Are Narrative CVs contributing towards shifting research culture?&nbsp;Workshop Report from the 2023 Recognition and Rewards Festival

Noémie Aubert Bonn; James Peter Morris; Sean Sapcariu; Karen Stroobants

doi:10.12688/f1000research.146108.2

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Brief Report

Revised

Are Narrative CVs contributing towards shifting research culture? Workshop Report from the 2023 Recognition and Rewards Festival

[version 2; peer review: 2 approved, 2 approved with reservations]

Noémie Aubert Bonn ^1,2^*, James Peter Morris³^*, Sean Sapcariu⁴^*, Karen Stroobants⁵^*

^* Equal contributors

PUBLISHED 19 Jun 2025

Author details Author details

¹ Department of Healthcare and Ethics, Universiteit Hasselt, Hasselt, Flanders, 3500, Belgium
² University of Manchester, Department of Computer Science, Manchester, M14 9PL, UK
³ Science Europe, Brussels, Brussels, 1040, Belgium
⁴ Fonds National de la Recherche, Luxembourg City, Luxembourg District, 4365, Luxembourg
⁵ CultureBase Consulting, Cambridge, UK

Noémie Aubert Bonn
Roles: Conceptualization, Data Curation, Formal Analysis, Project Administration, Writing – Original Draft Preparation, Writing – Review & Editing

James Peter Morris
Roles: Conceptualization, Data Curation, Formal Analysis, Project Administration, Visualization, Writing – Original Draft Preparation, Writing – Review & Editing

Sean Sapcariu
Roles: Conceptualization, Data Curation, Formal Analysis, Project Administration, Resources, Writing – Original Draft Preparation, Writing – Review & Editing

Karen Stroobants
Roles: Conceptualization, Data Curation, Formal Analysis, Investigation, Project Administration, Writing – Original Draft Preparation, Writing – Review & Editing

OPEN PEER REVIEW

REVIEWER STATUS

This article is included in the Research on Research, Policy & Culture gateway.

This article is included in the Innovations in Research Assessment collection.

Abstract

Background

Over the past decade, calls for research assessment reform have grown, led by initiatives such as the Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) and the Leiden Manifesto, and, more recently, the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA). A key element being discussed as part of research assessment reform is a shift towards more qualitative assessments, focussed on the content of research and the broad skills and competencies of researchers, and the array of contributions they make to knowledge creation and innovation. Narrative CV formats have emerged as a good practice example for enabling qualitative assessments of research projects and researchers, and are becoming more widely piloted and implemented.

Methods

As part of the 2023 Dutch Recognition and Rewards Festival, the authors hosted a workshop to gather perspectives on Narrative CVs, including whether and how they may contribute to shifts in research culture that are needed to support research assessment reform.

Results

Participants, representing research organisations and the research community, discussed both beneficial and critical aspects of narrative-style CV implementations from their experiences. The effects observed since narrative CVs have been implemented were discussed, with perspectives provided on career prospects and the empowerment of the research community to direct change. Finally, the discussion turned to expectations for the future, with workshop participants calling for focus on the roles that narrative-style CVs can play in improving research careers, recognition of collaborative work, and equality, diversity, and inclusion. A short informal survey exploring levels of implementation of narrative CVs across different research organisations was run prior to the workshop, the results of which are also presented as part of this report.

Discussion

The authors intend to expand this discussion to other scientific and policy conferences, and this report serves as a basis for a wider and deeper dialogue in the community.

Keywords

Research Assessment; Research Culture; Qualitative Assessment; Narrative CV; Diversity; Research Careers

Corresponding author: Noémie Aubert Bonn

Competing interests: No competing interests were disclosed.

Grant information: The author(s) declared that no grants were involved in supporting this work.

Copyright: © 2025 Aubert Bonn N et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

How to cite: Aubert Bonn N, Morris JP, Sapcariu S and Stroobants K. Are Narrative CVs contributing towards shifting research culture? Workshop Report from the 2023 Recognition and Rewards Festival [version 2; peer review: 2 approved, 2 approved with reservations]. F1000Research 2025, 13:332 (https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.146108.2) First published: 23 Apr 2024, 13:332 (https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.146108.1) Latest published: 19 Jun 2025, 13:332 (https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.146108.2)

Revised Amendments from Version 1

The revised version of the manuscript provides further discussion in line with the excellent comments from the two reviewers. Edits are mostly in the discussion section, and they include a greater emphasis on the need for research and evidence to support the arguments raised by participants in the workshop as well as a more extensive discussion on the different cultural elements and power dynamics at play in shaping research assessment and their changes in light of the ongoing reform.

See the authors' detailed response to the review by Simon Kolstoe
See the authors' detailed response to the review by Maria Pietilä

Introduction

Over the past decade, calls for research assessment reform have gained great momentum. Initiatives such as the Declaration on Research Assessment¹ (DORA) and the Leiden Manifesto² raised considerable awareness about the need to rethink research assessment and were rapidly followed by a multitude of reports, statements, and recommendations from national and international organisations.³^–¹² More recently, the interest in changing research assessment even acquired a global scope, with organisations such as the G7,¹³ UNESCO,¹⁴ and the Global Research Council,¹⁵ addressing the topic formally. The Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment¹⁶ (CoARA) was created against this background, aiming to provide support and coordination to the global reform of research assessment. CoARA already counts the support of nearly 600 research organisations (as of November 2023), highlighting a true momentum for change.

A key element being discussed as part of research assessment reform activities is a shift towards more qualitative assessments, focussed on the content of research and the broad skills and competencies of researchers, and the array of contributions they make to knowledge creation and innovation. Narrative CV formats have emerged as a good practice example for enabling qualitative assessments of research projects and researchers, and are becoming more widely piloted and implemented. Narrative CVs are “generally understood to encompass a structured description of a researcher’s contributions and achievements that reflect a broader range of skills and experiences beyond publications and funding record.”¹⁷ In a Narrative CV, researchers have more freedom over the way they present achievements, outputs, and skills that define their career than they normally would in an itemised CV. Because Narrative CVs are started to be implemented quite recently, a lot remains to be known about their impact and potential.

Methods

Ethics

Given the scope of this report and associated workshop, the workshop was conducted as an exploration from interested organisations without seeking ethical approval. Participants agreed to take part after being made aware that a summary of the workshop would be published from the discussions.

Methodology

On April 13^th, 2023, we held a workshop with the title “Are narrative CVs proving effective in achieving desired outcomes of recognition and reward initiatives?” at the Recognition and Rewards Festival in Utrecht, NL in order to gather perspectives on the role that narrative CVs play in shifting research cultures and in enabling the research assessment reform. This report summarises the views and opinions expressed by the 14 participants that joined the workshop, and serves as a resource for others in further reflections and development of narrative-style CV templates. Participants included research funders and three researchers, most of them active in the Dutch research landscape. The feedback in this report should not be considered as representative of the research community. In fact, participants to the Recognition and Reward Festival are likely to have a priori interest in the reform of research assessment and the small sample size precludes a complete view of perspectives. Nonetheless, the feedback from workshop participants is rich and diverse enough to help guide organisations and institutions considering or implementing narrative-style CVs when thinking about the potential impact on research culture that could occur due to these changes. In addition, we hope that our experience can be a template for other workshops around this topic, and that this report serves as a catalyst for further dialogue and proactive communication around narrative-style CVs and their impact on research culture.

Results

Views on narrative CVs/challenges with their use

The workshop participants raised many beneficial and critical aspects of the narrative-style CV, all of which need to be considered by funders and institutions who are implementing these new formats and further assessed by empirical research. However, the general agreement was that effective and efficient assessment reform will take time and requires systemic change, due to the many different parties involved in changing assessment, above and beyond only changing a CV format.

In general, narratives were seen to have always been a part of an evaluation, whether or not they were in the CV. In this sense, a narrative was seen as required for an evaluation – the narrative-style CV helps in increasing the understanding of a candidate and legitimising the contributions that were previously not well-recognised since it requires the researcher to tell their own story about their career and achievements. At the same time, this increased flexibility can be confusing, so balancing structure and flexibility in the formats is needed. This can be a different way of evaluating compared to the current process, leading to difficulties for reviewers in terms of comparing applicants and assessing the content.

Participants felt that new CV formats can lead to increased use of buzzwords and a loss of authenticity, as they might feel obligated to fill in all of the fields of a template, to “tick all the boxes” and thus get an edge in the evaluation. Certain participants stated that a need to appear competent everywhere might create a loss of authenticity for researchers. While it is important for institutions using a narrative-style CV to emphasise that what is requested is not an increased number and range of accomplishments, participants also argued that a lack of authenticity is generally identifiable in an evaluation (especially an interview), and as such would not prove to be a problem in the long term adoption of new CV formats.

One of the concerns raised was the perspective that there is not much uptake in narrative-style CV use internationally, and the widespread use of quantitative data and metrics is still present in systems around the world. Given our informal pre-workshop survey results (see Box 1), this perspective might reflect a lack of awareness of the international landscape and use of narrative-style CVs. Regarding the engagement with the format, applicants were told specifically not to add certain (less traditional) contributions because they could be perceived as a “lack of focus”. This shows a clear resistance from a part of the academic community for the narrative-style CV, and a need for more dialogue around these changes.

Box 1. Informal pre-workshop survey.

Methods

A short 12-question survey was devised by the report authors and distributed to representatives from research organisations via the following forums: the DORA Funders Group; the Global Research Council Responsible Research Assessment Working Group; and the Science Europe Working Group on Research Culture.

The survey was launched between March and April 2023 and received 24 full responses from representatives of 23 research organisations, covering 18 countries across 4 continents and one European-wide organisation. The aggregated data were presented during the workshop at the Recognition and Rewards Festival in Utrecht, NL on 13 April 2023 solely to provoke discussion and are not used for other purposes. The results are presented in this report in the same manner. The survey data were aggregated to avoid re-identification. Raw results data cannot be shared as individual responses would easily allow for identification of the respondent in several cases. The questions asked in the survey, a mix of multiple choice and open text, are provided in the codebook that is available alongside the data published at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.25146155.v1.

Short summary of survey results

Across the 24 respondents to the survey, and in response to both open-ended and multiple choice questions (see annex 1 for the full list of questions), just over half of the responding organisations (13 organisations) had already implemented a narrative CV format as part of their assessment processes. These organisations were spread across different regions of the world, including Latin America and the Caribbean, Australia and New Zealand, Northern America, and Northern, Western, and Southern Europe. Among these organisations, there was a split between those that implemented the same narrative CV format across all programmes (5 organisations) and those that implemented the format only for specific programmes (7 organisations). The most commonly reported approach to implementing a narrative CV was to develop a template ‘in house’, from scratch (7 organisations). Less commonly, organisations reported building upon an existing template, adapting it to their needs (4 organisations), and just 2 organisations reported using existing templates with little adaptation. The Royal Society’s Narrative CV template, the “Résumé for Researchers” was cited by a number of respondents as the guidance template used.

When asked what the main reasons or goals for introducing a narrative CV format were, respondents referenced: broadening the recognition of research activities, contributions, and skills; supporting equality, diversity, and inclusion; building compliance with community-driven initiatives such as DORA; and simply as an attempt to improve the evaluation and selection of researchers and research projects.

A wide spread of responses were obtained in response to the question about the years when organisations first considered piloting or introducing a narrative CV format, beginning from 2015, and most commonly around 2020. Subsequent implementation of a narrative CV as part of assessment processes was observed to follow quickly after first consideration, often only taking one or two years (see Figure 1). Some common challenges to implementing narrative CVs were reported by responding organisations, including: 1) resistance to change, 2) difficulty in developing appropriate training and guidance, and 3) clear and effective communication on the reasons for change.

Figure 1. Research organisations that implement a narrative CV format were asked when they first considered piloting or introducing a narrative CV format, and when they started implementing it as part of their assessment processes.

Responding organisations that had not yet implemented narrative CVs (11 organisations) within any part of their assessment processes shared diverse reasons why they had not. A number of respondents were considering implementing them in the future. Others reported that it was not a priority for the moment. Some respondents reported a current lack of data to support the effectiveness of such a change as a barrier whilst other respondents cited administrative challenges.

Note: We omitted one respondent in the first question since they mentioned that they always used narrative CVs for hiring.

