Frequently Asked Questions

It’s unlikely that the subject matter of any discipline gives its researchers advantages or disadvantages for developing their narrative CVs. 

However, some disciplines (especially some in the social sciences and humanities):

1. Involve narrative writing as a matter of day-to-day professional practice, 
2. Use less technical language and symbols in general, and 
3. Tend to require broad contextualization of contributions when they are made. 

Others (especially some in the natural sciences and engineering) do not involve much narrative writing, employ more technical language and symbols as a matter of course, and tend to require narrower contextualization of contributions. For applications where the narrative CV will be reviewed by a multidisciplinary committee, and for the personal statement section in general, researchers in the former disciplines may find a narrative CV easier to approach.

Researchers should keep in mind, though, that many different styles of writing can be compelling for their narrative CVs, and peer-reviewers from one’s own discipline will expect the conventions of that discipline.

Faculty-specific workshops on the narrative CV are likely a good idea.

Not personal at all in the sense that you might ask a friend if you can tell them something personal, i.e. private and not to be divulged to others. That’s a confessional sense of the word, and is not the sense of the word “personal” being used for the TCV or any other narrative CV. The corresponding section in the Fonds de recherche du Québec (FRQ) CV is entitled “Applicant’s career path and expertise”, which expresses the function of such a section for any narrative CV. The FRQ in fact specifies that “no sensitive personal information [should] be included in the narrative CV”, which applies, as sound advice, to any narrative CV format.

The personal statement is intended to provide space for a description of your unique career path, and to “describe why you are well suited for your proposed role relevant to the application” (TCV instructions), or more precisely, “how and in what way your academic, professional or personal background enables you to meet the objectives of the program and carry out the current research proposal” (CV-FRQ instructions). 

A good general barometer for assessing what’s appropriate to reveal about yourself is whether you would feel comfortable making your narrative CV public, just as most researchers make their traditional CVs public. If you’d be comfortable sharing it publicly, you’re likely within the scope of what the TCV considers “personal” in a professional sense. 

If your “personal statement” includes anything that would make you want to keep your narrative CV strictly private, it’s worth carefully considering whether it should be included at all. The narrative CV is not a perfect instrument, and by submitting it with your application, you are, to some degree, making it public. 

The first section of your narrative CV is an opportunity to highlight the expertise and experiences that are essential to your project, particularly those that may not be visible in a traditional CV. This is your opportunity to bring them forward. You’re not obliged to share details of your private life to do so, and probably shouldn’t unless you genuinely feel it adds meaningful context.

For some, however, early life experiences, such as a formative event in childhood may have profoundly shaped their career path. One of Canada’s greatest educators, for example, was fundamentally shaped by her experience as a surviving Indigenous child of the Sixties Scoop. One of Canada’s greatest electric vehicle battery scientists was inspired toward his career by his experience as an asthmatic in the pollution of his childhood town. Neither should use the narrative CV as a place to tell their whole story because that’s not the place for it (though we should be grateful if each would tell their whole story elsewhere, to all our benefit). But those experiences absolutely have a place in the first section of their narrative CVs, if they want to include them, and if so should be connected immediately to what they have done because of those experiences, and why that matters for their projects.  

But many researchers’ private experiences may not have such a place with respect to their professional careers and the proposed research project. You do not have to relate them at all, if you do not want to. Describing your general research interests and activities is more than sufficient for the personal statement – that statement can be half a page if you’d like, as long as you connect it to why it matters for your project.   

The personal statement is part of a CV that is as professional, as a narrative, as a traditional CV is as a series of lists. It should be treated professionally.

There are many ways to approach this, and decisions about which one to use may in many cases come down to fitting that information into the limited space you have. But remember that the narrative CV has to be self-contained: all such citation information, in full, does need to be contained somewhere in your narrative CV. You can’t refer to the bibliography you submit with your research proposal, and your traditional CV is not included in your application.

Your personal statement is an introduction, and as long as you provide full information on a contribution later (article citation, exhibition details, policy document information, etc.), in the “contributions and experiences” section, you can mention it in your personal statement without providing it there. Another option is to finish your narrative CV with a numbered table of everything cited, and add an endnote number every time you mention a contribution listed there. Such a table could also be in a slightly reduced font-size, “as long as it is legible when the page is viewed at 100%” (Tri-agency formatting instructions).

