8.5.2 Find out where your panel members are publishing

When searching for your panel members publications through and author impact search, also make sure you sort the results by publication. Many academics have their favorite journals and they will tend to think positively about applicants targeting the same journals. This might be because targeting the same journals automatically reflects a similarity in academic norms and values, or simply because your panel members are more aware of the (high) quality standards of the journals they are personally familiar with.

I am not proposing you should lie about where you are targeting your work. However, doing a quick search to find out which journals your panel members tend to publish in heavily, might give you some clues about which of your research projects to focus on. It might also lead you to emphasize in your job interview that you have been doing ad-hoc reviewing for this particular journal (only if this is true of course).

Reviewing the type of outlets that panel members publish in also gives you an idea of what is valued in the institution you are applying to. Are they mainly publishing in top US academic journals, are they publishing in wider variety of journals, do professional journals feature as an outlet, have any of them written books?

None of these publication strategies are inherently superior to other strategies, but it is useful to be aware what seems to be valued most by the institution in question. You could use this as a lead-in to a question of what would be expected of you in terms of publication output if you joined the institution. Most interviews panels really appreciate it if you ask questions pro-actively rather than just answer theirs. However, what they appreciate most are informed questions.