It was mentioned that narrative-style CVs have the possibility of helping with increasing the diversity of who is funded, specifically with females and minority groups. The new format allows people to describe a wider diversity of careers and outputs, and as such, participants perceived that they may facilitate inclusion for people with different backgrounds. However, at the same time, the quality of narratives are dependent on writing ability, which could introduce new biases and requirements for support and training – something that not all people and institutions have the resources to implement. These perspectives are important to consider in the implementation of narrative CVs, but they also call for more empirical research to understand the genuine impact that narrative CVs have on diversity and biases. In addition, although it was only lightly discussed during the workshop, the place of Large Language Models and Generative Artificial Intelligence in narrative CVs also raises important questions for the future and the impact – either challenges or opportunities – that these new technologies may bring should be carefully considered.

The introduction of the narrative-style CV is seen as an iterative process with regards to the structure and content requested, as well as the openness of the template. As the needs and focus of the different organisations and the goals of assessments are different, participants felt that a tailored approach is needed for the various narrative-style CV templates. At the same time, participants stressed that funders and institutions should not judge academics beyond what is required for the remit of the assessment, and should take into account potential biases arising from the new format.

Changes as a result of introducing narrative CVs

Introduction of narrative-style CVs and other initiatives to diversify and broaden the ability of researchers to demonstrate their achievements have led to concrete changes in the perspectives and careers of people in the community, both with positive and negative effects. Participants discussed the reflection required in filling out a narrative CV being a positive experience, and the need for reflection to be present earlier in academic trajectories. In addition, one participant described a narrative-style CV playing a role in the promotion of people that would have been unlikely to have this opportunity otherwise. Another participant highlighted the role that narrative-style CVs could play in empowering researchers to contribute to research culture shifts by allowing them to describe competencies, activities, or actions that they deem important to the research culture they want to work within. Careful consideration of how this diversity of competencies, activities, or actions plays into assessment decisions and how they will be used by assessors will be important to better understand the potential for a culture shift.

One issue raised was around the communication of the shift to a narrative-style CV. The request for a broad range of output and achievements in evaluation was viewed by researchers as a requirement to fulfil the entire breadth of outputs and achievements that can be accounted for. This highlights a need to ensure that researchers are aware of the requirements around narrative-style CVs, through training of applicants and assessors, fostering dialogue around these new forms, and other avenues of proactive communication. Guidance documents are a useful starting point, but are best complemented by active reinforcement, as they are passive tools and are not always read as carefully. As mentioned above, not everyone has an equal level of writing ability, and institutions should offer support where possible to ensure that there is no disadvantage in writing narrative-style CVs.

Participants highlighted that data collection around the myths and assumptions of narrative-style CVs will also help to ensure clarity of these new evaluation tools. They also suggested that these new formats will cause power dynamics to shift, yet it is not quite clear what this will mean in terms of the evolution of research ecosystems. These shifts should be studied and monitored closely to ensure that the changes fit the research culture that is desired.

Expectations for the future

As this shift towards narrative-style CV uptake in assessment processes continues, participants gave their opinions on how this change should be handled, with specific goals and needs they would like to see. These expectations address specifically the culture change that is required to ensure a diverse and inclusive research ecosystem where people are evaluated on a broader range of research outputs, contributions, and achievements.

In general, participants expressed a need to not be naive in implementing changes, and to try and keep everyone on board through the shift in the research ecosystem. The importance of all roles required in research (e.g. HR staff, technicians, etc.) should be highlighted, and all of these voices should be included in system changes. To this end, a broader diversity of career trajectories should be considered when shifting assessment (and the skills that come along with these different career paths), including careers with inter-sectoral mobility as well as more “classical” career paths.

A need for more diversity and inclusion was requested, specifically in the creation of research systems that are beneficial to younger individuals in research, as well as women and minorities. This can be done through creating more diverse evaluation panels and hiring/promotion assessment committees, as well as by engaging a more diverse group of voices in the dialogue and evidence building around system adaptation and change. It is important that epistemic diversity is also taken into account, involving diverse representation in studies and evaluations of process changes to break the current dominance and self-reinforcing concepts of ‘excellence’.

Shifting research culture, including spreading the use of the narrative-style CV, requires bottom-up involvement and peer exchange from individuals in research. Collaboration is an important value in research culture, and participants expressed a wish to share their experiences with others. At the same time, adequate support from institutions and funders for these new formats should be put in place. Funders and institutions need to make sure that changes do not impact the performance of research – we need to balance the time and resource commitment required in assessment with the desire for more creative ideas and faster innovation.

Discussion

This report describes results from a workshop that aimed at being the start of an ongoing and self-reflecting discussion on the topic of narrative CVs as contributors to positive shifts in research culture. The workshop, hosted as part of the Dutch Recognition and Rewards Festival (2023), was attended by a group of engaged and reform-supportive stakeholders from research organisations, research funders, and the research community. It provided a first snapshot of perspectives that will be built on through further future events.

Reflections by researchers who participated in the workshop emphasised the role that narrative-style CVs can play in broadening the types of activities, contributions, outputs, and achievements that are recognised and how this can translate into a more diverse selection of people and ideas as part of our understanding of high-quality research. They added that the process of completing a narrative CV may in itself provide insights and inspiration on the diversity of activities that are perceived as important in research careers, and that introducing narrative CVs may play a role in shaping new cultures of success and achievements among researchers. Yet the discussion also provided insights on elements that need to be considered in order to ensure that narrative CVs achieve their desired purpose. Key learnings from the workshop discussions included an understanding of existing inequalities in the support (through training and guidance, for instance) provided by research institutions towards narrative CV development, and a lack of clear descriptions of the breadth of activities and outputs that can be included (and how they are assessed). Such inequalities should be scrutinised and minimised so as to avoid introducing additional bias into assessment processes, and further research should be undertaken to identify how these perceived impacts are reflected in practice. Workshop participants were not well-aware of the growing interest and uptake of narrative-style CVs and qualitative assessment across research organisations in Europe and beyond: a trend being pushed by community-led initiatives such as DORA and CoARA. Research organisations may consider how they effectively communicate and engage with research community members to shed light on the work and changes taking place to support the evolution of research cultures and promote quality research. As these changes to policies and practices become further embedded in our research systems, it is vital that they are regularly discussed, reviewed, and analysed to identify and mitigate unintended and unwanted consequences that may arise for any constituency within our research communities. Overall, the workshop highlighted the value and importance of engaging community members in research policy and practice discussions, and the need for continued dialogue.

It is important to note that this change process is long and complex, and narrative-style CVs are just one part. There are long-standing cultural norms embedded into current assessment practices and policies that challenge the changes being made towards broadening what is recognised and rewarded in research. Incremental shifts in guidance and processes are counterbalanced by enduring cultural expectations that influence how careers are viewed and developed at all levels. Consequently, the introduction of narrative-style CVs and any other changes to the assessment processes should never happen in a vacuum, but go hand in hand with active discussions and culture change initiatives. We need to prepare for what the future will bring in research assessment, and make sure that the community actively studies and evidences the impact of changes and mitigates the issues that might arise, including the impact of new technologies on assessment and the creation of new inequalities based on different players changing the system at different speeds. It is also important to understand the forces at play as the reform unfolds to identify those who play a role in shaping cultures of assessment. Involving a breadth of stakeholders with distinct priorities and powers – including those pushing for the reform, those pushing against, those who assess, and those who are assessed – is vital to enabling a shared dialogue. A higher-level and global view will be crucial to ensure that the ecosystem is steered towards a diverse and inclusive research culture, which will require all of the participants in the system to work together towards this goal.

To this end, we encourage more conversations and debate around this topic, as only through dialogue will we be able to create a research culture that recognises and embraces everyone who contributes to the research ecosystem. Discussions targeting changes to research assessment practices must involve diverse members of the research community to capture the breadth of perspectives, worries, and hopes for the future. Workshops like this help to make people more aware of the shifting ecosystem as well as to ensure that a diverse range of voices contribute to these shifts. We propose holding these workshops at a variety of scientific and policy conferences in many domains, so that as many people as possible can contribute to the discussion. If you are organising, participating in, or aware of an event where a structured discussion on Narrative CVs and research culture would be welcome, do not hesitate to contact the authors to explore how a workshop like the one described above could be incorporated or proposed.

Data availability

Underlying data

Figshare: Data on the implementation of Narrative CV captured ahead of the 2023 Recognition and Rewards Festival, https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.25146155.v1.¹⁸

This project contains the following underlying data:

• Codebook.pdf
• Codebook.xlsx
• Data.csv

Data are available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC-BY 4.0).

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank: 1) the organisers of the 2023 Dutch Recognition and Rewards Festival for hosting the workshop; 2) the participants of the workshop for their enthusiasm the insightful discussions; and 3) the respondents of the informal pre-workshop survey for their time and willingness to provide valuable information.

References

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Version 2

VERSION 2 PUBLISHED 23 Apr 2024

Author details Author details

Noémie Aubert Bonn
Roles: Conceptualization, Data Curation, Formal Analysis, Project Administration, Writing – Original Draft Preparation, Writing – Review & Editing

James Peter Morris
Roles: Conceptualization, Data Curation, Formal Analysis, Project Administration, Visualization, Writing – Original Draft Preparation, Writing – Review & Editing

Sean Sapcariu
Roles: Conceptualization, Data Curation, Formal Analysis, Project Administration, Resources, Writing – Original Draft Preparation, Writing – Review & Editing

Karen Stroobants
Roles: Conceptualization, Data Curation, Formal Analysis, Investigation, Project Administration, Writing – Original Draft Preparation, Writing – Review & Editing

Competing interests

No competing interests were disclosed.

Grant information

The author(s) declared that no grants were involved in supporting this work.

Article Versions (2)

version 2

Revised

Published: 19 Jun 2025, 13:332

https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.146108.2

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https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.146108.1

© 2025 Aubert Bonn N et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Aubert Bonn N, Morris JP, Sapcariu S and Stroobants K. Are Narrative CVs contributing towards shifting research culture? Workshop Report from the 2023 Recognition and Rewards Festival [version 2; peer review: 2 approved, 2 approved with reservations]. F1000Research 2025, 13:332 (https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.146108.2)

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Version 2

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Reviewer Report 10 Sep 2025

Ruth Schmidt, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, USA

Approved

https://doi.org/10.5256/f1000research.183663.r405115

This brief report articulates views on the state of narrative CVs that were collected from a workshop and survey; while the authors recognize that the limited number and fairly narrow composition of these views might over-index on some items while underplaying others, they posit (and I agree) that this efforts like these are valuable in identifying areas for further inquiry to ensure that narrative CVs can be more effectively employed in assessing research and researchers.
The points raised are well-taken and provide a good landscape of many issues facing uptake, use, and potential issues with the narrative CV format, which holds promise as a way to reduce reliance on traditional quantifiable metrics, but also introduces the potential for new challenges and barriers to adoption.
Within the report, the wide variety of insights and observations raised by the authors are all relevant and interesting but feel a bit unstructured in some places and redundant in others. This makes it harder than necessary to walk away with a cohesive view on the themes raised. My main recommendation, therefore, is primarily oriented toward clarifying dominant themes within (or across) the major sections such that a reader can more easily digest the useful content.
For example, the Views on narrative CVs/challenges with their use section represents many findings that are each individually interesting, but which might be largely clustered into four major themes: narrative CV’s potential to engage an increased diversity of people and backgrounds; the need to balance flexibility and structure; the potential for bias on the part of both researchers and assessors; and headwinds that might discourage uptake. Stating these themes before introducing the more detailed findings will help a reader first grasp higher-level principles, which can then be expounded upon with the more concrete findings.
Similarly, Changes as a result of introducing narrative CVs seems to center on three main ideas: the potential for unexpected positives; the need for support/training for both researchers and assessors; and the need to collect/evaluate implications and value that arise from use. Expectations for the future centers primarily on seeing NCVs as an iterative, collective effort — top-down and bottom up, with diverse views and trajectories — if it is to yield collective benefits. Finally, the Discussion summarizes five main prongs, some of which pull from sections above: possible (unexpected) benefits of CVs; the need for thoughtful support and communication to avoid amplifying known inequities or creating new ones; areas for further research and analysis; the need for open, diverse, and continual communication; and recognizing that narrative CVs require a systems approach.
In each of these sections, the addition of even a single sentence stating these kinds of overriding themes (with possible minor reorganization of a point here or there) would increase the chances that a reader comes away with a more coherent sense of the major issues and possibilities, and — perhaps more importantly — can help make those findings ‘stickier’ and more memorable such that they take these very useful insights forward into other conversations and activities in the responsible research assessment space.

Is the work clearly and accurately presented and does it cite the current literature?

Yes
Is the study design appropriate and is the work technically sound?

Yes
Are sufficient details of methods and analysis provided to allow replication by others?

