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[oppositeofyesterday]

My advisor recently was asked to write what seems like a book chapter (25 pages, in-depth overview of current scholarship on [topic], etc.) and plans to collaborate with some of her advisees on it, including me. The slightly odd thing is that the book is technically titled as an Encyclopedia--the previous edition is circa 1000 pages over around 100 chapters/topics, if that helps.  Earlier this year, I co-authored a couple of what I would consider "real" encyclopedia entries (short, 500-750 word overviews on a topic), and this seems markedly different than that. Assuming we collaborate and it gets published, would it be acceptable to list this as a "book chapter" instead of an "encyclopedia entry" on my vita, as that seems more representative of what it actually is/will be? If it matters, I'm in a journal-based field, but book chapters are still fairly common (I'd really like to get experience writing one, so I jumped on the opportunity to collaborate on this).
 

Thanks!

[minimimi]

I have a 5000-word encyclopedia entry on my CV. I list it as an encyclopedia entry, though it is about as long as one of my book chapters. To me, the difference is the sort of contribution each makes. As you point out, encyclopedia entries are overviews. Articles and book chapters, in my humanities field at least, should advance arguments.

Depending on where you wind up teaching, though, you might not have to distinguish between the two. My colleagues at my first job—a SLAC—regularly listed short reference articles, book reviews, and peer-reviewed articles in undifferentiated lists. This practice would not fly where I work now, at a R1 whose powers-that-be impose a standard format for our CVs.

[oppositeofyesterday]

Maybe it's a field-varied thing, then? Most of the book chapters I've seen in my (social science) field have been reviews, overviews, syntheses--which usually have some component of opinion or argument to them. Almost no one would publish original research (that hadn't previously been published in a journal) in a book chapter unless there was some really exceptional reason or the work, for whatever reason, couldn't "fit" into a journal. 

[totoro]

I list these as book chapters on my CV. I just got asked to write a 2000 word one. I'm in economics if that helps.

[crumpet]

Depending on where you wind up teaching, though, you might not have to distinguish between the two. My colleagues at my first job—a SLAC—regularly listed short reference articles, book reviews, and peer-reviewed articles in undifferentiated lists. This practice would not fly where I work now, at a R1 whose powers-that-be impose a standard format for our CVs.

Do this for now if it seems appropriate for your discipline. That's what I did until I had enough publications in various categories to differentiate between them.

[minimimi]

Maybe it's a field-varied thing, then? Most of the book chapters I've seen in my (social science) field have been reviews, overviews, syntheses--which usually have some component of opinion or argument to them. Almost no one would publish original research (that hadn't previously been published in a journal) in a book chapter unless there was some really exceptional reason or the work, for whatever reason, couldn't "fit" into a journal. 

Sorry, I didn't distinguish clearly enough between disciplinary conventions and institutional ones. Where I work, we have a standard format for our official CVs, in which publications are divided into 30 or so different categories. E.g., peer-reviewed monographs, peer-reviewed co-authored books, non-peer reviewed monographs, non-peer reviewed co-authored books, peer-reviewed single-authored journal articles, etc. down the pecking order to letters to the editor. Under this system, I am not allowed to list a 5000-word piece in the Camford Companion to Basketweaving as a book chapter.

[systeme_d_]

Here's how it works over in my corner of the humanities.

I've written several "encyclopedia entries" that are 5-10k words in length.    They are not book chapters, and are never considered to be such.

I'd advise the OP to put the entry where it belongs on the CV (under "Publications," one assumes), but to also specify the word count.

[janewales]

Another humanities person here. I've also written things that are long enough (5-10K words) that they might be considered "chapters," but if they're in encyclopedias, then I call them encyclopedia articles, and they sit in the part of my CV reserved for such things. To me, an encyclopedia article is also defined by its purpose and audience: there's a difference between a 9,000 word survey of a field (encyclopedia article), and a 9,000 word original intervention (book chapter).

An interesting gray area is the companion article. Those tend to be quite long, but in terms of purpose/ audience, they're not unlike encyclopedia articles. Mine are, so far, sufficiently affected by my own particular research interests etc that I still list them as book chapters, but I'm not sure that there shouldn't be year another category, for contributions of this sort.

[hennypenny]

social sciences here.

If it's an entry in an encyclopedia, it's an encyclopedia entry.  At my university they count for precisely squat.  In my field, perhaps squat + 1.

says the person working on one right now :(

hp

p.s. this one's 5k words.