Invited Talks on a CV: Is it Necessary to Include Submitted Talks?

[Pengwuino]

"Invited talks" in a CV

I've seen a few CVs in my lifetime and from what I recall, people sometimes have a section on "invited talks". Now, at conferences, I've always thought there was a distinction between "invited talks" and "submitted talks", the former being the conference organizers going out and asking someone to give a talk at their conference and the latter, constituting the large majority of the talks, being a researcher/student/whatever submitting their talk on their own.

I assume it's surely a given that you would include the "invited talks" on a CV, but do people include talks they submit and give at conferences that could be categorized as "submitted"? I assume as one becomes more experienced, they may only list the "invited" talks to keep the length down, but is it customary for someone beginning their scientific career to add "submitted" talks to a CV?

 

[Choppy]

I have a section for conference proceedings, which is essentially the "talks and posters" section of my CV.

I've never really been sure of the exact "invited talks" definition. What you've described is pretty much my understanding though - the organizers contact you because of your recognized expertise in a given field. But say for example you were selected as one of 10 presenters for a young investigators symposium in which there were 50 - 100 submissions? Is that "invited" or "submitted"? Or what if you are invited by a local high school to give a talk on your general field? Clearly that's not the same league as being invited by a conference's scientific committee to an international conference to give a one hour lecture on the state of your field.

 

[AlephZero]

If the conference procedings were published, a "submitted talk" would appear in your publications list. It they weren't published, maybe it wasn't worth mentioning anyway...

As well as "Invited talks" there are activities like chairing discussion sessions, or even being a member of the conference organizing committee...

 

[Moonbear]

List them as a subsection of publications. The first section should be peer-reviewed, accepted or published papers. When just starting out, such as a grad student applying for a post-doc position, it's okay to have another list of submitted manuscripts since it's common for a lot to get submitted at the end of graduate work and it shows how productive you were. That should never appear by the time you're applying for faculty positions...by then, it doesn't count until it's accepted. The bottom of the publications list should be abstracts and conference proceedings. I personally don't think there's much distinction between an invited talk and a regular abstract submission, but you can make a parenthetical note of invited talks, platform presentations, and posters. When that information is useful is when faculty come up for promotion and tenure. Then, invited talks are evidence of national or international recognition, depending on where they are invited.

If there's no abstract, and the talk is more of an invited seminar, I lump those under invited talks and seminars, and separate from publications, because they aren't published in any form anywhere. Where those go can vary, so you can ask your mentor what the convention is for your department or discipline.

I have more than one version of my CV for different purposes. There's the short version for funding agencies, the version I'd send out if giving a talk somewhere or applying for new jobs, and a really long version that includes every stupid little thing I'd never include for sharing anyplace but internally that conforms to my promotion guidelines. The long version is the one I update regularly, and then copy and paste the relevant information into the others as needed, or use as a reminder of things I've done that go into my annual activity report to justify my existence.

 

[ZapperZ]

I've never really been sure of the exact "invited talks" definition. What you've described is pretty much my understanding though - the organizers contact you because of your recognized expertise in a given field. But say for example you were selected as one of 10 presenters for a young investigators symposium in which there were 50 - 100 submissions? Is that "invited" or "submitted"? Or what if you are invited by a local high school to give a talk on your general field? Clearly that's not the same league as being invited by a conference's scientific committee to an international conference to give a one hour lecture on the state of your field.

That would be considered as submitted or contributed talk. An invited talk is truly an invitation, without you first submitting anything, for you to present a talk.

Coming back to penguino's question, I would list both submitted/contributed talks and invited talks on the CV, with the invited talks, for obvious reasons, given the more prominent order of listing and emphasis.

Zz.