Yes
If applicable, is the statistical analysis and its interpretation appropriate?

Not applicable
Are all the source data underlying the results available to ensure full reproducibility?

Yes
Are the conclusions drawn adequately supported by the results?

Yes

Competing Interests: No competing interests were disclosed.

Reviewer Expertise: Responsible research assessment reform; qualitative research; behavioral systems system

I confirm that I have read this submission and believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard.

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Reviewer Report 08 Sep 2025

Marianne Gauffriau, IT University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

Approved with Reservations

https://doi.org/10.5256/f1000research.183663.r405118

The manuscript presents a report from a workshop in 2023 on narrative CVs hosted by the authors. Narrative CVs are presented in the context of the research assessment reform. In the workshop, 14 participants (research funders and researchers) discussed the use and future of narrative CVs. To initiate the discussion, the authors had, prior to the workshop, conducted a survey with 24 respondents from research institutions. The survey is also reported in the manuscript.

Findings from the workshop and the survey give nuanced illustrations of the perception of narrative CVs and their use. The manuscript gives examples of how pros and cons of narrative CVs were discussed in 2023. This documentation is an important contribution for future work on narrative CVs. Topics discussed by the workshop participants can serve as inspiration for new empirical studies, and thus improve our understanding of how narrative CVs work.

I have two suggestions for clarifications that may strengthen the manuscript:

1) The Introduction gives a brief and accurate introduction to the research assessment reform supported by relevant literature references. The second part of the Introduction is about narrative CVs with a good description of the CVs. However, I miss a short state-of-the-art with relevant literature references up until 2023 on narrative CVs. This will be important for future studies. Furthermore, a state-of-the-art can elaborate on the statements in the Introduction "Narrative CVs are started to be implemented quite recently, a lot remains to be known about their impact and potential" and in the Discussion "… the growing interest and uptake of narrative-style CVs and qualitative assessment across research organizations in Europe and beyond: a trend being pushed by community-led initiatives such as DORA and CoARA". The latter is supported by the informal pre-workshop survey. Do other studies arrive at similar results?

2) The survey design ans results are well documented with access to codebook and data. However, information about the workshop design is missing. For example, access to the workshop program and a brief discussion of methodological choices would be beneficial and indeed support the authors’ suggestion "that our experience can be a template for other workshops around this topic".

Narrative CVs and their potential in the implementation of the research assessment reform is an important and timely topic relevant to many stakeholders in academia and beyond.

Is the work clearly and accurately presented and does it cite the current literature?

Partly
Is the study design appropriate and is the work technically sound?

Yes
Are sufficient details of methods and analysis provided to allow replication by others?

Partly
If applicable, is the statistical analysis and its interpretation appropriate?

Yes
Are all the source data underlying the results available to ensure full reproducibility?

Yes
Are the conclusions drawn adequately supported by the results?

Yes

Competing Interests: No competing interests were disclosed.

Reviewer Expertise: research evaluation, responsible research assessment, bibliometrics

I confirm that I have read this submission and believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard, however I have significant reservations, as outlined above.

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Reviewer Report 09 Jul 2025

Simon Kolstoe, School of Health & Care Professions, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, England, UK

Approved

https://doi.org/10.5256/f1000research.183663.r393273

I'm happy that they have made some thoughtful additions to the paper ... Continue reading

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VERSION 1

PUBLISHED 23 Apr 2024

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Reviewer Report 25 Nov 2024

Simon Kolstoe, School of Health & Care Professions, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, England, UK

Approved with Reservations

https://doi.org/10.5256/f1000research.160148.r336924

Narrative CVs - where next on the journey?

Who your audience is, and what you are trying to communicate to that audience, is the most important consideration for authors of any type of document. When writing an academic CV the audience is often an employment or grants panel who will be looking for indications that the author will meet whatever criteria they have established for the role/funding. The problem is that the criteria is not always explicit, and can often reflect unrecognised prejudice, making it quite a challenge to write a CV that "plays the game" well, especially for people with diverse or non-traditional backgrounds.

To address this a number of "key performance indicator" (KPI) style metrics have been proposed for academics/researchers, and although they are widely used, they are open to significant manipulation. They are also quite biased towards indicators that current senior researchers value in their own CVs, rather than indicators that might lead to better research overall.

This weakness of the KPI approach has been increasingly recognised over recent years thanks to an encouraging international effort to consider issues relating to research integrity and culture in order to highlight the broader virtues and responsibilities of a good researcher. The development of narrative CVs is one attempt to recognise this by using, as the authors of this manuscript state, a qualitative rather than quantitative approach.

However, as with many issues in life, a pendulum swing from one extreme (quantitative indicators) to the other (qualitative indicators) is not the answer. The solution to fair assessment most likely sits somewhere in the middle, with this middle being identified through further discussion and reflection on what we do now, what works or doesn't, and how we might change systems and processes. This is precisely the conversation that this manuscript addresses.

Viewing this work as a reflection on narrative CVs is helpful, because the sample size is small. Indeed with only 24 responses to the survey I would like to see the authors report number of responses in their summary of survey results rather than percentages to better reflect the very small sample. Likewise the 14 participants in the workshop cannot in anyway be considered representative of the research community, and this should be acknowledge explictly. Thus said a very small sample does not prevent interesting observations being made.

One element of the results/discussion I did find interesting was the fear that narrative CVs may favour more talented writers, potentially coming from English speaking education systems. This is a fair comment and concern, but I would also like to see the author address the recent challenge raised by the use of AI for both proof reading and also creating content. Surely this must be an increasing threat to the idea of a narrative CV, and even if it wasn't mentioned by participants in the workshop, the author could raise the fact that this wasn't discussed and perhaps should have been.

I was also struck by the comment that "Epistemic diversity should also be taken into account, in order to break the current dominance of “excellence” that reinforces hierarchies between disciplines". I think this relates to a perceived prejudice towards medical and physical sciences that many from a social science background are often quite concerned about. However, as many CVs often function to obtain positions/grants etc. within subject areas, and thus are judged by academics of similar backgrounds, I would be interested to hear some real examples of where Epistemic diversity is important.

The Discussion starts with the sentence: "It is vital that discussions targeting changes to research assessment practices involve all members of the research community." I'm not certain this sentence is needed, or indeed justified without further explanation - who is the research community, does it involve research participants, government ministers etc. and should they all be involved in this conversation? Perhaps this sentence could be deleted or alternatively justified further.

The second paragraph of the discussion also repeats many of the results so could either be deleted or reframed to make a specific, explicit, point.

But overall this manuscript represents an interesting reflection on the topic, and should be considered as a valuable contribution to the ongoing discussion.

Is the work clearly and accurately presented and does it cite the current literature?

Yes
Is the study design appropriate and is the work technically sound?

Yes
Are sufficient details of methods and analysis provided to allow replication by others?

Yes
If applicable, is the statistical analysis and its interpretation appropriate?

I cannot comment. A qualified statistician is required.
Are all the source data underlying the results available to ensure full reproducibility?

Partly
Are the conclusions drawn adequately supported by the results?

Partly

Competing Interests: No competing interests were disclosed.

Reviewer Expertise: Originally a Biochemist, now Associate Professor of Bioethics with a specific interest in research integrity, ethics and governance.

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Author Response 11 Sep 2025

Noémie Aubert Bonn, Department of Healthcare and Ethics, Universiteit Hasselt, Hasselt, 3500, Belgium

11 Sep 2025

Author Response

Thank you for your careful review of our manuscript. We found great value in your comments and believe that they improved the quality of our manuscript. We include a detailed ... Continue reading Thank you for your careful review of our manuscript. We found great value in your comments and believe that they improved the quality of our manuscript. We include a detailed overview of the edits we made in light of your comments in our responses below.

"Narrative CVs - where next on the journey?

Who your audience is, and what you are trying to communicate to that audience, is the most important consideration for authors of any type of document. When writing an academic CV the audience is often an employment or grants panel who will be looking for indications that the author will meet whatever criteria they have established for the role/funding. The problem is that the criteria is not always explicit, and can often reflect unrecognised prejudice, making it quite a challenge to write a CV that "plays the game" well, especially for people with diverse or non-traditional backgrounds.

To address this a number of "key performance indicator" (KPI) style metrics have been proposed for academics/researchers, and although they are widely used, they are open to significant manipulation. They are also quite biased towards indicators that current senior researchers value in their own CVs, rather than indicators that might lead to better research overall.

This weakness of the KPI approach has been increasingly recognised over recent years thanks to an encouraging international effort to consider issues relating to research integrity and culture in order to highlight the broader virtues and responsibilities of a good researcher. The development of narrative CVs is one attempt to recognise this by using, as the authors of this manuscript state, a qualitative rather than quantitative approach.

However, as with many issues in life, a pendulum swing from one extreme (quantitative indicators) to the other (qualitative indicators) is not the answer. The solution to fair assessment most likely sits somewhere in the middle, with this middle being identified through further discussion and reflection on what we do now, what works or doesn't, and how we might change systems and processes. This is precisely the conversation that this manuscript addresses."

RESPONSE: Thank you this introduction and useful context which nicely aligns with the arguments that drove this manuscript.

Viewing this work as a reflection on narrative CVs is helpful, because the sample size is small. Indeed with only 24 responses to the survey I would like to see the authors report number of responses in their summary of survey results rather than percentages to better reflect the very small sample. Likewise the 14 participants in the workshop cannot in anyway be considered representative of the research community, and this should be acknowledge explictly. Thus said a very small sample does not prevent interesting observations being made.

RESPONSE: Thank you for noting this important point. In the methods section, we added the following: “The feedback in this report should not be considered as representative of the research community. In fact, participants to the Recognition and Reward Festival are likely to have a priori interest in the reform of research assessment and the small sample size precludes a complete view of perspectives”, and we changed all percentages to numbers in the survey results box.

One element of the results/discussion I did find interesting was the fear that narrative CVs may favour more talented writers, potentially coming from English speaking education systems. This is a fair comment and concern, but I would also like to see the author address the recent challenge raised by the use of AI for both proof reading and also creating content. Surely this must be an increasing threat to the idea of a narrative CV, and even if it wasn't mentioned by participants in the workshop, the author could raise the fact that this wasn't discussed and perhaps should have been.

RESPONSE: This is a good point and indeed probably one we would have heard a lot more if the workshop had taken place a year later. We added a sentence in the discussion about inequalities for writing ability as follows: “In addition, although it was only lightly discussed during the workshop, the place of Large Language Models and Generative Artificial Intelligence in narrative CVs also raises important questions for the future and the impact – either challenges and opportunities – that these new technologies may have should be carefully considered.” We already get back to this point in the discussion by stating “We need to prepare for what the future will bring in research assessment, and make sure that the community actively studies and evidences the impact of changes and mitigates the issues that might arise, including the impact of new technologies on assessment and the creation of new inequalities based on different players changing the system at different speeds.”

I was also struck by the comment that "Epistemic diversity should also be taken into account, in order to break the current dominance of “excellence” that reinforces hierarchies between disciplines". I think this relates to a perceived prejudice towards medical and physical sciences that many from a social science background are often quite concerned about. However, as many CVs often function to obtain positions/grants etc. within subject areas, and thus are judged by academics of similar backgrounds, I would be interested to hear some real examples of where Epistemic diversity is important.

RESPONSE: Thank you for raising this point and for making us reflect further on our statement. We realise that our initial sentence may have brought confusion on our intended meaning, which was aiming to point to more general perspectives of ‘excellence’ and how its evaluation and definitions often depend on uniform models and one-size-fits-all framing of research. Consequently, our intended meaning was to highlight the importance of involving a diversity of views when setting standards and expectations on what ‘excellence’ should look like. We now rephrased the sentence to “It is important that epistemic diversity is also taken into account, involving diverse representation in studies and evaluations of process changes to break the current dominance and self-reinforcing concepts of 'excellence'.”

The Discussion starts with the sentence: "It is vital that discussions targeting changes to research assessment practices involve all members of the research community." I'm not certain this sentence is needed, or indeed justified without further explanation - who is the research community, does it involve research participants, government ministers etc. and should they all be involved in this conversation? Perhaps this sentence could be deleted or alternatively justified further.

RESPONSE: Thank you for sharing this thought with us. This sentence indeed steps out from the discussion structure, so we removed it from its current position and moved it below, while rephrasing it to clarify our point. As it currently stands, it is written as “Discussions targeting changes to research assessment practices must involve diverse members of the research community to capture the breadth of perspectives, worries, and hopes for the future.”.

The second paragraph of the discussion also repeats many of the results so could either be deleted or reframed to make a specific, explicit, point.

