Skip to content

Must media coverage be about me, or do comments count?

Key answer

The core of the criterion is material about you and your work written by someone else: interviews, articles about your career. Expert comments and columns you authored do not close it - community experience shows officers ignore them. They go in as extras after three or more full pieces about you.
Check a journal or outlet for the petition

Community answers

The answers below are translated from the original Russian - the language of the community chats.

  • The USCIS manual states simply: articles should be about the petitioner and their work, published in major or professional publications. Expert articles can be added at the very end - after you have three or more interviews or articles specifically about you.

  • When I included expert comments under the 'publications about me' criterion, the officer ignored them and discussed only four materials that were clearly about me and my career.

  • For this criterion, the author must be someone else. Expert opinions may qualify if the editor writes their own material and adds your comment as an opinion from a significant expert - but only relying on comments to satisfy the criterion is risky, it should be supplementary.

The answers are anonymized community experience from the public chats, not legal advice. Officers may decide similar cases differently.

Why "Scholarly authorship" gets refused

Accepted in 44% of challenged petitions (86 of 196); not an approval rate.

The venue is not accepted as professional, trade or major media - where it was published is judged separately from the article itself.

All refusal grounds and the sample

Sources

All questions on: Media about youAll questions on: Articles and citations

Related on this site

Similar questions

A reference page built from community experience, not legal advice. Requirements and practice change - verify on uscis.gov.

Did this answer help?