Narrative CVs

If you’re the Lead Applicant or Joint Lead Applicant, you’ll each be asked to complete and upload a narrative CV word template – see current template.

You can write up to two pages across the 3 questions. In the examples you provide, be specific about your contribution to each and provide enough detail to enable our reviewers to understand what you have discovered, developed and achieved. Also describe the impact of these actions and influence in your field.

We outline in the template the types of activities we expect against each question. The lists are non-exhaustive, so you can include other examples relevant to your application. You don’t need to provide an example for every activity. Our application guidelines also provide further information.

There are no specific guidelines on text formatting but we encourage you to make the content captivating and avoid making the responses too complicated.

We started rolling out the new narrative CV into non-fellowship funding schemes for assessment in our Autumn 2022 funding rounds.

Previously you may have been asked to complete our Key Research Achievements form with your 3-5 key research achievements under our commitment to the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA). This is now being replaced with the new CV.

Following feedback from our researchers and committee members, we’re retaining other aspects of a traditional CV such as list-based career history and educational history. We think this hybrid approach is a pragmatic way to enable researchers and reviewers to use narrative CVs most effectively.

For all fellowship applications, we’ll continue to use our Skills and Experience form which has more detailed questions relevant to fellowships that are aligned with the structure of our Competency Framework for Fellowships. Our framework provides a more extensive and detailed “guide” to the skills and experiences that are expected/considered at each different career stage.

We’ll provide our expert reviewers guidance on how to assess grant applications which will include guidance on narrative CVs.

Reviewers will be asked to consider the narrative CV sections holistically, not in isolation, when making assessments on the applicant’s skills and experience.  

By providing better context in a narrative CV, we believe reviewers will be able to assess applications more effectively as there is a consistent approach to qualitative assessment.

We are continuing to review and evolve our approach in response to your feedback.

We surveyed users of the narrative CV (both applicants and reviewers) in the Autumn 2023 funding call and analysed their views on the value, feasibility and future of narrative CVs in research assessment. We’ve also written in more detail about our analysis and next steps for evolving the narrative CV.

We have updated our prompts and example evidence for applicants submitting proposals for funding calls from August 2024, which can be found in the narrative CV template. We will be exploring options for providing example CV elements, such as how to link your skills and experience in the narrative CV section with the research proposal in your application.

We are currently trialling the use of the narrative CV in place of the standard CV elements for one of our funding schemes to reduce burden on applicants and reviewers, and reflecting the move towards using a narrative to describe applicants’ skill and experience. We will report on this pilot in late 2024.

We’ve joined a number of other research funders to form the Joint Funders Group and explore a shared approach towards narrative CVs (see our Funders Joint Statement).

This group is working to align approaches where possible, share learnings and best practice, help others engage and to discuss potential challenges of adopting narrative CVs. 

• Joint Funders Group resources
• University of Glasgow 25-min online course on writing a narrative CV for a grant 
• Luxembourg National Research Fund workshop on narrative CVs
• DORA: Using Narrative CVs: Process optimization and bias mitigation