RESPONSE: Thank you for raising this point. We added this paragraph specifically to provide a brief summary of the main results for readers who may find it helpful. We know that discussions on narrative CVs are useful to academic literature as well as to policy level, policy-makers and funders are thus part of our target audience. From experience, we have learnt that a summary paragraph such as this makes it easy for this work to be so utilized, and therefore to support evidence-informed policy. For this reason, we would be in favour of keeping this summary paragraph even if it repeats the information mentioned in the results.

But overall this manuscript represents an interesting reflection on the topic, and should be considered as a valuable contribution to the ongoing discussion.

RESPONSE: We thank you for this useful appraisal and for the concrete recommendations which significantly improved our manuscript.
Thank you for your careful review of our manuscript. We found great value in your comments and believe that they improved the quality of our manuscript. We include a detailed overview of the edits we made in light of your comments in our responses below.

"Narrative CVs - where next on the journey?

Who your audience is, and what you are trying to communicate to that audience, is the most important consideration for authors of any type of document. When writing an academic CV the audience is often an employment or grants panel who will be looking for indications that the author will meet whatever criteria they have established for the role/funding. The problem is that the criteria is not always explicit, and can often reflect unrecognised prejudice, making it quite a challenge to write a CV that "plays the game" well, especially for people with diverse or non-traditional backgrounds.

To address this a number of "key performance indicator" (KPI) style metrics have been proposed for academics/researchers, and although they are widely used, they are open to significant manipulation. They are also quite biased towards indicators that current senior researchers value in their own CVs, rather than indicators that might lead to better research overall.

This weakness of the KPI approach has been increasingly recognised over recent years thanks to an encouraging international effort to consider issues relating to research integrity and culture in order to highlight the broader virtues and responsibilities of a good researcher. The development of narrative CVs is one attempt to recognise this by using, as the authors of this manuscript state, a qualitative rather than quantitative approach.

However, as with many issues in life, a pendulum swing from one extreme (quantitative indicators) to the other (qualitative indicators) is not the answer. The solution to fair assessment most likely sits somewhere in the middle, with this middle being identified through further discussion and reflection on what we do now, what works or doesn't, and how we might change systems and processes. This is precisely the conversation that this manuscript addresses."

RESPONSE: Thank you this introduction and useful context which nicely aligns with the arguments that drove this manuscript.

Viewing this work as a reflection on narrative CVs is helpful, because the sample size is small. Indeed with only 24 responses to the survey I would like to see the authors report number of responses in their summary of survey results rather than percentages to better reflect the very small sample. Likewise the 14 participants in the workshop cannot in anyway be considered representative of the research community, and this should be acknowledge explictly. Thus said a very small sample does not prevent interesting observations being made.

RESPONSE: Thank you for noting this important point. In the methods section, we added the following: “The feedback in this report should not be considered as representative of the research community. In fact, participants to the Recognition and Reward Festival are likely to have a priori interest in the reform of research assessment and the small sample size precludes a complete view of perspectives”, and we changed all percentages to numbers in the survey results box.

One element of the results/discussion I did find interesting was the fear that narrative CVs may favour more talented writers, potentially coming from English speaking education systems. This is a fair comment and concern, but I would also like to see the author address the recent challenge raised by the use of AI for both proof reading and also creating content. Surely this must be an increasing threat to the idea of a narrative CV, and even if it wasn't mentioned by participants in the workshop, the author could raise the fact that this wasn't discussed and perhaps should have been.

RESPONSE: This is a good point and indeed probably one we would have heard a lot more if the workshop had taken place a year later. We added a sentence in the discussion about inequalities for writing ability as follows: “In addition, although it was only lightly discussed during the workshop, the place of Large Language Models and Generative Artificial Intelligence in narrative CVs also raises important questions for the future and the impact – either challenges and opportunities – that these new technologies may have should be carefully considered.” We already get back to this point in the discussion by stating “We need to prepare for what the future will bring in research assessment, and make sure that the community actively studies and evidences the impact of changes and mitigates the issues that might arise, including the impact of new technologies on assessment and the creation of new inequalities based on different players changing the system at different speeds.”

I was also struck by the comment that "Epistemic diversity should also be taken into account, in order to break the current dominance of “excellence” that reinforces hierarchies between disciplines". I think this relates to a perceived prejudice towards medical and physical sciences that many from a social science background are often quite concerned about. However, as many CVs often function to obtain positions/grants etc. within subject areas, and thus are judged by academics of similar backgrounds, I would be interested to hear some real examples of where Epistemic diversity is important.

RESPONSE: Thank you for raising this point and for making us reflect further on our statement. We realise that our initial sentence may have brought confusion on our intended meaning, which was aiming to point to more general perspectives of ‘excellence’ and how its evaluation and definitions often depend on uniform models and one-size-fits-all framing of research. Consequently, our intended meaning was to highlight the importance of involving a diversity of views when setting standards and expectations on what ‘excellence’ should look like. We now rephrased the sentence to “It is important that epistemic diversity is also taken into account, involving diverse representation in studies and evaluations of process changes to break the current dominance and self-reinforcing concepts of 'excellence'.”

The Discussion starts with the sentence: "It is vital that discussions targeting changes to research assessment practices involve all members of the research community." I'm not certain this sentence is needed, or indeed justified without further explanation - who is the research community, does it involve research participants, government ministers etc. and should they all be involved in this conversation? Perhaps this sentence could be deleted or alternatively justified further.

RESPONSE: Thank you for sharing this thought with us. This sentence indeed steps out from the discussion structure, so we removed it from its current position and moved it below, while rephrasing it to clarify our point. As it currently stands, it is written as “Discussions targeting changes to research assessment practices must involve diverse members of the research community to capture the breadth of perspectives, worries, and hopes for the future.”.

The second paragraph of the discussion also repeats many of the results so could either be deleted or reframed to make a specific, explicit, point.

RESPONSE: Thank you for raising this point. We added this paragraph specifically to provide a brief summary of the main results for readers who may find it helpful. We know that discussions on narrative CVs are useful to academic literature as well as to policy level, policy-makers and funders are thus part of our target audience. From experience, we have learnt that a summary paragraph such as this makes it easy for this work to be so utilized, and therefore to support evidence-informed policy. For this reason, we would be in favour of keeping this summary paragraph even if it repeats the information mentioned in the results.

But overall this manuscript represents an interesting reflection on the topic, and should be considered as a valuable contribution to the ongoing discussion.

RESPONSE: We thank you for this useful appraisal and for the concrete recommendations which significantly improved our manuscript.
Competing Interests: No competing interests were disclosed. Close
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COMMENTS ON THIS REPORT

Author Response 11 Sep 2025

Noémie Aubert Bonn, Department of Healthcare and Ethics, Universiteit Hasselt, Hasselt, 3500, Belgium

11 Sep 2025

Author Response

Thank you for your careful review of our manuscript. We found great value in your comments and believe that they improved the quality of our manuscript. We include a detailed ... Continue reading Thank you for your careful review of our manuscript. We found great value in your comments and believe that they improved the quality of our manuscript. We include a detailed overview of the edits we made in light of your comments in our responses below.

"Narrative CVs - where next on the journey?

Who your audience is, and what you are trying to communicate to that audience, is the most important consideration for authors of any type of document. When writing an academic CV the audience is often an employment or grants panel who will be looking for indications that the author will meet whatever criteria they have established for the role/funding. The problem is that the criteria is not always explicit, and can often reflect unrecognised prejudice, making it quite a challenge to write a CV that "plays the game" well, especially for people with diverse or non-traditional backgrounds.

To address this a number of "key performance indicator" (KPI) style metrics have been proposed for academics/researchers, and although they are widely used, they are open to significant manipulation. They are also quite biased towards indicators that current senior researchers value in their own CVs, rather than indicators that might lead to better research overall.

This weakness of the KPI approach has been increasingly recognised over recent years thanks to an encouraging international effort to consider issues relating to research integrity and culture in order to highlight the broader virtues and responsibilities of a good researcher. The development of narrative CVs is one attempt to recognise this by using, as the authors of this manuscript state, a qualitative rather than quantitative approach.

However, as with many issues in life, a pendulum swing from one extreme (quantitative indicators) to the other (qualitative indicators) is not the answer. The solution to fair assessment most likely sits somewhere in the middle, with this middle being identified through further discussion and reflection on what we do now, what works or doesn't, and how we might change systems and processes. This is precisely the conversation that this manuscript addresses."

RESPONSE: Thank you this introduction and useful context which nicely aligns with the arguments that drove this manuscript.

Viewing this work as a reflection on narrative CVs is helpful, because the sample size is small. Indeed with only 24 responses to the survey I would like to see the authors report number of responses in their summary of survey results rather than percentages to better reflect the very small sample. Likewise the 14 participants in the workshop cannot in anyway be considered representative of the research community, and this should be acknowledge explictly. Thus said a very small sample does not prevent interesting observations being made.

RESPONSE: Thank you for noting this important point. In the methods section, we added the following: “The feedback in this report should not be considered as representative of the research community. In fact, participants to the Recognition and Reward Festival are likely to have a priori interest in the reform of research assessment and the small sample size precludes a complete view of perspectives”, and we changed all percentages to numbers in the survey results box.

One element of the results/discussion I did find interesting was the fear that narrative CVs may favour more talented writers, potentially coming from English speaking education systems. This is a fair comment and concern, but I would also like to see the author address the recent challenge raised by the use of AI for both proof reading and also creating content. Surely this must be an increasing threat to the idea of a narrative CV, and even if it wasn't mentioned by participants in the workshop, the author could raise the fact that this wasn't discussed and perhaps should have been.

RESPONSE: This is a good point and indeed probably one we would have heard a lot more if the workshop had taken place a year later. We added a sentence in the discussion about inequalities for writing ability as follows: “In addition, although it was only lightly discussed during the workshop, the place of Large Language Models and Generative Artificial Intelligence in narrative CVs also raises important questions for the future and the impact – either challenges and opportunities – that these new technologies may have should be carefully considered.” We already get back to this point in the discussion by stating “We need to prepare for what the future will bring in research assessment, and make sure that the community actively studies and evidences the impact of changes and mitigates the issues that might arise, including the impact of new technologies on assessment and the creation of new inequalities based on different players changing the system at different speeds.”

I was also struck by the comment that "Epistemic diversity should also be taken into account, in order to break the current dominance of “excellence” that reinforces hierarchies between disciplines". I think this relates to a perceived prejudice towards medical and physical sciences that many from a social science background are often quite concerned about. However, as many CVs often function to obtain positions/grants etc. within subject areas, and thus are judged by academics of similar backgrounds, I would be interested to hear some real examples of where Epistemic diversity is important.

RESPONSE: Thank you for raising this point and for making us reflect further on our statement. We realise that our initial sentence may have brought confusion on our intended meaning, which was aiming to point to more general perspectives of ‘excellence’ and how its evaluation and definitions often depend on uniform models and one-size-fits-all framing of research. Consequently, our intended meaning was to highlight the importance of involving a diversity of views when setting standards and expectations on what ‘excellence’ should look like. We now rephrased the sentence to “It is important that epistemic diversity is also taken into account, involving diverse representation in studies and evaluations of process changes to break the current dominance and self-reinforcing concepts of 'excellence'.”

The Discussion starts with the sentence: "It is vital that discussions targeting changes to research assessment practices involve all members of the research community." I'm not certain this sentence is needed, or indeed justified without further explanation - who is the research community, does it involve research participants, government ministers etc. and should they all be involved in this conversation? Perhaps this sentence could be deleted or alternatively justified further.

RESPONSE: Thank you for sharing this thought with us. This sentence indeed steps out from the discussion structure, so we removed it from its current position and moved it below, while rephrasing it to clarify our point. As it currently stands, it is written as “Discussions targeting changes to research assessment practices must involve diverse members of the research community to capture the breadth of perspectives, worries, and hopes for the future.”.

The second paragraph of the discussion also repeats many of the results so could either be deleted or reframed to make a specific, explicit, point.

RESPONSE: Thank you for raising this point. We added this paragraph specifically to provide a brief summary of the main results for readers who may find it helpful. We know that discussions on narrative CVs are useful to academic literature as well as to policy level, policy-makers and funders are thus part of our target audience. From experience, we have learnt that a summary paragraph such as this makes it easy for this work to be so utilized, and therefore to support evidence-informed policy. For this reason, we would be in favour of keeping this summary paragraph even if it repeats the information mentioned in the results.

But overall this manuscript represents an interesting reflection on the topic, and should be considered as a valuable contribution to the ongoing discussion.