In-text citations can be used, but may be unwieldy as full citations within your narrative. Footnotes are a good option as well, in the “contributions and experiences” section, but remember that they have to meet all the formatting requirements for the rest of the CV (no reduced font-size).

Whatever format you choose, it is important to use one format consistently throughout your narrative CV. Note the citation requirements for the TCV and the CV-FRQ are not the same.

Tri-agency citation requirements

There are three Tri-agency requirements for citations in the TCV, for all types of contributions:

1. Use any citation style common in your field.
2. Add an asterisk (*) after each of your supervised highly qualified personnel (e.g., First Name Last Name* or Last Name, First Name*) if you are their supervisor.
   Highly qualified personnel are college and university students (undergraduate and graduate), postdoctoral researchers, technicians, skilled workers (e.g., artisans and tradespeople, community members), research assistants, or associates. They may be from post-secondary institutions or from other groups involved in research, like community groups or partner organizations (e.g., private, public or not-for-profit).
3. If the lead author is not listed first (e.g., if authorship is alphabetical), bold the lead author’s name (this is different from the CV-FRQ!).

Citation requirements for the CV-FRQ

The citation requirements for the CV-FRQ depend on what type of contribution is being cited.

If you include publications in the CV-FRQ:

1. Follow the most recent version of the American Psychological Association (APA) standards, or any other citation standard recognized in your research discipline. 
2. Add an asterisk (*) after the name of each person you supervise (e.g. First Name Last Name* or Last Name, First Name*). This includes college and university students (undergraduate and graduate), post-docs and highly qualified personnel. These people may be from a higher education institution or from other groups involved in research, such as community groups or partner organizations (private, public or not-for-profit). 
3. Identify your surname and first name in bold, as well as those of any co-investigators identified in the funding application, if applicable. (This is different from the TCV!) 

If you include artistic works or performances in the CV-FRQ, the references must be complete, including:

1. The title of the work or performance, 
2. A succinct description (maximum 5 lines), 
3. The year and place of first presentation of the work or performance, 
4. In the case of collective creations, indicate the main creator in bold, 
5. Photo and video credits, if applicable.

The current Tri-agency CV instructions list lived or living experience in the first section of the TCV. While the Fonds de recherche du Québec CV (CV-FRQ) instructions do not have an exactly corresponding phrase, they indicate that “skills and expertise acquired through personal experience or achievements” and “practical experience” have their place in the first section of the CV-FRQ as well. But these can also be a part of the other narrative CV sections; the amount of space given to this will vary. 

Where lived experience has played a significant role in determining the focus or trajectory of your research, for example, it would be appropriate to include this in the first section. Pertinence to your proposed research is an essential consideration: the overall purpose of the first section is to show why your expertise and experience make you well suited for your role in the research proposal to which you are attaching your narrative CV. A helpful hypothetical example that one workshop participant noted involved a geneticist who has developed a unique method and has a family member with cerebral palsy. In a research project connected directly to cerebral palsy, sharing that lived experience could be highly relevant. However, the same personal context might not be appropriate to include in a project focused on cardiac research with no connection to cerebral palsy.

Where lived experience has played a significant role in a particular “contribution or experience” that is pertinent to your research proposal – in a community-focused collaboration, for example – it would likewise be appropriate to discuss it with respect to that in the Most significant contributions and experiences section.

And lived experience can deeply impact one’s mentorship and supervision as well: how you came to understand needs of students, mentorship of early-career researchers with similar lived experience, and outreach activities that derive from your lived experience are all good examples of this. In this case, it would be appropriate to discuss – or refer back to – your lived experience in the Supervisory and mentorship activities section as well. 

The order in which you present should likely vary by section.

For the first section, a chronological order of your experiences and career path may feel like a natural way to present, and shouldn’t necessarily be avoided. It is important to be selective though: a chronological order does not mean you should discuss every experience you’ve had (you should not!). If you are an early-career researcher and you had particularly striking and career-shaping experiences during your undergraduate and PhD education, for example, you can discuss those without necessarily discussing your experiences during your master’s degree. 

