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I submitted a paper to a good journal in theoretical computer science. Today I received an email from the editor stating that the status of the paper is:

"Accepted subject to minor revisions".

The revisions suggested by the referee were only typos. More precisely, there were only 5 typos. The referees strongly recommended to accept the paper.

To tell the truth, this was the paper with the least number of corrections I ever had (even though it may have been the one which required the greatest amount of my time to write). Often when submitting papers to conferences I get a much bigger list of corrections/suggestions. Nevertheless, the paper appears at the conference's list of accepted papers much before the corrections are implemented. So shouldn't the same reasoning apply to journals?

Question: Should I list the paper as "Accepted" in my CV / homepage?

In other words, what do theoretical computer scientists / mathematicians write in their CV in this case?

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    Often "accept subject to minor revisions" can become "accepted" within hours/days of making the revisions
    – StrongBad
    Jul 31, 2015 at 15:11
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    If you are going to send your CV today, you could state "Accepted subject to minor revisions" in the CV. Otherwise, just wait until it is accepted and then include it in your CV as a regular paper with DOI instead of isssue/pages. Jul 31, 2015 at 16:52
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    @MaratTalipov: there can be quite an interval between acceptance and being assigned a citable DOI. (This may depend on the field.) Jul 31, 2015 at 19:39
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    If you are conflicted about this, perhaps the safest option is to list it in your CV as "Accepted subject to minor revisions".
    – Bitwise
    Jul 31, 2015 at 21:15
  • It's important to distinguish your case of "five minor typos" and the more general case of receiving an email "accepted subject to minor revisions". In other cases, minor revisions can often involve some substantial work, and thus, there is a possibility (although typically small) that such a paper would not be subsequently accepted. Are you asking the general question about "accepted subject to minor revisions" or about the specific question where the minor revisions truly are trivial to complete? Based on your choice, the body and title of question should be made consistent. Aug 3, 2015 at 2:52

5 Answers 5

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The following apparently does not apply to theoretical mathematics, see comments and other answers for detail.

From my experience, during the time between acceptance and publication, you list the article as "in publication". This indicates that you have gone through the work of writing, submitting, responding to feedback, and the article has gone through peer review, been accepted and is just waiting to be published.

I've seen other qualifiers as well, including "in submission" for those going through the submission process, and "in preparation" for those that you're writing but haven't submitted. I strongly recommend against listing any papers in either of these categories, as until they're accepted they're not really "peer-review articles", they're just "ideas you have that you hope someone will publish one day".

Your case falls in the "in submission" category, and as such I would not list it.

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    In my field (mathematics), listing submitted publications is a common and, it seems to me, accepted practice. Given that papers often take over a year to review, listing only the papers that have been accepted could leave many early-career researchers with CVs that are misleadingly sparse. This can be very important when applying for postdoctoral positions, for example. One usually also posts submitted preprints to the arXiv, so that interested parties can judge the work for themselves.
    – user37208
    Jul 31, 2015 at 15:22
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    If the goal is to keep a CV up-to-date, I think waiting until it's accepted is sound advice. But if the CV is to be sent as an application for a position, omitting mention of the journal article could be genuinely harmful advice. If you have say 20 journal papers, then okay, you can omit it. But there is a big difference between 0 journal articles and 1 journal article. In some (not all) CS departments, journal papers are (perhaps unfortunately) the most important aspect of a CV ...
    – badroit
    Aug 1, 2015 at 16:46
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    ... hence you would be gravely under-representing yourself to omit the entry entirely. Listing the article as "accepted pending minor revisions" is the best, most general advice. It is entirely honest and gives you credit for the work you have done until that point. If the panel have questions about the status of the paper, they can ask later (they can only ask if they are made aware of it). It does zero harm to list the article like this. On the other hand, omitting it could be a grave mistake.
    – badroit
    Aug 1, 2015 at 16:49
  • tl;dr: if the CV is being sent as part of an application, it would be egregiously naive not to list this journal article as "accepted pending minor revision". While there are cases where people try to pad out their CV, this is certainly not one!
    – badroit
    Aug 1, 2015 at 16:52
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    @eykanal: you should make clear in your answer that your experience is not in theoretical computer science or mathematics, and therefore not directly relevant to the original questioner. Your suggestion that submitted-but-not-accepted papers are not valid CV items is utterly inconsistent with the current practice in mathematics, for example.
    – Tom Church
    Aug 2, 2015 at 6:24
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In my area, cognitive neuroscience, 'in revision' is the common phrase. I would not list it as accepted, until it is. Between acceptance and publication, it would be 'in press'.