RESPONSE: We thank you for this useful appraisal and for the concrete recommendations which significantly improved our manuscript.
Thank you for your careful review of our manuscript. We found great value in your comments and believe that they improved the quality of our manuscript. We include a detailed overview of the edits we made in light of your comments in our responses below.

"Narrative CVs - where next on the journey?

Who your audience is, and what you are trying to communicate to that audience, is the most important consideration for authors of any type of document. When writing an academic CV the audience is often an employment or grants panel who will be looking for indications that the author will meet whatever criteria they have established for the role/funding. The problem is that the criteria is not always explicit, and can often reflect unrecognised prejudice, making it quite a challenge to write a CV that "plays the game" well, especially for people with diverse or non-traditional backgrounds.

To address this a number of "key performance indicator" (KPI) style metrics have been proposed for academics/researchers, and although they are widely used, they are open to significant manipulation. They are also quite biased towards indicators that current senior researchers value in their own CVs, rather than indicators that might lead to better research overall.

This weakness of the KPI approach has been increasingly recognised over recent years thanks to an encouraging international effort to consider issues relating to research integrity and culture in order to highlight the broader virtues and responsibilities of a good researcher. The development of narrative CVs is one attempt to recognise this by using, as the authors of this manuscript state, a qualitative rather than quantitative approach.

However, as with many issues in life, a pendulum swing from one extreme (quantitative indicators) to the other (qualitative indicators) is not the answer. The solution to fair assessment most likely sits somewhere in the middle, with this middle being identified through further discussion and reflection on what we do now, what works or doesn't, and how we might change systems and processes. This is precisely the conversation that this manuscript addresses."

RESPONSE: Thank you this introduction and useful context which nicely aligns with the arguments that drove this manuscript.

Viewing this work as a reflection on narrative CVs is helpful, because the sample size is small. Indeed with only 24 responses to the survey I would like to see the authors report number of responses in their summary of survey results rather than percentages to better reflect the very small sample. Likewise the 14 participants in the workshop cannot in anyway be considered representative of the research community, and this should be acknowledge explictly. Thus said a very small sample does not prevent interesting observations being made.

RESPONSE: Thank you for noting this important point. In the methods section, we added the following: “The feedback in this report should not be considered as representative of the research community. In fact, participants to the Recognition and Reward Festival are likely to have a priori interest in the reform of research assessment and the small sample size precludes a complete view of perspectives”, and we changed all percentages to numbers in the survey results box.

One element of the results/discussion I did find interesting was the fear that narrative CVs may favour more talented writers, potentially coming from English speaking education systems. This is a fair comment and concern, but I would also like to see the author address the recent challenge raised by the use of AI for both proof reading and also creating content. Surely this must be an increasing threat to the idea of a narrative CV, and even if it wasn't mentioned by participants in the workshop, the author could raise the fact that this wasn't discussed and perhaps should have been.

RESPONSE: This is a good point and indeed probably one we would have heard a lot more if the workshop had taken place a year later. We added a sentence in the discussion about inequalities for writing ability as follows: “In addition, although it was only lightly discussed during the workshop, the place of Large Language Models and Generative Artificial Intelligence in narrative CVs also raises important questions for the future and the impact – either challenges and opportunities – that these new technologies may have should be carefully considered.” We already get back to this point in the discussion by stating “We need to prepare for what the future will bring in research assessment, and make sure that the community actively studies and evidences the impact of changes and mitigates the issues that might arise, including the impact of new technologies on assessment and the creation of new inequalities based on different players changing the system at different speeds.”

I was also struck by the comment that "Epistemic diversity should also be taken into account, in order to break the current dominance of “excellence” that reinforces hierarchies between disciplines". I think this relates to a perceived prejudice towards medical and physical sciences that many from a social science background are often quite concerned about. However, as many CVs often function to obtain positions/grants etc. within subject areas, and thus are judged by academics of similar backgrounds, I would be interested to hear some real examples of where Epistemic diversity is important.

RESPONSE: Thank you for raising this point and for making us reflect further on our statement. We realise that our initial sentence may have brought confusion on our intended meaning, which was aiming to point to more general perspectives of ‘excellence’ and how its evaluation and definitions often depend on uniform models and one-size-fits-all framing of research. Consequently, our intended meaning was to highlight the importance of involving a diversity of views when setting standards and expectations on what ‘excellence’ should look like. We now rephrased the sentence to “It is important that epistemic diversity is also taken into account, involving diverse representation in studies and evaluations of process changes to break the current dominance and self-reinforcing concepts of 'excellence'.”

The Discussion starts with the sentence: "It is vital that discussions targeting changes to research assessment practices involve all members of the research community." I'm not certain this sentence is needed, or indeed justified without further explanation - who is the research community, does it involve research participants, government ministers etc. and should they all be involved in this conversation? Perhaps this sentence could be deleted or alternatively justified further.

RESPONSE: Thank you for sharing this thought with us. This sentence indeed steps out from the discussion structure, so we removed it from its current position and moved it below, while rephrasing it to clarify our point. As it currently stands, it is written as “Discussions targeting changes to research assessment practices must involve diverse members of the research community to capture the breadth of perspectives, worries, and hopes for the future.”.

The second paragraph of the discussion also repeats many of the results so could either be deleted or reframed to make a specific, explicit, point.

RESPONSE: Thank you for raising this point. We added this paragraph specifically to provide a brief summary of the main results for readers who may find it helpful. We know that discussions on narrative CVs are useful to academic literature as well as to policy level, policy-makers and funders are thus part of our target audience. From experience, we have learnt that a summary paragraph such as this makes it easy for this work to be so utilized, and therefore to support evidence-informed policy. For this reason, we would be in favour of keeping this summary paragraph even if it repeats the information mentioned in the results.

But overall this manuscript represents an interesting reflection on the topic, and should be considered as a valuable contribution to the ongoing discussion.

RESPONSE: We thank you for this useful appraisal and for the concrete recommendations which significantly improved our manuscript.
Competing Interests: No competing interests were disclosed. Close
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Reviewer Report 25 Sep 2024

Maria Pietilä, University of Eastern Finland, Eastern Finland, Finland

Approved with Reservations

https://doi.org/10.5256/f1000research.160148.r317744

Thank you for the invitation to review the paper. The paper addresses an important and timely topic: the potential of narrative CVs in changing the current ways of research assessment. It draws on data gathered at a workshop organized in the Netherlands and data obtained from a pre-workshop survey.

The paper is well situated in the broader context of research assessment reform. The topic is relevant for readers within the science policy environment in different countries. The paper presents interesting findings which are relevant for the wider scholarly community preparing innovative, responsible ways to assess research/ers.

I agree with the authors that assessments have for long had narrative elements included. For example, in funding applications researchers have had to put their research proposal in a wider context and to explain its significance to evaluators who may not be experts in the topic. In recruitment, motivation/cover letters represent narratives in which the researchers tell about their skills and career background, often in a free format. Thus, narrative CVs are not completely new in the context of evaluation.

In the following, I make some comments/reflections/suggestions that the authors may consider when revising their paper and when organizing future workshops on the topic.

I would consider adding at the beginning of the paper a brief description of narrative CVs: what do they normally look like, what do they aim for, etc.

The paper places significant (mostly positive) expectations on narrative CVs and maintains an overall optimistic tone toward their use. However, some of the findings in the paper sound more like hypothesis for empirical research. For example, the argument that narrative CVs are good for women and minorities was put forward by the workshop participants. In the paper, you could consider, whether there is a need to critically assess this expectation - is there any empirical research showing that this is the case? I also wonder to what extent narrative CVs in practice lead to the acknowledgement of a broader set of skills. Changing the documentation does not mean that the valuations critical for assessment change. Candidates applying for funding or jobs may still be inclined to present traditional outputs in their narrative CVs (maybe for good reasons). Despite universities/funders’ goal towards identifying and acknowledging a wider set of researchers’ contributions, evaluators may still give priority to traditional outputs and activities at the extent of others. Therefore, the authors might reflect on the need to take into account broader power dynamics in academic recruitment with different actors and priorities and the 'cultural burden' connected to existing research assessment practices that may shape how contributions in narrative CVs are assessed.

I would argue organizations using narrative CVs should be encouraged to state clearly how different contributions in narrative CVs are assessed: if all the contributions are of equal value or if some are more valued than others, given the different needs of the funder/employing unit. Objective comparison of candidates’ merits/achievements is crucial for example in recruitment, and thus having transparent criteria and showing them to the applicants is essential (this was touched upon on page 4).

Therefore, I suggest adding some more reflection on the needs for further academic research on the topic (with proper research designs; such research is already being conducted). Also, the authors are encouraged to consider ‘practice-oriented sessions’ on how to evaluate narrative CVs in the future workshops (incl. how to make comparisons between candidates who bring up different kinds of contributions in their narrative CVs).

Is the work clearly and accurately presented and does it cite the current literature?

Yes
Is the study design appropriate and is the work technically sound?

Yes
Are sufficient details of methods and analysis provided to allow replication by others?

Partly
If applicable, is the statistical analysis and its interpretation appropriate?

Not applicable
Are all the source data underlying the results available to ensure full reproducibility?

Yes
Are the conclusions drawn adequately supported by the results?

Partly

Competing Interests: No competing interests were disclosed.

Reviewer Expertise: Academic careers; research assessment; gender equality in academia; university organisations

CITE

Report a concern

Author Response 11 Sep 2025

Noémie Aubert Bonn, Department of Healthcare and Ethics, Universiteit Hasselt, Hasselt, 3500, Belgium

11 Sep 2025

Author Response

Thank you for your careful review of our manuscript. We found great value in your comments and believe that they improved the quality of our manuscript. We include a detailed ... Continue reading Thank you for your careful review of our manuscript. We found great value in your comments and believe that they improved the quality of our manuscript. We include a detailed overview of the edits we made in light of your comments in our responses below.

"Thank you for the invitation to review the paper. The paper addresses an important and timely topic: the potential of narrative CVs in changing the current ways of research assessment. It draws on data gathered at a workshop organized in the Netherlands and data obtained from a pre-workshop survey.

The paper is well situated in the broader context of research assessment reform. The topic is relevant for readers within the science policy environment in different countries. The paper presents interesting findings which are relevant for the wider scholarly community preparing innovative, responsible ways to assess research/ers.

I agree with the authors that assessments have for long had narrative elements included. For example, in funding applications researchers have had to put their research proposal in a wider context and to explain its significance to evaluators who may not be experts in the topic. In recruitment, motivation/cover letters represent narratives in which the researchers tell about their skills and career background, often in a free format. Thus, narrative CVs are not completely new in the context of evaluation.

In the following, I make some comments/reflections/suggestions that the authors may consider when revising their paper and when organizing future workshops on the topic.

I would consider adding at the beginning of the paper a brief description of narrative CVs: what do they normally look like, what do they aim for, etc."

RESPONSE: Thank you for making us realise that this important background information was missing. We added a short description at the end of the introduction as follows: “Narrative CVs are “generally understood to encompass a structured description of a researcher’s contributions and achievements that reflect a broader range of skills and experiences beyond publications and funding record.” 18 In a Narrative CV, researchers have more freedom over the way they present achievements, outputs, and skills that define their career than they normally would in an itemised CV. Because Narrative CVs are started to be implemented quite recently, a lot remains to be known about their impact and potential.” With a reference to Fritch R., Hatch, A., Hazlett, H., Vinkenburg, C. Using Narrative CVs: Process optimization and bias mitigation. (DORA, 2021). https://zenodo.org/record/5799414#.YeM-41IOIPY

"The paper places significant (mostly positive) expectations on narrative CVs and maintains an overall optimistic tone toward their use. However, some of the findings in the paper sound more like hypothesis for empirical research. For example, the argument that narrative CVs are good for women and minorities was put forward by the workshop participants. In the paper, you could consider, whether there is a need to critically assess this expectation - is there any empirical research showing that this is the case?"

RESPONSE: This is a very good point. We added a statement to the first sentence of the Results section to clarify that the findings need to be further assessed by empirical research. In addition, when discussing findings we made sure that it was clear that point were based on the perspectives of participants, and we highlighted that these perspectives should be documented with evidence. For example, when discussing the value of narrative CVs in increasing diversity, we added “These perspectives are important to consider in the implementation of narrative CVs, but they also call for more empirical research to understand the genuine impact that narrative CVs have on diversity and biases.” We further repeated this point in the discussion where we added that “further research should be undertaken to identify how these perceived impacts are reflected in practice”, and that we need to “make sure that the community actively studies and evidences the impact of changes and mitigates the issues that might arise”.

