Should an Editorial be considered as a regular paper in CV, or should it be put in another section?

Question

Me an other colleagues organized an Special Issue of some Journal (indexed by ISI) and after having accepted some of the submitted papers (10 in total), we wrote an editorial, which will also appear in the Journal. Do you think such effortless papers can be considered or cited in a CV as a regular paper or should be put into another section?

Answer 1

I am editing an ISI listed journal and have also noticed that the editorials I or others write end up as if they were regular publications and obtain citations. I do not think they should be considered as such but believe it simply is a flaw in the system. The persons entering data or who made the system that scans published papers simply cannot distinguish between editorials and papers, despite the word "Editorial:" occurring in the title of such contributions in "my" journal. Since these editorials are not reviewed by others than the editors-in chief (in my case) they are not fully peer reviewed and would definitely not pass a regular review since they were never intended as journal articles.

So, do one want to put an editorial "paper" in the CV? I do not think it belongs under the heading of papers published in refereed journals. But, having written an editorial means you have been instrumental to produce a thematic journal issue and so you can list it in conjunction with "meriting academic missions" (or whatever you might call it). It will represent the journal issue and the work done there which, in my opinion, is probably worth more than a paper. The fact that it might also be cited can be taken as indicating interest in the jorunal issue that you have summarized in the editorial, but should be kept separate from regular papers.

I should add as a final note that the key for me is whether or not the contribution has been properly peer reviewed. I doubt many editorial receive proper peer review.