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How to write a Academic CV

Called a resume in the US and a CV almost everywhere else — the same document, and these are the rules it gets judged by.

The conventions below are the ones this field actually uses. They are what the builder applies when you pick Academic / Research, and what the rating checks a finished CV against.

What it must contain

Leave any of these out and the CV reads as incomplete to someone who hires in this field:

  • Education
  • Publications — Full citations in a consistent style. This is the section that is actually read.

The order to put them in

Order is not cosmetic. What sits at the top is what gets read before someone decides whether to keep reading.

  1. Research Interests
  2. Education
  3. Academic Appointments
  4. Publications
  5. Grants, Awards & Funding
  6. Projects
  7. Skills
  8. Licences & registrations
  9. Certifications
  10. Languages

Section by section

  • Research Interests — Two or three lines on your research area, not a marketing pitch.
  • Grants, Awards & Funding — Grants with amounts and funding body, awards with year.

What to put numbers on

The single most common reason a CV in this field reads as weak is that nothing in it is measured. These are the figures that mean something here:

citations · h-index · grant amount · cohort size · sample size

Verbs that carry weight

Openers like “responsible for” and “worked on” describe a job description rather than a person. In this field these do the work instead:

Investigated · Published · Supervised · Secured · Presented · Peer-reviewed

What gets one rejected

  • An academic CV is judged on its publication record. Do not omit it.

Length

2 to 8 pages is normal for this field.

Build a Academic CVSee a worked example

Free, no account, and nothing is uploaded — the builder runs in your browser and the CV never leaves it.

Common questions

What should an academic CV include?

An academic CV has to carry education and publications. The order this field expects is research interests, education, academic appointments and publications.

What goes first on an academic CV?

The research interests. That is where this field's convention puts it, and it is what the builder applies when you pick Academic.

How long should an academic CV be?

2 to 8 pages is normal for this field. Going longer does not add weight; it moves the thing being looked for further down.

Is an academic CV the same as an academic resume?

For applying to a job, yes - the same document under two names. Resume is the usual word in North America and CV almost everywhere else. The one real exception is the academic CV, which is long-form and lists publications.

Is there a free academic CV template?

Yes. ihatejob builds one to this field’s convention for free, with no account and no upload: the section order, the section names and the rating all come from the academic pack described on this page. It exports to PDF, Word and plain text.

Related fields

Teaching