The narrative CV: a step towards more inclusive science?

The conventional academic CV, containing a list of achievements and particularly a long list of publications, might not be the best way to assess candidates for jobs and funding. In fact, there is a growing consensus that it’s damaging scientific progress itself. ‘[It’s] led to pressures to publish, and those pressures to publish really have driven questionable research practices, authorship disputes, research misconduct, and in some research fields actually a loss in trust of the published literature,’ says Jane Alfred, the director of editorial and training agency Catalyst Editorial. Instead, funders including UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and Wellcome are now asking researchers to submit a narrative CV, which provides a wider range of information on an individual’s contributions to research and the academic community.

The shift is part of ongoing efforts to improve fairness in the evaluation of researchers and move away from simplistic indicators like the number of publications or amount of research funding, which ‘disadvantages newer applicants, people coming from non-traditional areas, [and] people that perhaps have an unconventional career path,’ says Ginny Barbour, co-chair of the Declaration on Research Assessment (Dora), an initiative that promotes better research assessment. While there is support for this shift, some researchers feel they have not been given sufficient training in both writing and reviewing this new format.

Hilary Noone, research and innovation culture lead at UKRI, says the narrative CV is about widening the pool of researchers who receive funding. This will ultimately leave us better positioned to address complex research challenges. She says in the past, funders have found it hard to identify ‘the people and the ideas that really need the support’ from the traditional academic CV. The new format puts the researcher’s relevant contributions centre stage.

Different emphasis

There are different versions of the narrative CV, but all provide ‘a structured written description of a person’s contributions and achievements that reflects a broad range of relevant skills and experiences’, according to Dora. UKRI describes it as halfway between a CV and cover letter. In 2021 it adopted the Résumé for Research and Innovation (R4RI) format for all funding opportunities that require a track record.

In this format, researchers describe their experience in four modules: knowledge within your field; developing others, including effective working relationships; contributions to your wider research community and finally, contributions to society through innovation or engagement. ‘UKRI have been leaders in [developing the narrative CV],’ says Barbour. Dora is now playing a role in convening workshops for a wider group of funders to define and discuss implementation of the new format.

What all versions of the narrative CV have in common is a focus on the evidence for the contributions a researcher is making. For example, a traditional CV may state an academic has supervised 20 PhD students. ‘That’s just a list that’s saying what you’ve done,’ says Alfred. ‘It’s not describing how your supervision has supported others to develop the professional skills that they require. That’s the difference in emphasis.’

It is a time consuming process though. ‘We update traditional CVs at best maybe once a year, and that’s a quick, easy job to do,’ says Alfred. ’That’s not going to be the case for a narrative CV. You’re going to have to tailor your narrative CV to each application, whether that’s for funding or for jobs, and you’re going to be really highly selective as to what activities and contributions you’re going to include.’ Alfred advises researchers to start collecting examples of their contributions that fit each module in a spreadsheet or word document – effectively creating a library they can use to create each narrative CV with contributions that are relevant for that application.

Alfred does have some reservations about how the new format is being rolled out, saying there is a gap in provision of support and training, including too few examples of narrative CVs. Universities are offering training courses and some have produced excellent online resources – Alfred singles out the University of Oxford and the University of Glasgow in the UK. But she is worried that there is an ‘un-level playing field’, where those at institutions without the financial capability to provide enough support are disadvantaged. She also points out it is more difficult for those who are neurodiverse or who don’t have English as their first language to put together a narrative CV. The danger, she says, is that we will ‘end up amplifying biases that are already out there in evaluation of researchers’.

Writing and reviewing

Alfred suggests those writing their first narrative CV reach out to colleagues who may have already written one. Although they will not all be the same: ‘We’re finding that for each funding call, funders can include different types of guidance on what is in your narrative CV.’ UKRI and five other European agencies are also funding the Peer Exchange Platform for Narrative CVs (PEP-CV). ‘PEP-CV aims to bridge this gap, supporting marginalised researchers and various minorities,’ says Pooja Khurana, PEP-CV community manager. Launched in March 2024 by the Marie Curie Alumni Association (MCAA) and the Young Academy of Europe (YAE), the initiative provides mentorship to researchers looking for advice on developing a narrative CV and in turn they can act as mentors to others. As of October the platform includes 167 mentors and 382 mentees and supports nine languages (English, French, German, Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese and Japanese). PEP-CV has made an intentional decision not to share samples of narrative CVs as ‘each CV should be a unique reflection of the mentee’s distinct skill set and professional journey,’ explains Khurana. Instead, on top of one-to-one mentoring, PEP-CV hosts webinars to discuss best practice.

The other major concern is how narrative CVs are being reviewed by funding panels and employers. In 2021, Alfred and colleagues at the University of Glasgow undertook a three-month study of the effectiveness of the narrative CV format. They concluded it took longer to review than the conventional format.

Some reviewers were resorting to ‘shortcuts’ such as googling the researchers and looking up their publication lists. ‘That’s absolutely what we don’t want them to do,’ says Alfred. She also reports that at a recent research culture conference, an audience was given samples of both conventional and narrative CVs to assess in less than five minutes. About 50% expressed a preference for the conventional format, which they found quicker to judge. ‘It’s still going to be a real challenge for reviewers to fairly and consistently assess narrative CVs without additional support on how to do so,’ she concludes.

I think we have a window of opportunity

Noone says UKRI does provide reviewers with guidance, ‘building on existing good practice’, which includes making all assessment criteria visible. But she adds that a number of academics discussing their experience with narrative CVs have commented to her that they were not previously given any training in how to assess conventional CVs.

‘I think we have a window of opportunity,’ says Alfred, but ‘we still need to persuade the research community that narrative CVs could work’. Part of that will be evaluating whether they’re actually achieving their goal of more equitable outcomes. Barbour agrees that there is very little evidence: ‘At this point, we don’t yet know.’ Dora is encouraging studies to understand their impact, both from the point of view of applicants and the point of view of those assessing applications. A team at the University of Cambridge, UK, is currently running a controlled trial to investigate the effects of using narrative CVs in postdoc recruitment compared to standard CVs. They are analysing five pilot recruitments, so some evidence may soon be available.

UKRI and 60 other organisations have developed an evaluation framework to assess both applicants’ and reviewers’ experiences of the narrative CV and track their sector-wide impact including the ‘long impact tail’ associated with culture change. Funders including Alzheimer’s Research UK and Cancer Research UK have published reports and UKRI plans to publish insights next year. So far Noone says they have found ‘largely, people are okay with [the narrative CV], they welcome it, they have positive experiences’.

There is already some anecdotal evidence that narrative CVs can produce culture change. Noone says the Arts and Humanities Research Council used narrative CVs in the recruitment of peer reviewers that make up its grant-giving panels and in consequence have seen changes in who they are funding. ‘They got completely different applicants [to] apply, and they got completely different people around the table as decision makers and actually were quite surprised that, as a result, they got completely different projects awarded,’ says Noone.

Of course, addressing the problem of a narrowly focused publish or perish research culture will not be as simple as changing a CV format. ‘They’re not a magic bullet to address that wider problem,’ says Alfred, but they might provide one small step towards fairer and more effective researcher evaluation. For Noone, success will be a more inclusive system which should lead to a growth in creativity and a greater cross-pollination of ideas. Though as she admits: ‘It’s very hard to measure something like that.’