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Narratives

The uses and evaluation of researchers’ narrative CVs

Summary

The use of narrative CVs is growing rapidly across research systems, as part of a wider shift towards responsible research assessment. Narrative CVs are meant to complement traditional CV formats, allowing researchers to offer textual accounts of their accomplishments and professional trajectories. 

This is intended to discourage overreliance on purely quantitative comparison and reductive shortcuts in peer review for funding, hiring, promotions and other evaluative decisions. Ideally, narrative CVs can help to diversify criteria of success and achievement, thereby diversifying the research workforce and creating more openness towards different career trajectories.

At the same time, little is known about how such novel formats will affect evaluative practices and what practical challenges may arise from wider uptake and implementation. This project is designed to provide research funders and policymakers with evidence and analytical insights to facilitate the design and use of narrative CV formats.

Project team

Partner organisations

  • DORA (Declaration on Research Assessment)
  • Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR)
  • Health Research BC 
  • NWO – Dutch Research Council
  • Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF)
  • UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)
  • Volkswagen Foundation 
  • Wellcome Trust

The project in detail

Building on earlier scoping by DORA, the partners involved in the NARRATIVES project have aligned in identifying three modules of greatest interest to the group. 

  • The first module will develop an inventory of challenges related to the implementation of narrative CVs across different funding organisations, and strategies to tackle them. For this purpose, we will synthesise information that has already been collected by participating organisations as well as create additional evidence through focus groups and interviews. 
  • The second module will focus on learning effects among reviewers handling narrative CVs over consecutive funding rounds. The aim here is to study conditions that facilitate making optimal use of the affordances of narrative CVs. We will collect empirical material through participant observation in review panels, through interviews, as well as through surveys with reviewers.
  • The third module will investigate the effects of narrative CVs on the diversity of funding recipients. To do this we will conduct an experiment to compare the effects of using a narrative CV rather than a regular CV. This will be done by splitting a cohort of applicants by CV type, and comparing outcomes.
UKRI has developed a ‘Résumé Resources Library’ to support researchers with their narrative CVs

Project timeline

The NARRATIVES project runs for two years, to June 2025.

Outputs

This RoRI Insights report outlines five key recommendations to help funders create a supportive environment for the effective implementation of Narrative CVs.

Read here

In this Working Paper, we propose a way to conceptualize how narrative CVs alter evaluative practices in peer review and provide preliminary findings about their impact from an ongoing study. We draw on observations and interviews with reviewers in two subsequent funding rounds of a Dutch Research Council (NWO) grant programme, which aims to enable early career researchers in the social sciences and humanities to carry out an independent research project abroad.

Read here

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