Faculty search committees take note: academic dishonesty extends to CVs, according to a new study.
When we think about academic misconduct, we tend to think about misrepresentation of research findings or plagiarism. But a new study says that misrepresentation of academic achievements on CVs is a problem requiring attention, too.
For their experiment, the researchers collected each and every curriculum vitae submitted for all faculty positions at a large, purposely unnamed research university over the course of a year. Then they let the CVs sit for 18 to 30 months to allow any pending articles to mature into publications that they could verify.
To make the data set manageable, the researchers eventually analyzed 10 percent of the sample for accuracy. Of the 180 CVs reviewed, 141, or 78 percent, claimed to have at least one publication. But 79 of those 141 applicants (56 percent) had at least one publication on their CV that was unverifiable or inaccurate in a self-promoting way, such as misrepresenting authorship order.
