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I have some published papers and in my CV, I mention them under the heading of "Publications".

However, I have some papers that I have not yet submitted to a venue (conference or journal). I think that I cannot mention these papers as "Publications".

What is the best and more appropriate description for the papers that have not been submitted yet? e.g. "Research Papers"? Or "Research Manuscripts"? Or something else?

Work in Progress might be good as it implies that there may still be some work to do in the writing - and even some uncertainty about the final title. In addition it also subtly says that you are still active and not resting on your old achievements.

You could, in addition, mark each paper according to its readiness, or at least those that are ready for submission.

I think that Research Papers carries a connotation that they are internal and may not be published.

I want to second the idea that your "Publications" or "Scholarship" section of your CV should have subsections. Typically, there would be separate subsections something along these lines: books and book chapters; peer-reviewed journal articles; peer-reviewed conference proceedings; non-peer-reviewed publications; unpublished manuscripts; manuscripts in preparation.

I also recommend highly that any piece of scholarship that you list on your CV in this section should be publicly available, if only by request. This is of course the case for published materials. For unpublished materials and papers in preparation, I think the best practice is that you should make them available upon request. Thus, it is best not to list something until it is in state where you are ready to share it.

I suggest using subdivisions in your list of publications, for instance:

• Peer-reviewed journal articles


• Peer-reviewed conference articles


• Non-peer reviewed publications


• [edited] Future submissions

I recommend to take a positive attitude and just list them in sequence (i.e. reverse chronological, right up front, along with the rest) and say "in preparation for J. Appl. Phys." or whatever journal is planned. Use your common sense. But if you publish all the time in J. Appl. Phys. and know the paper meets the subject and quality hurdles, fine, list that. If you seriously think it is a Science/Nature/Phys Rev paper, than list that. I'm going to assume you are an accomplished paper writer and getting publisheder. Or well on your way to being there. So this should not be rocket science to know where you plan to submit. And you should be submitting to places you plan to get accepted at (not chasing rainbows or submitting junk).

Given that you say "in preparation" or "submitted" or whatever qualifier, it's OBVIOUS that the paper may never get finished (or might evolve, split, merge, etc.) Even "in press" still has some wiggle room in that there is a remote possibility it shifts venue or the like (I mean it's not in the archived literature yet). So what. Not a big deal. Note, I see many CVs on the web that have this exact structure. The simple caveat is plenty. You don't need to obsess about different sections or the like.

The other, not insignificant, benefit is that it concentrates your mind. And makes you more likely to finish, submit, get published. Because you have identified the target.