Judging Must Align With Your Core Expertise

▶ Watch the video on Immigration Merit Lab

USCIS determines whether the person has acted as the judge of the work of others in the same or an allied field of specification.

Examples of judging the work of others may include, but are not limited to:

• Peer reviewing for a scholarly journal, as evidenced by a request from the journal to the person to do the review, accompanied by proof that the review was actually completed;

• Peer review of abstracts or papers submitted for presentation at scholarly conferences in the respective field;

• Serving as a member of a Ph.D. dissertation committee that makes the final judgment as to whether a candidate’s body of work satisfies the requirements for a doctoral degree, as evidenced by departmental records; and

• Peer reviewer for government research funding programs.

Considerations:

The petitioner must show that the person has not only been invited to judge the work of others, but also that the person actually participated in the judging of the work of others in the same or allied field of specialization. For example, a petitioner might document the person’s peer review work by submitting a copy of a request from a journal to the person to do the review, accompanied by evidence confirming that the person actually completed the review.