Last updated: October 2026. Checked against the USCIS Policy Manual (Volume 6, Part F, Chapter 5), Matter of Dhanasar and 8 CFR 204.5.
Yes, you can file an EB2 NIW without publications. Neither 8 CFR 204.5 nor the USCIS Policy Manual requires papers or citations. The Policy Manual lists the kinds of evidence that can show you are “well positioned” to advance your endeavor. It says the list “is not meant to be a checklist” and that no single type of evidence is “either required or sufficient.” Published articles and citation history are two items on that list. The rest include patents, contracts, licenses, investment, grants, letters from government agencies and proof that other people use your work. Industry professionals build their cases from those items.
You still have to pass every other part of the test. You need EB-2 eligibility (an advanced degree, a bachelor’s plus five years of progressive experience, or exceptional ability) and all three prongs of Matter of Dhanasar. This guide matches each type of non-publication evidence to the Policy Manual wording behind it and points out where industry petitions usually run into trouble. It does not predict approval odds, because USCIS decides each case on its own record.
Key takeaways
- Publications and citations are optional types of evidence. The Policy Manual’s list is non-exhaustive and “not meant to be a checklist.”
- Evidence the Policy Manual names that has nothing to do with publishing includes patents, contracts, licenses, investment, grants, government letters and “evidence demonstrating how the person’s work is being used by others.”
- Letters can be persuasive when they come from experts with first-hand knowledge, give specific examples and “are supported by other independent evidence.”
- Results you achieved for your employer help show you are well positioned. But “benefits to a specific employer alone” do not establish national importance.
- Dhanasar does not require proof that your endeavor will succeed, but “unsubstantiated claims would not meet the petitioner’s burden of proof.”
EB2 NIW without publications: what USCIS actually evaluates
Under Matter of Dhanasar, 26 I&N Dec. 884 (AAO 2016), USCIS may grant a national interest waiver if you show three things:
- Your proposed endeavor has substantial merit and national importance.
- You are well positioned to advance it.
- On balance, waiving the job offer and labor certification benefits the United States.
Publications only matter as evidence, and mostly under the second prong. For that prong, the Policy Manual says USCIS considers factors “including, but not limited to”:
- Your “education, skills, knowledge, and record of success in related or similar efforts”;
- A detailed proposal or plan you developed or played a significant role in developing;
- “Any progress towards achieving the proposed endeavor”; and
- “The interest or support garnered by the person from potential customers, users, investors, or other relevant entities or persons.”
None of these four factors mentions publishing. For an engineer, analyst or clinician, a record of success might be a system now in service or a product people use. Dhanasar states: “We do not, therefore, require petitioners to demonstrate that their endeavors are more likely than not to ultimately succeed.” The Policy Manual adds the limit: “unsubstantiated claims would not meet the petitioner’s burden of proof.” Without publications, your documents have to do the job peer review does for an academic.
Non-publication evidence the Policy Manual lists
These items from the Policy Manual’s second-prong list do not depend on academic publishing. The first column quotes USCIS; the other two are practical notes.
| Evidence type (Policy Manual wording) | Industry example | Point to watch |
|---|---|---|
| “Degrees, certificates, or licenses in the field” | Professional engineering license, clinical licensure, recognized certifications | A degree alone “is not a sufficient basis” for the second prong |
| “Patents, trademarks, or copyrights developed by the person” | Granted patents or registered software copyrights naming you | Show significance and use, not just the certificate |
| “Published articles or media reports about the person’s achievements or current work” | Trade press or news coverage of your project | The coverage is about you. You don’t have to be the author |
| “Evidence that the person’s work has influenced the field of endeavor” | Methods, tools or designs that other organizations adopted | Needs proof from outside your employer |
| “Correspondence from prospective or potential customers, users, investors, or other relevant entities” | Letters of intent, pilot requests, purchase interest | Specific, dated and on letterhead |
| Investment from “venture capital firms, angel investors, or start-up accelerators” | Funding rounds, accelerator admission | Amounts must be “appropriate to the relevant endeavor” |
| “Copies of contracts, agreements, or licenses showing the potential impact of the proposed endeavor” | Client contracts, licensing deals, partnership agreements | Link each contract to your role |
| Awards, grants or non-monetary support from “federal, state, or local government entities” | Government grants, free use of public facilities | The agency should have expertise in economic development, R&D or job creation |
| “Letters from government agencies or quasi-governmental entities in the United States” | Letter from an agency or federally funded R&D center | “Not required,” but can be relevant to all three prongs |
| “Evidence demonstrating how the person’s work is being used by others” | Companies using a product you built, deployments of your invention | Often the strongest substitute for citations |
Industry impact and adoption
For someone without citations, the closest equivalent is proof that others use your work. The Policy Manual gives three examples of this: contracts with companies “using products that the person developed or assisted in developing,” documents showing technology you invented or helped invent “and how others use that technology,” and patents or licenses “with documentation showing why the patent or license is significant to the field.” Deployment records and client confirmations backed by contracts fit here. The same evidence can also help with national importance. The Policy Manual says a petitioner could show “widespread interest in adoption or licensing of the technology.”
