CPE submission: How are article and white paper different? (p. 15)

[Andreas_Haamann]

As mentioned by @CraginS in this thread, I'll open up a new thread for my questions.

Regarding chapter "Contributions to the profession", section "Create New Industry Knowledge", on page 15.

There is a differentiation between the activities of writing an article, worth up to 20 CPEs as author, and writing a white paper, worth up to 10 CPEs as author. All the other categories are pretty clear to me, however I have a hard time to distinguish these two.

Is article "simply" an security-related article that is published in a magazine of any kind? Or is it an article/paper in a peer-reviewed research journal? And how does a white paper correlate to those two? What are the differences? White paper implies kind of self-publication, similar to a blog post (Both have the same potential CPE values)?

My gut feeling would say that article strictly implies an article in a peer-reviewed journal and alike (e.g. ACM, IEEE, etc.), considering the efforts with literature research and so on. Comparing that to a "simple" magazine article (InfoSec magazine?    ), the awarded CPEs seem to be a bit odd. However, I miss experience when it comes to writing magazine articles, maybe they involve more effort than I can imagine?

Thanks for the support!

[CraginS]

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@Andreas_Haamann wrote:

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Is article "simply" an security-related article that is published in a magazine of any kind? Or is it an article/paper in a peer-reviewed research journal? And how does a white paper correlate to those two? What are the differences? White paper implies kind of self-publication, similar to a blog post (Both have the same potential CPE values)?

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Andreas,

Here is my personal opinion on a possible useful distinction between an article and a white paper. An article has to have been actually published (not simply submitted) by an external web site or print publication, not affiliated with the author or the author's employer, subject to editor and preferably peer review prior to publication. A white paper is an informative paper released in electronic or print form directly by the author or the author's employer, without review and approval by an external editor. Your suggestion that a blog post might be a white paper is a grey area, given the length of most blog posts (including my own). I would expect a white paper to have more length and depth than most blog posts.

Craig