Skip to content

How does the media criterion differ from authorship?

Key answer

Simply put: articles written about you go under the media criterion; articles you wrote for a professional audience go under authorship. Mixing them is a common mistake that can sink both. Quantity depends on the rest of the case - the community has seen approvals with just one or two pieces about the applicant.
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.

  • Publications under the media criterion must be specifically about you: interviews or articles that write about you. Articles where you are the author and write as an expert do not qualify for the 'media about you' criterion - that constitutes authorship.

  • It depends on how well these criteria balance the others. There were approvals in the chat with 1-3 publications in the media, but in a case with one publication about the person, there were 18 scientific articles.

  • The media criterion is for publications ABOUT YOU: interviews, articles, and segments where you are presented as an expert (the author, date, and that the material is indeed about you are important). The authorship criterion is for articles written BY YOU, primarily scientific or professional. So, an article about me and an article authored by me satisfy different criteria.

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?