Contracts, patents and licenses
A patent proves an idea was new, not that it mattered, so the Policy Manual asks for documentation of why a patent “is significant to the field.” In its entrepreneur section, it adds that you should show how you contributed to the intellectual property “and how it has or may be used internally or externally.” License agreements, products built on the patent or third-party use make it far stronger evidence.
Funding, investment and grants
The Policy Manual says outside investment “may provide independent validation” of an endeavor, and that awards or grants can do the same. Funding counts even if you are an employee and not a founder, as long as you can document your role in the funded work. In Dhanasar itself, the AAO relied partly on “consistent government funding of the petitioner’s research projects” and on “sustained interest of and funding from government entities such as NASA and AFRL.”
Leadership and your role
The Policy Manual says “the more integral a person is to an endeavor, the stronger the case the person presents that they are well-positioned to advance the endeavor.” A job title doesn’t prove that. Org charts, project charters, sign-off records and letters that describe the decisions you made do. The Policy Manual also cautions that “general work experience in a given field may not be sufficient.” Its example is a bank teller or accounts manager who proposes a national consultancy advising banks on customer relations.
Peer review outside academia
The entrepreneur section contains a sentence that applies to many non-academics: “While entrepreneurs typically do not undergo the same type of peer review common in academia, entrepreneurs may operate in a variety of high-tech or cutting-edge industries that have their own industry or technology experts that provide various forms of peer review.” External design reviews, acceptance by a standards committee, investor technical due diligence and competitive selection into a program are all industry forms of peer review.
Not sure which of these you can actually document? Our free EB-2 NIW profile evaluation checks your evidence against this list before you spend money on filing.
Recommendation letters: evidence, not opinion
When there are no publications, letters often carry much of the case. The Policy Manual says letters “may be persuasive when they are from experts in the person’s field who have first-hand knowledge of the person’s achievements, describe those achievements, provide specific examples of how the person is well positioned to advance the person’s endeavor, and are supported by other independent evidence.” A footnote adds that petitioners “may submit evidence related to the credentials of experts who support a petition.” In practice, every claim a letter makes should point to a document somewhere else in the petition.
| Claim in a letter | Independent evidence that backs it up |
|---|---|
| “Her monitoring system reduced unplanned downtime at our plants.” | Maintenance logs, before-and-after reports, a client acceptance memo |
| “Three utilities adopted his protection scheme.” | Contracts, purchase orders or letters from those utilities confirming use |
| “She led the team that built the platform.” | Org chart, project charter, performance reviews that name her role |
| “His patented method is licensed by other manufacturers.” | License agreements, royalty statements, product documentation |
| “A federal agency is interested in this work.” | A letter from the agency itself, a grant award or a cooperative agreement |
The Policy Manual does not divide letters into “independent” and “collaborator” categories. It asks for first-hand knowledge, specific examples and independent support. Supervisors can supply first-hand detail, and letters from people at other organizations who use your work can also show impact beyond one employer. Our strategic recommendation letter service builds letters around the exhibits that support them.
