What goes in a funder’s Narrative CV?: A Scoping Review

Narrative Curriculum Vitae (NCVs) are a type of CV focusing on written descriptions of researchers' skills, experiences, collaborations, and achievements, which seek to promote more equitable and responsible research assessments. Despite an apparent shift by funding organizations towards the use of NCVs to reassess how researchers are evaluated, the extent of current NCV adoption is unclear. Therefore, we conducted a scoping review to answer the following: 1. Which research funding agencies currently provide NCVs templates for their applicants? and 2. What are the characteristics of said NCV templates? To this end, we employed grey literature searches to identify all existing NCV templates provided by research funding organizations. Our findings highlight several key insights. First, number of funders currently requiring NCVs remains low overall, although national granting agencies are among the early adopters. Second, some funders do not provide formal guidance on how to complete narrative CV's-this may create barriers to uptake. Third, among the NCV templates identified, there are structural commonalities, although there is little insight into the evaluation of NCVs. As interest in NCVs grows, addressing these gaps will be essential to realizing their potential as a fairer and more holistic tool for research assessment.