I’m writing this series of blog posts to share what I’m learning about Narrative CVs with you – it’s aimed both at people applying for grants, jobs, or those supporting them. I’m going to summarise some of the relevant resources available for you – and ask you for your thoughts and comments on them as I go along.
This first blog post is going to look at the rationale behind Narrative CVs: what’s the point of them? Why do you have to get your head around them?
Secondly, I’ll take a look at the resources available for people like you writing these documents and find the best advice there is at the moment.
Thirdly, I’ll be writing about the guidance available for reviewers. This is where I’ll particularly need your help! Message me at ktm34@cam.ac.uk if you’ve a go-to blog post, podcast, framework, to help reviewers. More on that to come.
A possible final blog post could be about the evaluation of narrative CVs: again, let me know ktm34@cam.ac.uk if you’d be interested in reading that and I’ll collaborate with ARRC researchers to produce it.
Narrative CVs: why are they being introduced?
Let’s start with this post from the LSE Blog (1). It’s got a great list of the reasons that funders give for developing their use of NCVs:
against the misuse of metrics
against lists
against a narrow definition of impact
in favour of contextualised selection
in favour of inclusivity
and as a signifier for 'working towards the adoption of better practices'.
These reasons are garnered from the authors’ reading of 28 articles from a variety of sources including funders, learned societies and academics themselves, and is based on an article published in Research Evaluation (2). Of interest (to people like me at least that spend inordinate amounts of time looking at people’s application documents!) is their reference to a piece of research looking at CVs from the 1950s onwards, in academic applications in Germany. There really is nothing new under the sun.
A similar article, bringing together opinions from various sources, is this one from Nature Careers. It’s particularly useful for looking at the progress of NCVs in countries outside Europe. (3)
If we turn to some funders themselves, then we can see a more detailed insight to their decision to use NCVs.
The UK’s Royal Society first publicly wrote about their Résumé for Researchers in this blog post from 2019 (4). ‘The Résumé for Researchers is intended to be a flexible tool that can be adapted to a range of different processes that require a summative evaluation of the researcher, recognising that their relative importance will be context- specific.’ They continue, saying that ‘maintaining an excellent research culture is challenging and necessary. It requires continuous evaluation and adaptation and that [the Royal Society] will continue to give a high priority to this theme.’ So from the very start, there is a connection between their implementation of NCV, with a better research culture.
UKRI, the umbrella body for research councils in the UK, similarly references their ‘ambition to create a more inclusive and supportive research and innovation culture’, explicitly saying that their narrative CV will be a ‘better way for you to evidence your contributions’. (5)
Turning now to an individual funder, Alzheimer's Research UK specifically connects the narrative CV with equality, diversity, and inclusion. They say ‘we are committed to recognising and rewarding the full range of contributions a researcher makes to their field. Moving away from the traditional CV formats, we hope to increase the diversity of researchers applying for grants and to put diversity and inclusion at the forefront of our decision-making processes.’
Their narrative CV format ‘consists of questions that guide applicants to provide supporting evidence of the skills, expertise, and experience unique to them. This new format aims to support an individual's varied research outputs and contributions to the wider research community.’ (6)
So far, so well intentioned. What do you think about the reasons given for the introduction of these documents?
As I said above, I’m happy to bring together some of the work on evaluating these documents against their stated uses, if that would be interesting reading for you.
Would you rather, as I would, that they were called ‘structured personal statements’? ‘SPS’ would take the focus off both ‘narrative’ and ‘CV’. I’m sensing that part of the struggle some researchers are finding with them is to do with mentally converting their traditional academic CV into this format. Instead, it might be easier to start afresh with the module headings as inspiration for a short piece of writing.
My next post will point to some of the really good resource available to you as you start writing. I’ve even found a couple of example paragraphs for you to chew over.
I’d love to hear what you think!
PS: I realise I’ve taken it for granted that you know what a narrative CV actually is. If you need a hand understanding more, a good place to start is the UKRI website Introducing R4RI: a better way for you to evidence your contributions – UKRI.
I am an experienced careers consultant for researchers, currently part of the Action Research on Research Culture research team at the University of Cambridge. As part of my role, I have the privilege of reading narrative CVs supplied by candidates for job applications, used as part of our research.
Author: Kate Murray – ARRC and University of Cambridge Careers Consultant
References:
1. Although hard to define, Narrative CVs are changing how we think about researcher assessment. Impact of Social Sciences https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2023/06/16/although-hard-to-define-narrative-cvs-are-changing-how-we-think-about-researcher-assessment/ (2023).
2. Bordignon, F., Chaignon, L. & Egret, D. Promoting narrative CVs to improve research evaluation? A review of opinion pieces and experiments. Res. Eval. 32, 313–320 (2023).
3. Woolston, C. Time to rethink the scientific CV. Nature 604, 203–205 (2022).
4. Research culture: Résumé for Researchers | Royal Society. https://royalsociety.org/blog/2019/10/research-culture/.
5. Introducing R4RI: a better way for you to evidence your contributions. https://www.ukri.org/apply-for-funding/improving-your-funding-experience/introducing-a-better-way-for-you-to-evidence-your-contributions/.
6. Narrative CVs. Alzheimer’s Research UK https://www.alzheimersresearchuk.org/research/for-researchers/resources-and-information/narrative-cvs/.