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Editorial: ‘Is that for real?’: curriculum vitae padding

2013; Wiley; Volume: 22; Issue: 17-18 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/jocn.12161

1365-2702

Michelle Cleary, Garry Walter, Debra Jackson,

Ethics in Business and Education

In this editorial, we address the thorny topic of curriculum vitae (CV) padding. The term refers to the practice of misrepresenting one's achievements or contributions to a particular field, with the aim of inflating one's record or role(s) for the purpose of securing an unfair advantage over others in competitive endeavours. We are not referring here to the rarer practice of falsifying formal degrees, qualifications and professional registration, although some may regard these as the extreme on a continuum of poor behaviour. It is widely acknowledged that deliberate misrepresentation in CVs is becoming a growing problem (Wexler 2006, Nosnik et al. 2010). Curriculum Vitae padding is often a subtle mode of dishonesty that can assume many forms. Among the forms that will be briefly mentioned here are misrepresenting one's supervisor experiences, contribution as an author, research grant successes, reviewer roles and teaching awards. In relation to a past or current supervisor role, even the most casual association with a higher degree student may be improperly described in a CV or job application as supervision experience. This means that a very informal and short-term (possibly even one-off) encounter with a student can result in the claim of being an experienced supervisor, and perhaps, even the name of the student and successfully completed project will be cited. Falsely claiming supervision of higher degree students is unethical, and this type of misrepresentation may result in people getting all the way to an interview situation – the duplicity is often only discovered through sustained and probing questioning. Regrettably, where this level of scrutiny does not occur, appointments can be made, with subsequent regret by a selection panel and future supervisees. Under normal circumstances, supervision teams are formally constituted and named, with each supervisor generally being able to 'claim' kudos for a certain percentage of the candidature, based on contribution. Claiming higher percentages of supervision than that formally noted by the institution is problematic. Other ethical difficulties and potential for misrepresentation around supervision include change of supervision at a late stage of candidature, where a given supervisor has developed and guided a project through his or her expertise, but due to circumstances such as a change of job or illness, is replaced at the 11th hour. This may mean that someone who has had very little input and no specialist knowledge of either area or method claims the completion, creating the erroneous impression that they were involved from the outset. Another example of CV padding is where there is an allocation of a high percentage of 'contribution' to a published paper (e.g. 80% contribution) when there are several co-authors involved who presumably also had substantial and potentially more significant roles. Given ethical publishing guidelines (Walter & Bloch 2001), it must be assumed that the other named authors had a role to satisfy authorship criteria. Further, as it is generally well established that first, second and last are the starred author positions (Cleary et al. 2012a, Vale 2012), it is our view then that listing percentages is problematic unless agreed to, and signed off, by all contributing authors/team members. The practice is problematic as perceptions would differ, and this could well lead to acrimony and undermine future team collaborations. Furthermore, 'publications are publications' and are either refereed or non-refereed papers, book chapters or monographs, etc. – all papers should involve a 'team effort' with all listed authors contributing in some meaningful way. The status of papers 'under review' or 'in-press' should also be clearly indicated in a CV. We are aware of people who list papers that are under review as actual publications, even having them appear on Web-based CVs. Conference presentations (oral or poster) should not be listed as a journal publication, but rather in a section aptly titled 'conference presentations' (or similar), and it is our opinion that abstracts do not even warrant mentioning, despite the practice being widespread. Should bibliometric indices be given in a CV, then it is important that these are commonly used indicators and readily understood by key stakeholders perusing the document. For example, the Hirsch index (h-index) is a widely used measure to assess a researcher's output, and databases like the Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar may be used for this calculation (Hunt et al. 2010). The h-index is the highest number of authored articles by an author/researcher that has each been cited h or more times. (For example, a h-index of 15 would mean that the researcher has had at least 15 articles cited at least 15 times.) Google Scholar is generally regarded as problematic as citation counts are difficult to verify and much of the information is considered to be 'grey literature', that is, it comes from non-refereed or unreliable sources (Hunt et al. 2010). Thus, if an h-index is provided in a CV, the source needs to be identified. Scopus, for instance, tends to have lower score than Google Scholar because of differences in the material upon which the score is drawn. While both databases have their adherents, and either would be fine, it is important when making claims in a CV (and elsewhere) that the date and source database are acknowledged. Remember, it takes less than five minutes to verify these claims and citation rates, and false claims will result in prompt rejection of a candidate and potentially even more dire consequences. A further example in padding a CV pertains to claiming competitive research funding for a project in which the person was not originally named, but later came to be involved, and potentially very late, due to unforeseen circumstances, for example, a staff member leaving or becoming ill. These special circumstances should be clarified in a CV. The issue of 'honorary' researcher status, whereby generally senior staff are named on a project so that their track record can be used to obtain funding but are non-participatory subsequently, is problematic, as is the related scenario of 'honorary authorship'. By deliberately and unjustifiably omitting colleagues, the person seeks to gain greater credit for the work (Babalola et al. 2012). There are other ways in which a CV may be deceptively inflated. For instance, a person may claim to be an active reviewer for a journal, but decline every invitation to review for that journal after perhaps accepting the very first reviewer invitation, often years earlier. A similar tactic maybe used in mentioning 'active' and often long-standing committee membership on a CV, despite seldom attending, let alone fully participating in meetings. Yet another domain pertains to mentioning special teaching awards and positive feedback (notably from students) on a CV; this is a complex area and there are many contextual factors that can impact on educators and the quality of their teaching, not all of which are in their control (Mackey et al. 2012, Cleary et al. 2013). Furthermore, there are subtle means in which educators can provide positive inducements to garner favourable feedback and awards (Cleary et al. 2012b). Some of the above embellishments can be difficult to prove quickly, but with time colleagues can easily disprove claims. When staff who mislead others are eventually caught, no action may be taken, but the likely outcome is that collegial trust will be undermined. Further, damage can also be done to one's reputation and cause others to view a person with suspicion and question their integrity (Leung & Robson 1990, Cleary et al. 2012c, Mackey et al. 2012). It is likely too that these people will continue to exhibit unbecoming and unprofessional behaviour, in various ways, throughout their career (Nosnik et al. 2010). Increasingly in health care, search committees are routinely used to recruit high calibre staff to senior positions. Typically, as one's career progresses, so do one's achievements grow and seldom are these questioned. Although rare, some have taken CV padding to a new art form and have an incredibly impressive CV, but one which is wildly misrepresentative. The danger for those able to misrepresent themselves successfully in regard to achievements is that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy as stated achievements are accepted at face value and then iteratively used to further develop and build a track record and career. The above list of examples of how a CV may be padded is not exhaustive, and it is worth drawing attention to other practices. For example, using larger font (beyond that required for clear reading) and excessive line spacing, including irrelevant material (e.g. unnecessarily including school grades or misrepresenting student placements as a period of paid employment), among other practices, are all designed to deceive. It is incumbent on all people not only to regularly update their CV but just as importantly to ensure that their CV accurately reflects their record. Crucially, for a would-be employee or scrutineer for job promotion or tenure, 'what they see' (the CV) should be 'what they get'. 'Honesty is the best policy' in all walks of life.