the actual work you’ve done is perfect.

You want to make it easy for the person thinking about hiring you to see your range of experience and knowledge in your field; this is what citing your published work will do.

Papers will also demonstrate some soft skills like good writing and the ability to analyze data.

When you’ve got a good library of publications, how do you choose which ones to include?

What format should you use in your citation?

For answers, you’ve come to the right place.

We’ve pulled together the rules and tips you need for adding your publications to your resume or CV to help get things perfect.

The right time to add publications to a resume or CV

The first thing you need to do is assess the job role that you’re applying for and decide if your published work is relevant.

You only have a small amount of space and it gets full, quickly.

The best advice you’ll get is to only include publications that match the job you’re applying for and support the points you’re making elsewhere in the resume.

To make it easy to follow, here are the main times you’re going to find listing your publications to be useful on your resume or CV:

Deciding which publications to use on your CV or resume

Your first instinct is probably to add everything you’ve ever achieved in life, but you need to make sure you’re targeting your information to the person reading your document.

• When you have papers that confer kudos, make you look more qualified, or demonstrate key skills for the role, these are the papers that you include.
• When you’ve got industry-specific publications or ones that really highlight a skillset, make sure you add them on.
• Articles about hobbies or casual subjects probably aren’t going to impress the hiring manager and can be omitted.

With all of this to think about, you’re probably thinking about which publications are the right ones to add to your resume or CV.

For your curriculum vitae, note down anything that has authority in its field that has been or will soon be published.

These could be:

• Books for academia
• Journal and publication research papers
• Not-yet-published research papers
• Articles of a scholarly nature
• Papers presented at conferences

The right type of publications to list on your resume include:

• Presentations at trade conferences
• Chapters of books or whole books
• Trade association magazine articles
• Industry journal publications

Pro-Tip

Not every publication belongs on your CV. Don’t include blogs, website content, or nonscientific or magazine articles. Also, if your thesis didn’t get published, it belongs in your “Education” section.

Why are resumes and CVs different for listing publications?

The question of the difference between a CV and resume should probably be tackled first!

Briefly…

Your resume contains a summary of your skills and experience in brief, covering just one or two pages.

Conversely, your CV is packed with detail and will run well over two pages in length.

You should be writing a different resume that’s specific to each position you’re applying for, whilst your CV remains static and you tailor your cover letter for each job you go for.

How does all of this affect how you show your published work?

This breaks it down for you:

Getting to the nitty-gritty…

Examples for listing publications on a resume

You’re here because you’re wondering…

Let’s answer that for you…

We’re going to give you the rules you need to follow for citing publications on your resume. It includes the order you need to use and the simple structure to follow to give you the perfect Publications section of your resume:

• Use a dedicated section called “Publications” so it’s easy for the recruiter to find
• Order it using reverse chronology, meaning you start with the most recently published and give each publication its own bullet point. Pick out your recent and relevant works so you can conserve space for all the other important things
• Pick the right style for your list. You don’t need to follow MLA (Modern Language Association) or APA (American Psychological Association) styling, rather you can make a list that covers the title of the work, where it was published, and the date it was featured. As an example: “Components of Neo-gothic Churches in Nineteenth-Century England” British Journal of Architecture, June 2018

Pro-Tip

APA style is a writing style and format for academic documents such as scholarly journal articles and books. It is commonly used for citing sources within the field of behavioral and social sciences. It was developed by The American Psychological Association.
MLA style is the leading style of documentation for literary research, as well as academic papers in the humanities field. It was developed by The Modern Language Association.

For including a written publication, it should look like this:

• Title of article or chapter, then the name of the journal/magazine/website
• Last name of the author, then first and middle names or initials
• Publication year
• Issue or publisher’s number, and volume and page numbers where applicable
• If the paper is available online, be sure to add the URL too

To cite a paper presented at a conference:

• Note your role, such as presenter, panelist, or keynote speaker
• The topic or title that was discussed
• Conference or forum name
• Where and when the presentation took place

Imagine you’re looking for a SEO consultant role and the skills you need to be showing are around SEO.

This is an example of how you’d cite relevant publications for these key skills:

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Examples for listing publications on a CV

We’ve already established that…

Your CV, or curriculum vitae, is what you use instead of a resume in the world of academia.

Rather than picking out the best bits of your publication history for your resume, on your CV you get to show absolutely everything you’ve had published during your career, except obsolete one.

There are a few different things to consider when you’re formatting your publications to go on to your CV:

• Have the right format. With only a few publications to cite you can just add a section called “Research and Publications” within your CV, when your list is more comprehensive you’ll need to use dedicated pages for your citations
• Be consistent with your style of citations, whether you choose to use MLA or APA. A general rule of thumb is that humanities fields like languages, social sciences, and philosophy generally use MLA whilst science and engineering fields tend to opt for APA style.
• Go in reverse chronological order starting with your most recent published work and go back in descending order, all the way back to your first published article
• Don’t refer to publications that are now obsolete, you’re fine to ignore things that have been superseded or aren’t relevant to your job or field any more
• Note work that’s yet to be published but is being peer-reviewed at the time you’re writing your CV. Format these papers in italics and don’t include the name of the journal you have sent them to.
• Highlight your byline when you have co-authors or collaborators by putting your name in bold, remember not to miss out on anyone’s name

Here’s a guide to the different styles that you may be expected to use:

To give you some examples of what your listed publications would look like based on the type of work and the style you decide to use:

Pro-Tip

Make sure you keep your list up to date as your career progresses and you get more articles, books, or presentations published. Each time something new goes live, add it to the top of your CV’s Publication and Research section.

Summing Up

When you have publications to cite on your CV or resume, it shows that you have skills, knowledge, and interest in your field. A potential employer will only see this in a positive light; they want you to be engaged in the work that you do.

It’s really important that everything that you include about your published history is correct and up to date, as well as relevant.

You can add publications to your CV or resume in a number of ways, depending on your field and purpose.

To be doubly sure that you’ve got it, here’s how to write publications on a resume and CV:

Publications on your resume:

• Put them in a separate section called “Publications”
• Include each publication in a new bullet point
• List the year and title
• Add the name of the magazine, website, or journal
• Only include publications that are relevant to the job you’re applying for

For your CV, usually, you'd include all your academic publications.

Publications for your CV:

• Include all of your academic publications
• Choose a citation style for your list and stick to it
• Start with the most recent publication and work backward
• Bold your byline when you’ve shared credit
• Don’t use outdated, disproved, or obsolete works

However, you choose to format your list, make sure that it looks tidy and well organized so any hiring manager knows exactly what they’re looking at.

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Article by:

SweetCV team