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  • While I upvoted your answer (as most others in this thread), I don't think that "in revision" fits this particular situation (where the paper is essentially accepted, while formally tentatively). IMHO, "in revision" should be used to emphasize the phase between submission and acceptance or any other decisions by editor(s). I am new to this, but that is what common sense and logic tell me. Aug 3, 2015 at 1:48
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    @AleksandrBlekh - true, but shit sometimes happens. I was reviewing a paper just last month, and then had to drop out of the reviewing process due to some family circumstances. So even though the authors did their first revision based on my comments, they were assessed by a completely different reviewer the second time. That new reviewer might not agree with my judgement, and the paper might get rejected. So I think it's better to play it safe and say 'in revision'.
    – Ana
    Aug 3, 2015 at 10:40
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    @AleksandrBlekh - although, admittedly, I myself wrote 'accepted pending minor revisions' in my CV once, for my very first paper. There it made a huge difference for my CV and graduate studies application. I think that sort of situation is a reasonable exception, though still risky.
    – Ana
    Aug 3, 2015 at 10:41
  • I see. Thank you for detailed clarifications - they indeed make sense. Aug 3, 2015 at 18:09
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You can probably get away with describing it as "accepted" if you are quite confident that the revisions are really minor, but if they turn out to be not so minor (e.g. the referee points out what appears to be a typo, but on closer inspection it is a logical error that invalidates your proof), you will be embarrassed.

The safest course of action is to wait until it is finally, completely accepted - when the referee has signed off on your revisions, and you have a letter from the editor saying "we will let you know when it's time to correct the galley proofs". At that point you can describe it as "Accepted", "To Appear", "In Press", or something like that.

Until then, the safest course of action is to describe it as "Submitted", "Under Review", or whatever term you would normally use on your CV to describe a paper that has been submitted but not yet accepted or rejected. (And contrary to eykanal's answer, in mathematics it is standard practice to include submitted papers on a CV.)

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"Accepted subject to minor revisions" is not yet accepted. You can list in your CV just like any other non-peer-reviewed manuscript if you want (just like e.g. papers that you have posted to ArXiv).

"Accepted" is accepted. You can list in your CV just like any other journal publication. Of course you don't have full bibliographic details yet, but you can simply give the authors, title, journal, and a note "to appear" or something similar.

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    "Accepted subject to the editor agreeing that I've correctly corrected these five typos" is so close to "accepted" that I don't think there's any harm whatsoever in describing this particular paper as "accepted". Jul 31, 2015 at 16:04
  • @DavidRicherby I know of a case in which the decision was essentially reversed at this stage (after "accepted subject to minor revisions" and before "accepted"), due to the publication of a competing paper. It ain't over til the fat lady sings.
    – Bitwise
    Jul 31, 2015 at 21:03
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    @Bitwise Sure, but that's extremely unlikely. And, frankly, if that happened to the paper described in the question, I see no difference at all between "The editor told me the paper was accepted subject to fixing five typos, I fixed them and then he changed his mind and rejected the paper" and "The editor told me the paper was accepted and then he changed his mind and rejected it." Jul 31, 2015 at 21:07
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If I were keeping my CV up to date and didn't want to wait for the final acceptance of the paper, I'd write exactly what the editor wrote to you, "accepted subject to minor revisions". I might be tempted to add something to the effect that the recommended revisions are just corrections of typos, but I'd probably resist that temptation. By quoting the editor exactly, you have an obvious and conclusive answer if anyone should question what you wrote.

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