"I also wonder to what extent narrative CVs in practice lead to the acknowledgement of a broader set of skills. Changing the documentation does not mean that the valuations critical for assessment change. Candidates applying for funding or jobs may still be inclined to present traditional outputs in their narrative CVs (maybe for good reasons). Despite universities/funders’ goal towards identifying and acknowledging a wider set of researchers’ contributions, evaluators may still give priority to traditional outputs and activities at the extent of others. Therefore, the authors might reflect on the need to take into account broader power dynamics in academic recruitment with different actors and priorities and the 'cultural burden' connected to existing research assessment practices that may shape how contributions in narrative CVs are assessed."

RESPONSE: This is an interesting point that was not thoroughly discussed in the workshop but that is well reflected in discussions on the reform of research assessment. We added a few sentences to this effect in the discussion to point to the important role of existing assessment practices and cultural norms. Specifically, we added the following sections in the Discussion: “There are long-standing cultural norms embedded into current assessment practices and policies that challenge the changes being made towards broadening what is recognised and rewarded in research. Incremental shifts in guidance and processes are counterbalanced by enduring cultural expectations that influence how careers are viewed and developed at all levels. Consequently, the introduction of narrative-style CVs and any other changes to the assessment processes should never happen in a vacuum, but go hand in hand with active discussions and culture change initiatives.” As well as “It is also important to understand the forces at play as the reform unfolds to identify those who play a role in shaping cultures of assessment. Involving a breadth of stakeholders with distinct priorities and powers – including those pushing for the reform, those pushing against, those who assess, and those who are assessed – is vital to enabling a shared dialogue.”

"I would argue organizations using narrative CVs should be encouraged to state clearly how different contributions in narrative CVs are assessed: if all the contributions are of equal value or if some are more valued than others, given the different needs of the funder/employing unit. Objective comparison of candidates’ merits/achievements is crucial for example in recruitment, and thus having transparent criteria and showing them to the applicants is essential (this was touched upon on page 4)."

RESPONSE: In addition to the points added above, we also added the following sentence when discussing the shift in the diversity of contributions that narrative CVs may enable: “Careful consideration of how this diversity of competencies, activities, or actions plays into assessment decisions and how they will be used by assessors will be important to better understand the potential for a culture shift.”.

"Therefore, I suggest adding some more reflection on the needs for further academic research on the topic (with proper research designs; such research is already being conducted). Also, the authors are encouraged to consider ‘practice-oriented sessions’ on how to evaluate narrative CVs in the future workshops (incl. how to make comparisons between candidates who bring up different kinds of contributions in their narrative CVs)."

RESPONSE: Thank you for this recommendation. We reflected the need for more research throughout the manuscript. We also thank you for the recommendation of practice-oriented sessions. We will certainly consider this recommendation in future workshops.
Thank you for your careful review of our manuscript. We found great value in your comments and believe that they improved the quality of our manuscript. We include a detailed overview of the edits we made in light of your comments in our responses below.

"Thank you for the invitation to review the paper. The paper addresses an important and timely topic: the potential of narrative CVs in changing the current ways of research assessment. It draws on data gathered at a workshop organized in the Netherlands and data obtained from a pre-workshop survey.

The paper is well situated in the broader context of research assessment reform. The topic is relevant for readers within the science policy environment in different countries. The paper presents interesting findings which are relevant for the wider scholarly community preparing innovative, responsible ways to assess research/ers.

I agree with the authors that assessments have for long had narrative elements included. For example, in funding applications researchers have had to put their research proposal in a wider context and to explain its significance to evaluators who may not be experts in the topic. In recruitment, motivation/cover letters represent narratives in which the researchers tell about their skills and career background, often in a free format. Thus, narrative CVs are not completely new in the context of evaluation.

In the following, I make some comments/reflections/suggestions that the authors may consider when revising their paper and when organizing future workshops on the topic.

I would consider adding at the beginning of the paper a brief description of narrative CVs: what do they normally look like, what do they aim for, etc."

RESPONSE: Thank you for making us realise that this important background information was missing. We added a short description at the end of the introduction as follows: “Narrative CVs are “generally understood to encompass a structured description of a researcher’s contributions and achievements that reflect a broader range of skills and experiences beyond publications and funding record.” 18 In a Narrative CV, researchers have more freedom over the way they present achievements, outputs, and skills that define their career than they normally would in an itemised CV. Because Narrative CVs are started to be implemented quite recently, a lot remains to be known about their impact and potential.” With a reference to Fritch R., Hatch, A., Hazlett, H., Vinkenburg, C. Using Narrative CVs: Process optimization and bias mitigation. (DORA, 2021). https://zenodo.org/record/5799414#.YeM-41IOIPY

"The paper places significant (mostly positive) expectations on narrative CVs and maintains an overall optimistic tone toward their use. However, some of the findings in the paper sound more like hypothesis for empirical research. For example, the argument that narrative CVs are good for women and minorities was put forward by the workshop participants. In the paper, you could consider, whether there is a need to critically assess this expectation - is there any empirical research showing that this is the case?"

RESPONSE: This is a very good point. We added a statement to the first sentence of the Results section to clarify that the findings need to be further assessed by empirical research. In addition, when discussing findings we made sure that it was clear that point were based on the perspectives of participants, and we highlighted that these perspectives should be documented with evidence. For example, when discussing the value of narrative CVs in increasing diversity, we added “These perspectives are important to consider in the implementation of narrative CVs, but they also call for more empirical research to understand the genuine impact that narrative CVs have on diversity and biases.” We further repeated this point in the discussion where we added that “further research should be undertaken to identify how these perceived impacts are reflected in practice”, and that we need to “make sure that the community actively studies and evidences the impact of changes and mitigates the issues that might arise”.

"I also wonder to what extent narrative CVs in practice lead to the acknowledgement of a broader set of skills. Changing the documentation does not mean that the valuations critical for assessment change. Candidates applying for funding or jobs may still be inclined to present traditional outputs in their narrative CVs (maybe for good reasons). Despite universities/funders’ goal towards identifying and acknowledging a wider set of researchers’ contributions, evaluators may still give priority to traditional outputs and activities at the extent of others. Therefore, the authors might reflect on the need to take into account broader power dynamics in academic recruitment with different actors and priorities and the 'cultural burden' connected to existing research assessment practices that may shape how contributions in narrative CVs are assessed."

RESPONSE: This is an interesting point that was not thoroughly discussed in the workshop but that is well reflected in discussions on the reform of research assessment. We added a few sentences to this effect in the discussion to point to the important role of existing assessment practices and cultural norms. Specifically, we added the following sections in the Discussion: “There are long-standing cultural norms embedded into current assessment practices and policies that challenge the changes being made towards broadening what is recognised and rewarded in research. Incremental shifts in guidance and processes are counterbalanced by enduring cultural expectations that influence how careers are viewed and developed at all levels. Consequently, the introduction of narrative-style CVs and any other changes to the assessment processes should never happen in a vacuum, but go hand in hand with active discussions and culture change initiatives.” As well as “It is also important to understand the forces at play as the reform unfolds to identify those who play a role in shaping cultures of assessment. Involving a breadth of stakeholders with distinct priorities and powers – including those pushing for the reform, those pushing against, those who assess, and those who are assessed – is vital to enabling a shared dialogue.”

"I would argue organizations using narrative CVs should be encouraged to state clearly how different contributions in narrative CVs are assessed: if all the contributions are of equal value or if some are more valued than others, given the different needs of the funder/employing unit. Objective comparison of candidates’ merits/achievements is crucial for example in recruitment, and thus having transparent criteria and showing them to the applicants is essential (this was touched upon on page 4)."

RESPONSE: In addition to the points added above, we also added the following sentence when discussing the shift in the diversity of contributions that narrative CVs may enable: “Careful consideration of how this diversity of competencies, activities, or actions plays into assessment decisions and how they will be used by assessors will be important to better understand the potential for a culture shift.”.

"Therefore, I suggest adding some more reflection on the needs for further academic research on the topic (with proper research designs; such research is already being conducted). Also, the authors are encouraged to consider ‘practice-oriented sessions’ on how to evaluate narrative CVs in the future workshops (incl. how to make comparisons between candidates who bring up different kinds of contributions in their narrative CVs)."

RESPONSE: Thank you for this recommendation. We reflected the need for more research throughout the manuscript. We also thank you for the recommendation of practice-oriented sessions. We will certainly consider this recommendation in future workshops.
Competing Interests: No competing interests were disclosed. Close
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COMMENTS ON THIS REPORT

Author Response 11 Sep 2025

Noémie Aubert Bonn, Department of Healthcare and Ethics, Universiteit Hasselt, Hasselt, 3500, Belgium

11 Sep 2025

Author Response

Thank you for your careful review of our manuscript. We found great value in your comments and believe that they improved the quality of our manuscript. We include a detailed ... Continue reading Thank you for your careful review of our manuscript. We found great value in your comments and believe that they improved the quality of our manuscript. We include a detailed overview of the edits we made in light of your comments in our responses below.

"Thank you for the invitation to review the paper. The paper addresses an important and timely topic: the potential of narrative CVs in changing the current ways of research assessment. It draws on data gathered at a workshop organized in the Netherlands and data obtained from a pre-workshop survey.

The paper is well situated in the broader context of research assessment reform. The topic is relevant for readers within the science policy environment in different countries. The paper presents interesting findings which are relevant for the wider scholarly community preparing innovative, responsible ways to assess research/ers.

I agree with the authors that assessments have for long had narrative elements included. For example, in funding applications researchers have had to put their research proposal in a wider context and to explain its significance to evaluators who may not be experts in the topic. In recruitment, motivation/cover letters represent narratives in which the researchers tell about their skills and career background, often in a free format. Thus, narrative CVs are not completely new in the context of evaluation.

In the following, I make some comments/reflections/suggestions that the authors may consider when revising their paper and when organizing future workshops on the topic.

I would consider adding at the beginning of the paper a brief description of narrative CVs: what do they normally look like, what do they aim for, etc."

RESPONSE: Thank you for making us realise that this important background information was missing. We added a short description at the end of the introduction as follows: “Narrative CVs are “generally understood to encompass a structured description of a researcher’s contributions and achievements that reflect a broader range of skills and experiences beyond publications and funding record.” 18 In a Narrative CV, researchers have more freedom over the way they present achievements, outputs, and skills that define their career than they normally would in an itemised CV. Because Narrative CVs are started to be implemented quite recently, a lot remains to be known about their impact and potential.” With a reference to Fritch R., Hatch, A., Hazlett, H., Vinkenburg, C. Using Narrative CVs: Process optimization and bias mitigation. (DORA, 2021). https://zenodo.org/record/5799414#.YeM-41IOIPY

"The paper places significant (mostly positive) expectations on narrative CVs and maintains an overall optimistic tone toward their use. However, some of the findings in the paper sound more like hypothesis for empirical research. For example, the argument that narrative CVs are good for women and minorities was put forward by the workshop participants. In the paper, you could consider, whether there is a need to critically assess this expectation - is there any empirical research showing that this is the case?"

RESPONSE: This is a very good point. We added a statement to the first sentence of the Results section to clarify that the findings need to be further assessed by empirical research. In addition, when discussing findings we made sure that it was clear that point were based on the perspectives of participants, and we highlighted that these perspectives should be documented with evidence. For example, when discussing the value of narrative CVs in increasing diversity, we added “These perspectives are important to consider in the implementation of narrative CVs, but they also call for more empirical research to understand the genuine impact that narrative CVs have on diversity and biases.” We further repeated this point in the discussion where we added that “further research should be undertaken to identify how these perceived impacts are reflected in practice”, and that we need to “make sure that the community actively studies and evidences the impact of changes and mitigates the issues that might arise”.

"I also wonder to what extent narrative CVs in practice lead to the acknowledgement of a broader set of skills. Changing the documentation does not mean that the valuations critical for assessment change. Candidates applying for funding or jobs may still be inclined to present traditional outputs in their narrative CVs (maybe for good reasons). Despite universities/funders’ goal towards identifying and acknowledging a wider set of researchers’ contributions, evaluators may still give priority to traditional outputs and activities at the extent of others. Therefore, the authors might reflect on the need to take into account broader power dynamics in academic recruitment with different actors and priorities and the 'cultural burden' connected to existing research assessment practices that may shape how contributions in narrative CVs are assessed."

