The UK Research and Innovation Resume for Research and Innovation (R4RI), launched in pilot in 2019 and now the default CV format across UKRI’s seven research councils, has accumulated enough operational experience to draw lessons. The narrative-CV approach has spread internationally: the Dutch Research Council, the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Royal Society’s CV format, parts of the EU’s Horizon Europe evaluation, and several US private funders have adopted variants. Where it has not spread is the major US federal funders. This post argues the case for broader adoption with reference to the UKRI experience.
What R4RI is
R4RI replaces the traditional publication-list CV with a structured narrative covering four modules: how the researcher has contributed to the generation of new ideas, tools, methodologies, or knowledge; how they have contributed to the development of others; how they have contributed to the wider research community; how they have contributed to broader research and innovation users and audiences, and the wider environment. Each module has a 250-word limit and the researcher provides specific evidence.
What R4RI explicitly does not ask for: lengthy publication lists, journal impact factors, h-indexes, citation counts, exhaustive grant histories. The Resume for Research and Innovation can include publications but as evidence of contribution, not as a metric.
Five years of operational experience
UKRI’s commissioned evaluations of R4RI (published 2022, 2024) and the broader literature on narrative-CV use have produced a reasonably clear picture.
First, reviewer time. The early concern was that narrative CVs would take longer to review than conventional ones. The evaluation data show modest increases for first-time reviewers, settling to comparable or shorter review times once reviewers were familiar with the format. Reviewers report that R4RI gives them a clearer picture of the applicant’s actual contribution.
Second, applicant time. Writing an R4RI takes longer than updating a publication list, and applicants without writing support are at a disadvantage. The equity implication is real: a researcher with access to research-administration support to help draft R4RI does better than one without. UKRI has invested in writing-support resources and several institutions have built internal capacity.
Third, career-stage equity. Narrative CVs perform better for early-career researchers whose publication record is short but whose contribution is significant; they perform better for researchers with non-traditional career paths; they perform better for researchers in disciplines where high-impact publication is not the norm. They perform less well for researchers with very strong conventional records who feel the narrative format does not adequately recognise their publications. On balance the evaluation suggests narrative CVs reduce systemic bias against under-represented career patterns.
Fourth, inter-rater reliability. The concern that narrative CVs would produce more variable assessment than metric-based CVs has been partially borne out: inter-rater reliability is somewhat lower for R4RI than for conventional CVs. This is in part a feature, not a bug — different reviewers genuinely weight different contributions differently, and the narrative CV surfaces those judgements. UKRI has responded with reviewer-training resources and structured rubrics.
Why other funders should adopt narrative CVs
Four reasons.
First, narrative CVs operationalise DORA and CoARA commitments in a concrete way. A funder that has signed DORA but continues to use publication-metric CVs is operating in contradiction with its commitment; a funder that adopts a narrative CV format is operationalising it. The CASRAI responsible assessment domain tracks the gap between policy and practice across major funders.
Second, narrative CVs make CRediT more useful. A CV that reports CRediT roles for the applicant’s recent papers gives the reviewer specific information about contribution; a publication list without CRediT gives only the byline order. The integration is operationally simple: narrative CVs cite specific contributions, CRediT statements describe what the contribution was.
Third, narrative CVs reduce the metric-feedback loop. The pernicious cycle in which researchers chase high-impact-factor publications because funders weight them and funders weight them because researchers seek them is one of the system pathologies that responsible-assessment reform aims to break. A narrative CV format breaks the funder side of the loop, which gives researchers permission to optimise differently.
Fourth, narrative CVs encode the broader range of contributions that modern research actually requires. Software, datasets, public engagement, peer review, mentorship, leadership of community-led infrastructure, contributions to open standards — none of these show up well in a conventional CV. They show up in a narrative CV. The CASRAI institutional responsible-assessment guide includes a checklist of contribution types that narrative formats can capture.
The objections, addressed
Three objections recur and deserve direct responses.
Narrative CVs are subjective and unscientific. The metric-based CV is also subjective: someone decided which metrics to weight, what the weighting should be, and what counts as success. Narrative CVs make the subjectivity explicit and reviewable; metric-based CVs hide it behind a number.
Narrative CVs disadvantage non-English-speakers. The concern is real and the mitigation is to allow CVs in the applicant’s working language with translation support funded by the funder. UKRI does not currently allow non-English R4RIs because UKRI operates in English; an international funder with multilingual operations would need to.
Narrative CVs are too long for high-volume review. The 250-word-per-module limit and the four-module structure produce a CV that is no longer than a conventional 5-page academic CV; in many cases shorter. The objection is empirically wrong as stated.
Practical recommendations
For funders considering adoption, the practical steps are: pilot with one or two grant streams; train reviewers with worked examples; develop a structured rubric for scoring; provide writing-support resources for applicants; commit to an evaluation at year three; iterate the format based on the evaluation. UKRI’s experience suggests this approach yields a usable format within three years.
For institutions supporting applicants, the practical steps are: build internal capacity to support narrative-CV drafting; offer it equitably across career stages and disciplines; treat it as part of the research-administration support package, not as an exceptional service for senior researchers only.
For applicants, the practical advice is to start drafting in a narrative format now, even where the funder does not require it. The discipline of articulating contribution rather than enumerating publications produces a richer self-understanding of one’s own research and is useful for promotion, tenure, and personal career planning regardless of funder requirements.
The trajectory
We expect narrative-CV adoption to accelerate through 2026-2028. The CoARA commitment to reforming research assessment, combined with the maturity of the R4RI model, gives funders a credible template to adopt. The remaining holdouts are the major US federal funders (NIH and NSF), whose biosketch and current-and-pending-support formats are partial moves toward narrative but retain substantial metric content. The next round of US-funder review-criteria revision will be the test.