The national importance trap for industry professionals
Industry petitions without publications are often strong on the second prong and weak on the first. The Policy Manual says: “Benefits to a specific employer alone, even an employer with a national footprint, are not sufficiently relevant to the question of whether a person’s endeavor has national importance.” The question is whether your endeavor “stands to have broader implications, such as for a field, a region, or the public at large.” USCIS gives these examples:
- A software engineer adapting an employer’s code for clients “will have difficulty demonstrating the national importance of that endeavor, absent additional broader impacts supported by specific evidence.”
- A person developing a drug may show national importance through “the prospective public health benefits of the drug, instead of solely projecting the profits that will accrue to the employer.”
- For a company technology, broader implications could come from “widespread interest in adoption or licensing of the technology, a novel and important manufacturing or operational process, or how the technology stands to impact the development of similar technology by other companies.”
- Working in “an occupation with a national shortage” is, on its own, “insufficient.”
The fix is in how you define the endeavor. It should describe what you will do and who outside your employer benefits. Our guide on how to write a proposed endeavor covers this, and our overview of the three prongs of EB-2 NIW shows how the prongs fit together.
Hypothetical evidence map for EB2 NIW without publications
The following example is hypothetical and for illustration only. It is not based on any client and does not suggest any outcome. The profile: a power-systems engineer with a bachelor’s degree, seven years of progressive post-degree experience and no papers. The proposed endeavor is developing grid-protection tools for U.S. utilities.
| Prong | What the evidence must show | Possible exhibits |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Merit and national importance | Impact beyond one employer | Government or industry reports on grid reliability, adoption of the method by other utilities, licensing interest |
| 2. Well positioned | Record of success, a plan, progress, outside interest | Deployment records, contracts, a professional engineering license, a patent with licensing documents, a detailed plan, letters from utility engineers backed by those records |
| 3. Balance of factors | Why waiving labor certification benefits the U.S. | An explanation of why a labor certification is impractical for this work, or why the U.S. benefits even if other qualified workers are available |
The weak spot here is the first prong. If every result stayed inside one utility, the evidence would mostly show value to one employer.
No publications and no master’s degree?
First you have to qualify for EB-2 at all. Without a master’s, you can use a bachelor’s degree plus five years of progressive experience, or you can show exceptional ability. The exceptional ability criteria in 8 CFR 204.5(k)(3)(ii) mostly don’t involve publishing. You need at least three of the six. Besides an academic record relating to the area, they are employer letters showing at least ten years of full-time experience, a license or certification for the profession, a salary that demonstrates exceptional ability, membership in professional associations, and recognition for significant contributions “by peers, governmental entities, or professional or business organizations.”
If these standards “do not readily apply” to your occupation, 8 CFR 204.5(k)(3)(iii) allows comparable evidence. Qualifying for EB-2 still “does not automatically mean” you qualify for the waiver, according to the Policy Manual.
Common mistakes in petitions without papers
- Treating letters as the evidence, when they should point to the evidence.
- Describing impact only in terms of the employer’s revenue or clients.
- Submitting a patent without showing that it is used or why it is significant.
- Filing a business plan with nothing to support it. The Policy Manual says plans “should be supported by other independent evidence.”
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I get an EB2 NIW with zero publications?
Publications are not a legal requirement. USCIS weighs the totality of the evidence in each case, and the Policy Manual says no single type of evidence is required. Whether a particular petition succeeds depends on its record.
Are citations required for EB2 NIW?
No. “A strong citation history” is one listed type of evidence among many. If you have a few citations and want to know how they are weighed, see our guide on how many citations EB-2 NIW requires.
What evidence replaces publications for an industry professional?
Patents, contracts, licenses, customer or investor correspondence, investment, government grants or letters, media reports about your work, and evidence of how others use your work.
Are recommendation letters enough on their own?
That is risky. The Policy Manual describes persuasive letters as ones “supported by other independent evidence,” so letters work best when they summarize achievements that documents elsewhere in the petition prove.
Skycap prepares complete I-140 petition packages for self-petitioners, with installment pricing on our plans page. If your case rests on industry evidence and not papers, start with a free profile evaluation so we can check which prong needs the most support.
Related guides
This article is general information, not legal advice. Skycap Consultancy is a petition-preparation consultancy, not a law firm. Requirements and fees change; check the linked USCIS pages before filing.