RESPONSE: This is an interesting point that was not thoroughly discussed in the workshop but that is well reflected in discussions on the reform of research assessment. We added a few sentences to this effect in the discussion to point to the important role of existing assessment practices and cultural norms. Specifically, we added the following sections in the Discussion: “There are long-standing cultural norms embedded into current assessment practices and policies that challenge the changes being made towards broadening what is recognised and rewarded in research. Incremental shifts in guidance and processes are counterbalanced by enduring cultural expectations that influence how careers are viewed and developed at all levels. Consequently, the introduction of narrative-style CVs and any other changes to the assessment processes should never happen in a vacuum, but go hand in hand with active discussions and culture change initiatives.” As well as “It is also important to understand the forces at play as the reform unfolds to identify those who play a role in shaping cultures of assessment. Involving a breadth of stakeholders with distinct priorities and powers – including those pushing for the reform, those pushing against, those who assess, and those who are assessed – is vital to enabling a shared dialogue.”

"I would argue organizations using narrative CVs should be encouraged to state clearly how different contributions in narrative CVs are assessed: if all the contributions are of equal value or if some are more valued than others, given the different needs of the funder/employing unit. Objective comparison of candidates’ merits/achievements is crucial for example in recruitment, and thus having transparent criteria and showing them to the applicants is essential (this was touched upon on page 4)."

RESPONSE: In addition to the points added above, we also added the following sentence when discussing the shift in the diversity of contributions that narrative CVs may enable: “Careful consideration of how this diversity of competencies, activities, or actions plays into assessment decisions and how they will be used by assessors will be important to better understand the potential for a culture shift.”.

"Therefore, I suggest adding some more reflection on the needs for further academic research on the topic (with proper research designs; such research is already being conducted). Also, the authors are encouraged to consider ‘practice-oriented sessions’ on how to evaluate narrative CVs in the future workshops (incl. how to make comparisons between candidates who bring up different kinds of contributions in their narrative CVs)."

RESPONSE: Thank you for this recommendation. We reflected the need for more research throughout the manuscript. We also thank you for the recommendation of practice-oriented sessions. We will certainly consider this recommendation in future workshops.
Thank you for your careful review of our manuscript. We found great value in your comments and believe that they improved the quality of our manuscript. We include a detailed overview of the edits we made in light of your comments in our responses below.

"Thank you for the invitation to review the paper. The paper addresses an important and timely topic: the potential of narrative CVs in changing the current ways of research assessment. It draws on data gathered at a workshop organized in the Netherlands and data obtained from a pre-workshop survey.

The paper is well situated in the broader context of research assessment reform. The topic is relevant for readers within the science policy environment in different countries. The paper presents interesting findings which are relevant for the wider scholarly community preparing innovative, responsible ways to assess research/ers.

I agree with the authors that assessments have for long had narrative elements included. For example, in funding applications researchers have had to put their research proposal in a wider context and to explain its significance to evaluators who may not be experts in the topic. In recruitment, motivation/cover letters represent narratives in which the researchers tell about their skills and career background, often in a free format. Thus, narrative CVs are not completely new in the context of evaluation.

In the following, I make some comments/reflections/suggestions that the authors may consider when revising their paper and when organizing future workshops on the topic.

I would consider adding at the beginning of the paper a brief description of narrative CVs: what do they normally look like, what do they aim for, etc."

RESPONSE: Thank you for making us realise that this important background information was missing. We added a short description at the end of the introduction as follows: “Narrative CVs are “generally understood to encompass a structured description of a researcher’s contributions and achievements that reflect a broader range of skills and experiences beyond publications and funding record.” 18 In a Narrative CV, researchers have more freedom over the way they present achievements, outputs, and skills that define their career than they normally would in an itemised CV. Because Narrative CVs are started to be implemented quite recently, a lot remains to be known about their impact and potential.” With a reference to Fritch R., Hatch, A., Hazlett, H., Vinkenburg, C. Using Narrative CVs: Process optimization and bias mitigation. (DORA, 2021). https://zenodo.org/record/5799414#.YeM-41IOIPY

"The paper places significant (mostly positive) expectations on narrative CVs and maintains an overall optimistic tone toward their use. However, some of the findings in the paper sound more like hypothesis for empirical research. For example, the argument that narrative CVs are good for women and minorities was put forward by the workshop participants. In the paper, you could consider, whether there is a need to critically assess this expectation - is there any empirical research showing that this is the case?"

RESPONSE: This is a very good point. We added a statement to the first sentence of the Results section to clarify that the findings need to be further assessed by empirical research. In addition, when discussing findings we made sure that it was clear that point were based on the perspectives of participants, and we highlighted that these perspectives should be documented with evidence. For example, when discussing the value of narrative CVs in increasing diversity, we added “These perspectives are important to consider in the implementation of narrative CVs, but they also call for more empirical research to understand the genuine impact that narrative CVs have on diversity and biases.” We further repeated this point in the discussion where we added that “further research should be undertaken to identify how these perceived impacts are reflected in practice”, and that we need to “make sure that the community actively studies and evidences the impact of changes and mitigates the issues that might arise”.

"I also wonder to what extent narrative CVs in practice lead to the acknowledgement of a broader set of skills. Changing the documentation does not mean that the valuations critical for assessment change. Candidates applying for funding or jobs may still be inclined to present traditional outputs in their narrative CVs (maybe for good reasons). Despite universities/funders’ goal towards identifying and acknowledging a wider set of researchers’ contributions, evaluators may still give priority to traditional outputs and activities at the extent of others. Therefore, the authors might reflect on the need to take into account broader power dynamics in academic recruitment with different actors and priorities and the 'cultural burden' connected to existing research assessment practices that may shape how contributions in narrative CVs are assessed."

RESPONSE: This is an interesting point that was not thoroughly discussed in the workshop but that is well reflected in discussions on the reform of research assessment. We added a few sentences to this effect in the discussion to point to the important role of existing assessment practices and cultural norms. Specifically, we added the following sections in the Discussion: “There are long-standing cultural norms embedded into current assessment practices and policies that challenge the changes being made towards broadening what is recognised and rewarded in research. Incremental shifts in guidance and processes are counterbalanced by enduring cultural expectations that influence how careers are viewed and developed at all levels. Consequently, the introduction of narrative-style CVs and any other changes to the assessment processes should never happen in a vacuum, but go hand in hand with active discussions and culture change initiatives.” As well as “It is also important to understand the forces at play as the reform unfolds to identify those who play a role in shaping cultures of assessment. Involving a breadth of stakeholders with distinct priorities and powers – including those pushing for the reform, those pushing against, those who assess, and those who are assessed – is vital to enabling a shared dialogue.”

"I would argue organizations using narrative CVs should be encouraged to state clearly how different contributions in narrative CVs are assessed: if all the contributions are of equal value or if some are more valued than others, given the different needs of the funder/employing unit. Objective comparison of candidates’ merits/achievements is crucial for example in recruitment, and thus having transparent criteria and showing them to the applicants is essential (this was touched upon on page 4)."

RESPONSE: In addition to the points added above, we also added the following sentence when discussing the shift in the diversity of contributions that narrative CVs may enable: “Careful consideration of how this diversity of competencies, activities, or actions plays into assessment decisions and how they will be used by assessors will be important to better understand the potential for a culture shift.”.

"Therefore, I suggest adding some more reflection on the needs for further academic research on the topic (with proper research designs; such research is already being conducted). Also, the authors are encouraged to consider ‘practice-oriented sessions’ on how to evaluate narrative CVs in the future workshops (incl. how to make comparisons between candidates who bring up different kinds of contributions in their narrative CVs)."

RESPONSE: Thank you for this recommendation. We reflected the need for more research throughout the manuscript. We also thank you for the recommendation of practice-oriented sessions. We will certainly consider this recommendation in future workshops.
Competing Interests: No competing interests were disclosed. Close
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VERSION 2 PUBLISHED 23 Apr 2024

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Version 1 23 Apr 24	read	read

Maria Pietilä, University of Eastern Finland, Eastern Finland, Finland
Simon Kolstoe, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, UK
Marianne Gauffriau, IT University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
Ruth Schmidt, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, USA

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10 Sep 2025 | for Version 2

Ruth Schmidt, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, USA

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Approved

Is the work clearly and accurately presented and does it cite the current literature?

Yes
Is the study design appropriate and is the work technically sound?

Yes
Are sufficient details of methods and analysis provided to allow replication by others?

Yes
If applicable, is the statistical analysis and its interpretation appropriate?

Not applicable
Are all the source data underlying the results available to ensure full reproducibility?

Yes
Are the conclusions drawn adequately supported by the results?

Yes

Competing Interests

No competing interests were disclosed.

Reviewer Expertise

Responsible research assessment reform; qualitative research; behavioral systems system

I confirm that I have read this submission and believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard.

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08 Sep 2025 | for Version 2

Marianne Gauffriau, IT University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

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Approved With Reservations

Is the work clearly and accurately presented and does it cite the current literature?

Partly
Is the study design appropriate and is the work technically sound?

Yes
Are sufficient details of methods and analysis provided to allow replication by others?

Partly
If applicable, is the statistical analysis and its interpretation appropriate?

Yes
Are all the source data underlying the results available to ensure full reproducibility?

Yes
Are the conclusions drawn adequately supported by the results?

Yes

Competing Interests

No competing interests were disclosed.

Reviewer Expertise

research evaluation, responsible research assessment, bibliometrics

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09 Jul 2025 | for Version 2

Simon Kolstoe, School of Health & Care Professions, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, England, UK

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Approved

I'm happy that they have made some thoughtful additions to the paper and engaged with the peer reviews. I have no further comments to make.

Competing Interests

No competing interests were disclosed.

Reviewer Expertise

Originally a Biochemist, now Associate Professor of Bioethics with a specific interest in research integrity, ethics and governance.

I confirm that I have read this submission and believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard.

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Reviewer Report

15 Views

25 Nov 2024 | for Version 1

Simon Kolstoe, School of Health & Care Professions, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, England, UK

15 Views Cite this report Responses(1)

Approved With Reservations

Is the work clearly and accurately presented and does it cite the current literature?

Yes
Is the study design appropriate and is the work technically sound?

Yes
Are sufficient details of methods and analysis provided to allow replication by others?

Yes
If applicable, is the statistical analysis and its interpretation appropriate?

I cannot comment. A qualified statistician is required.
Are all the source data underlying the results available to ensure full reproducibility?

Partly
Are the conclusions drawn adequately supported by the results?

Partly

Competing Interests

No competing interests were disclosed.

Reviewer Expertise

Originally a Biochemist, now Associate Professor of Bioethics with a specific interest in research integrity, ethics and governance.

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Author Response

11 Sep 2025

Noémie Aubert Bonn, Department of Healthcare and Ethics, Universiteit Hasselt, Hasselt, 3500, Belgium

Thank you for your careful review of our manuscript. We found great value in your comments and believe that they improved the quality of our manuscript. We include a detailed overview of the edits we made in light of your comments in our responses below.

"Narrative CVs - where next on the journey?

Who your audience is, and what you are trying to communicate to that audience, is the most important consideration for authors of any type of document. When writing an academic CV the audience is often an employment or grants panel who will be looking for indications that the author will meet whatever criteria they have established for the role/funding. The problem is that the criteria is not always explicit, and can often reflect unrecognised prejudice, making it quite a challenge to write a CV that "plays the game" well, especially for people with diverse or non-traditional backgrounds.

To address this a number of "key performance indicator" (KPI) style metrics have been proposed for academics/researchers, and although they are widely used, they are open to significant manipulation. They are also quite biased towards indicators that current senior researchers value in their own CVs, rather than indicators that might lead to better research overall.

This weakness of the KPI approach has been increasingly recognised over recent years thanks to an encouraging international effort to consider issues relating to research integrity and culture in order to highlight the broader virtues and responsibilities of a good researcher. The development of narrative CVs is one attempt to recognise this by using, as the authors of this manuscript state, a qualitative rather than quantitative approach.

However, as with many issues in life, a pendulum swing from one extreme (quantitative indicators) to the other (qualitative indicators) is not the answer. The solution to fair assessment most likely sits somewhere in the middle, with this middle being identified through further discussion and reflection on what we do now, what works or doesn't, and how we might change systems and processes. This is precisely the conversation that this manuscript addresses."

RESPONSE: Thank you this introduction and useful context which nicely aligns with the arguments that drove this manuscript.

Viewing this work as a reflection on narrative CVs is helpful, because the sample size is small. Indeed with only 24 responses to the survey I would like to see the authors report number of responses in their summary of survey results rather than percentages to better reflect the very small sample. Likewise the 14 participants in the workshop cannot in anyway be considered representative of the research community, and this should be acknowledge explictly. Thus said a very small sample does not prevent interesting observations being made.

