Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A funder replacing its publication-list CV requirement with a narrative-CV template as part of a DORA-aligned assessment reform.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
An NIH-style Biosketch that is entirely a chronological list of positions and publications, with no free-text contribution narrative, is not a narrative CV in this sense.
Editorial commentary
A narrative CV replaces, or supplements, the traditional chronological CV — a list of publications, positions, grants, and metrics — with structured free-text sections in which a researcher describes their contributions in their own words. The underlying goal is to let assessors evaluate the substance and breadth of a contribution (including things a metrics-only CV can’t easily capture, such as mentoring, community-building, or public engagement) rather than defaulting to publication count or journal-prestige proxies.
Narrative CVs have been adopted, in various concrete forms, by several funders and institutions: the UK’s R4RI (Resume for Researchers), used across UKRI funding; the Dutch Recognition & Rewards programme; narrative sections within the US NIH Biosketch; and the Swiss National Science Foundation’s own format. Each implementation structures its sections and length limits differently — narrative CV is the umbrella concept, not any one funder’s specific template.
Tie to DORA and CoARA
Narrative CVs are a direct practical expression of the broader shift away from metrics-driven research assessment championed by DORA (the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment) and CoARA (the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment). DORA’s core recommendation against using journal-based metrics (like impact factor) as a proxy for the quality of an individual researcher’s work, and CoARA’s commitment to assessing research and researchers on their merits rather than by output-count or venue proxies, are both operationalised in practice by formats like the narrative CV — a funder or institution that signs DORA or joins CoARA is signalling exactly the kind of assessment shift that narrative CVs are designed to support.
How this differs from the related terms on this site
“Narrative CV” is the general movement/concept. R4RI is one funder’s (UKRI’s) specific named implementation of it, with its own four defined modules. Two-page narrative refers to the short, fixed-length format convention that R4RI and comparable schemes use, rather than to any particular funder’s template. Research statement and teaching statement are a different family entirely: US academic job-market documents used in hiring and tenure decisions, not funder-assessment narrative CVs, and they predate the DORA/CoARA-driven movement described here.
References
- DORA Declaration (2012)
- CoARA Agreement (2022)
- Royal Society Resume for Researchers (R4RI)
Also known as
Narrative biosketch · Contribution-based CV
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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