RESPONSE: Thank you for noting this important point. In the methods section, we added the following: “The feedback in this report should not be considered as representative of the research community. In fact, participants to the Recognition and Reward Festival are likely to have a priori interest in the reform of research assessment and the small sample size precludes a complete view of perspectives”, and we changed all percentages to numbers in the survey results box.

One element of the results/discussion I did find interesting was the fear that narrative CVs may favour more talented writers, potentially coming from English speaking education systems. This is a fair comment and concern, but I would also like to see the author address the recent challenge raised by the use of AI for both proof reading and also creating content. Surely this must be an increasing threat to the idea of a narrative CV, and even if it wasn't mentioned by participants in the workshop, the author could raise the fact that this wasn't discussed and perhaps should have been.

RESPONSE: This is a good point and indeed probably one we would have heard a lot more if the workshop had taken place a year later. We added a sentence in the discussion about inequalities for writing ability as follows: “In addition, although it was only lightly discussed during the workshop, the place of Large Language Models and Generative Artificial Intelligence in narrative CVs also raises important questions for the future and the impact – either challenges and opportunities – that these new technologies may have should be carefully considered.” We already get back to this point in the discussion by stating “We need to prepare for what the future will bring in research assessment, and make sure that the community actively studies and evidences the impact of changes and mitigates the issues that might arise, including the impact of new technologies on assessment and the creation of new inequalities based on different players changing the system at different speeds.”

I was also struck by the comment that "Epistemic diversity should also be taken into account, in order to break the current dominance of “excellence” that reinforces hierarchies between disciplines". I think this relates to a perceived prejudice towards medical and physical sciences that many from a social science background are often quite concerned about. However, as many CVs often function to obtain positions/grants etc. within subject areas, and thus are judged by academics of similar backgrounds, I would be interested to hear some real examples of where Epistemic diversity is important.

RESPONSE: Thank you for raising this point and for making us reflect further on our statement. We realise that our initial sentence may have brought confusion on our intended meaning, which was aiming to point to more general perspectives of ‘excellence’ and how its evaluation and definitions often depend on uniform models and one-size-fits-all framing of research. Consequently, our intended meaning was to highlight the importance of involving a diversity of views when setting standards and expectations on what ‘excellence’ should look like. We now rephrased the sentence to “It is important that epistemic diversity is also taken into account, involving diverse representation in studies and evaluations of process changes to break the current dominance and self-reinforcing concepts of 'excellence'.”

The Discussion starts with the sentence: "It is vital that discussions targeting changes to research assessment practices involve all members of the research community." I'm not certain this sentence is needed, or indeed justified without further explanation - who is the research community, does it involve research participants, government ministers etc. and should they all be involved in this conversation? Perhaps this sentence could be deleted or alternatively justified further.

RESPONSE: Thank you for sharing this thought with us. This sentence indeed steps out from the discussion structure, so we removed it from its current position and moved it below, while rephrasing it to clarify our point. As it currently stands, it is written as “Discussions targeting changes to research assessment practices must involve diverse members of the research community to capture the breadth of perspectives, worries, and hopes for the future.”.

The second paragraph of the discussion also repeats many of the results so could either be deleted or reframed to make a specific, explicit, point.

RESPONSE: Thank you for raising this point. We added this paragraph specifically to provide a brief summary of the main results for readers who may find it helpful. We know that discussions on narrative CVs are useful to academic literature as well as to policy level, policy-makers and funders are thus part of our target audience. From experience, we have learnt that a summary paragraph such as this makes it easy for this work to be so utilized, and therefore to support evidence-informed policy. For this reason, we would be in favour of keeping this summary paragraph even if it repeats the information mentioned in the results.

But overall this manuscript represents an interesting reflection on the topic, and should be considered as a valuable contribution to the ongoing discussion.

RESPONSE: We thank you for this useful appraisal and for the concrete recommendations which significantly improved our manuscript.

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Competing Interests

No competing interests were disclosed.

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Reviewer Report

49 Views

25 Sep 2024 | for Version 1

Maria Pietilä, University of Eastern Finland, Eastern Finland, Finland

49 Views Cite this report Responses(1)

Approved With Reservations

Is the work clearly and accurately presented and does it cite the current literature?

Yes
Is the study design appropriate and is the work technically sound?

Yes
Are sufficient details of methods and analysis provided to allow replication by others?

Partly
If applicable, is the statistical analysis and its interpretation appropriate?

Not applicable
Are all the source data underlying the results available to ensure full reproducibility?

Yes
Are the conclusions drawn adequately supported by the results?

Partly

Competing Interests

No competing interests were disclosed.

Reviewer Expertise

Academic careers; research assessment; gender equality in academia; university organisations

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Author Response

11 Sep 2025

Noémie Aubert Bonn, Department of Healthcare and Ethics, Universiteit Hasselt, Hasselt, 3500, Belgium

Thank you for your careful review of our manuscript. We found great value in your comments and believe that they improved the quality of our manuscript. We include a detailed overview of the edits we made in light of your comments in our responses below.

"Thank you for the invitation to review the paper. The paper addresses an important and timely topic: the potential of narrative CVs in changing the current ways of research assessment. It draws on data gathered at a workshop organized in the Netherlands and data obtained from a pre-workshop survey.

The paper is well situated in the broader context of research assessment reform. The topic is relevant for readers within the science policy environment in different countries. The paper presents interesting findings which are relevant for the wider scholarly community preparing innovative, responsible ways to assess research/ers.

I agree with the authors that assessments have for long had narrative elements included. For example, in funding applications researchers have had to put their research proposal in a wider context and to explain its significance to evaluators who may not be experts in the topic. In recruitment, motivation/cover letters represent narratives in which the researchers tell about their skills and career background, often in a free format. Thus, narrative CVs are not completely new in the context of evaluation.

In the following, I make some comments/reflections/suggestions that the authors may consider when revising their paper and when organizing future workshops on the topic.

I would consider adding at the beginning of the paper a brief description of narrative CVs: what do they normally look like, what do they aim for, etc."

RESPONSE: Thank you for making us realise that this important background information was missing. We added a short description at the end of the introduction as follows: “Narrative CVs are “generally understood to encompass a structured description of a researcher’s contributions and achievements that reflect a broader range of skills and experiences beyond publications and funding record.” 18 In a Narrative CV, researchers have more freedom over the way they present achievements, outputs, and skills that define their career than they normally would in an itemised CV. Because Narrative CVs are started to be implemented quite recently, a lot remains to be known about their impact and potential.” With a reference to Fritch R., Hatch, A., Hazlett, H., Vinkenburg, C. Using Narrative CVs: Process optimization and bias mitigation. (DORA, 2021). https://zenodo.org/record/5799414#.YeM-41IOIPY

"The paper places significant (mostly positive) expectations on narrative CVs and maintains an overall optimistic tone toward their use. However, some of the findings in the paper sound more like hypothesis for empirical research. For example, the argument that narrative CVs are good for women and minorities was put forward by the workshop participants. In the paper, you could consider, whether there is a need to critically assess this expectation - is there any empirical research showing that this is the case?"

RESPONSE: This is a very good point. We added a statement to the first sentence of the Results section to clarify that the findings need to be further assessed by empirical research. In addition, when discussing findings we made sure that it was clear that point were based on the perspectives of participants, and we highlighted that these perspectives should be documented with evidence. For example, when discussing the value of narrative CVs in increasing diversity, we added “These perspectives are important to consider in the implementation of narrative CVs, but they also call for more empirical research to understand the genuine impact that narrative CVs have on diversity and biases.” We further repeated this point in the discussion where we added that “further research should be undertaken to identify how these perceived impacts are reflected in practice”, and that we need to “make sure that the community actively studies and evidences the impact of changes and mitigates the issues that might arise”.

"I also wonder to what extent narrative CVs in practice lead to the acknowledgement of a broader set of skills. Changing the documentation does not mean that the valuations critical for assessment change. Candidates applying for funding or jobs may still be inclined to present traditional outputs in their narrative CVs (maybe for good reasons). Despite universities/funders’ goal towards identifying and acknowledging a wider set of researchers’ contributions, evaluators may still give priority to traditional outputs and activities at the extent of others. Therefore, the authors might reflect on the need to take into account broader power dynamics in academic recruitment with different actors and priorities and the 'cultural burden' connected to existing research assessment practices that may shape how contributions in narrative CVs are assessed."

RESPONSE: This is an interesting point that was not thoroughly discussed in the workshop but that is well reflected in discussions on the reform of research assessment. We added a few sentences to this effect in the discussion to point to the important role of existing assessment practices and cultural norms. Specifically, we added the following sections in the Discussion: “There are long-standing cultural norms embedded into current assessment practices and policies that challenge the changes being made towards broadening what is recognised and rewarded in research. Incremental shifts in guidance and processes are counterbalanced by enduring cultural expectations that influence how careers are viewed and developed at all levels. Consequently, the introduction of narrative-style CVs and any other changes to the assessment processes should never happen in a vacuum, but go hand in hand with active discussions and culture change initiatives.” As well as “It is also important to understand the forces at play as the reform unfolds to identify those who play a role in shaping cultures of assessment. Involving a breadth of stakeholders with distinct priorities and powers – including those pushing for the reform, those pushing against, those who assess, and those who are assessed – is vital to enabling a shared dialogue.”

"I would argue organizations using narrative CVs should be encouraged to state clearly how different contributions in narrative CVs are assessed: if all the contributions are of equal value or if some are more valued than others, given the different needs of the funder/employing unit. Objective comparison of candidates’ merits/achievements is crucial for example in recruitment, and thus having transparent criteria and showing them to the applicants is essential (this was touched upon on page 4)."

RESPONSE: In addition to the points added above, we also added the following sentence when discussing the shift in the diversity of contributions that narrative CVs may enable: “Careful consideration of how this diversity of competencies, activities, or actions plays into assessment decisions and how they will be used by assessors will be important to better understand the potential for a culture shift.”.

"Therefore, I suggest adding some more reflection on the needs for further academic research on the topic (with proper research designs; such research is already being conducted). Also, the authors are encouraged to consider ‘practice-oriented sessions’ on how to evaluate narrative CVs in the future workshops (incl. how to make comparisons between candidates who bring up different kinds of contributions in their narrative CVs)."

RESPONSE: Thank you for this recommendation. We reflected the need for more research throughout the manuscript. We also thank you for the recommendation of practice-oriented sessions. We will certainly consider this recommendation in future workshops.

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Competing Interests

No competing interests were disclosed.

Alongside their report, reviewers assign a status to the article:

Approved - the paper is scientifically sound in its current form and only minor, if any, improvements are suggested

Approved with reservations - A number of small changes, sometimes more significant revisions are required to address specific details and improve the papers academic merit.

Not approved - fundamental flaws in the paper seriously undermine the findings and conclusions

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[5] 5. INORMS Research Evaluation Group: The SCOPE Framework. Emerald Publishing2021. Reference Source

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[7] 7. McLean R, Ofir Z, Etherington A, et al.: Research Quality Plus - Evaluating Research Differently. Ottawa: International Development Research Centre; 2022. Reference Source

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[9] 9. Mustajoki H, et al.: Making FAIReR assessments possible.2021. Publisher Full Text

[10] 10. Science Europe: Position Statement and Recommendations on Research Assessment Processes.2020. Publisher Full Text

[11] 11. Wilsdon J, et al.: The Metric Tide: Report of the Independent Review of the Role of Metrics in Research Assessment and Management. HEFCE; 2015. Reference Source

[12] 12. Wilsdon J, Bar-Ilan J, Frodeman R, et al.: Next-generation metrics: Responsible metrics and evaluation for open science. European Commission; 2017. Publisher Full Text

[13] 13. G7 2021 Research Compact: 2021. Reference Source

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[16] 16. CoARA: Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment.Reference Source

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Are Narrative CVs contributing towards shifting research culture? Workshop Report from the 2023 Recognition and Rewards Festival

Abstract

Abstract

Background

Methods

Results

Discussion

Keywords

Revised Amendments from Version 1

Introduction

Methods

Ethics

Methodology

Results

Views on narrative CVs/challenges with their use

Box 1. Informal pre-workshop survey.

Figure 1. Research organisations that implement a narrative CV format were asked when they first considered piloting or introducing a narrative CV format, and when they started implementing it as part of their assessment processes.

Changes as a result of introducing narrative CVs

Expectations for the future

Discussion

Data availability

Underlying data

Acknowledgements

References

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