But there are many ways of organizing your first section other than chronologically. One way is to begin by noting the areas of expertise that you have, and that are pertinent to your research proposal, and then briefly discuss how you came to acquire them. In this case, it might be a good idea to order those areas of expertise according to how important each of them is for your proposed research rather than the chronological order in which you acquired them. The same approach could also be used to organize your personal statement around areas of impact that your contributions have had, and leadership positions you have held, for example. And these are not mutually exclusive: expertise, impact, and leadership should all be included in your personal statement.

For the contributions and experiences section, pertinence of each contribution or experience to your proposed research, and its impact and significance, should guide the order of your presentation.  

Ultimately, regardless of what order(s) you use to present your narrative CV, don’t try to relate everything – choose what’s important for the proposed research.

In order to answer this question, it is important to make a distinction between: a) the citation count for an individual publication; b) career-total citation counts and the h-index; and c) the Journal Impact Factor (and other journal-based metrics):

1. The citation count for an individual publication is single-article/book-based. It is the number of times an individual article or book is included in the reference list of other articles or books. 
2. Career-total citation counts and the h-index are multiple-article/book-based, and are blunt and vague quantitative metrics by design. 
3. The Journal Impact Factor (JIF) is journal-based. It professes to rank journals according to their supposed level of impact, calculated with dubious known methods as well as obscure unknown methods that vary from journal to journal. It is not a good signifier of the value or quality of an individual article published in it, nor even a good predictor of the citation performance of any individual article.  

The Tri-agency and the Fonds de recherche du Québec (FRQ) are signatories to the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), which strongly discourages using the JIF and other journal-based metrics in the assessment of individual researchers’ contributions tout court. While neither the Tri-agency nor the FRQ (at the time of this writing, in April 2025) prohibits or discourages noting the JIF or other journal-based metrics in their narrative CVs, it seems prudent to be reflective about using them.

DORA also does not consider a researcher’s career-total citation count to be a reliable metric, and is even more skeptical about the value of using the h-index in research assessment. 

On the other hand, DORA encourages the responsible use of individual article or book citation counts. While they should not be used instead of qualitative discussion of an article’s content, impact, and significance in your narrative CV, they can be used in support of that discussion as a partial indicator. Used responsibly – which always includes noting the applicant’s role in the contribution – the citation count for an individual publication can be quite effective as a supplement to a broader and more contextual narrative about that publication. 

That said, Letitia Henville offers some sober advice that is worth considering on including numbers like the JIF and h-index, in an incisive recent University Affairs editorial: Despite the fact that such numbers “run counter to the whole point of the narrative CV,” she writes, “[i]n the short term — until reviewers are accustomed to looking at narrative CVs — I’m going to suggest that you include these kinds of numbers alongside unconventional or qualitative descriptions of impact. That’s my belief in academia’s conservativism coming to the fore. I advise conforming to existing norms in this document: while the form is shifting soon, it’ll take more time for the norms to follow.” 

It of course remains essential to carefully read both the TCV or CV-FRQ requirements and the instructions for the particular grant to which you are applying every time. If, for example, either the Tri-agency or the FRQ moves from just frowning on the use of the JIF, in principle, to actually prohibiting it, in practice, you want to know! And if such a shift happens, it might well be implemented first for some particular grant applications – and only for the narrative CVs attached to those applications – rather than for all TCVs or all CV-FRQ in general. 

Discussing career delays in your narrative CV is in no way obligatory. At the time of writing (April 2025), three modules, related to but separate from the TCV, are required by the Tri-agency, in addition to the TCV: 1) career delays, 2) education history, and 3) academic affiliations. These three modules are then attached to your narrative TCV for reviewers. The module on career delays is largely quantitative, essentially asking you to calculate a total number of research-months for all eligible delays and interruptions you experienced. The Fonds de recherche du Québec (FRQ) has not yet said how such information will be collected for the narrative CV-FRQ.

But if you think that your personal narrative should be seen qualitatively in light of eligible delays and interruptions you have experienced, and with nuance, the personal statement section is the place for that. With the exception of COVID-related delays, no one should feel in any way obliged to give details about reasons for eligible delays (such as parental, medical, bereavement and family care leaves, for example).  

The personal statement is also the perfect place to discuss the impacts of any delays that are not typically “counted”, but that count: an early-career researcher who is the only woman in a new department, and is therefore asked to sit on almost every hiring committee for several years, for example, might find it easier to qualify the impact of that work within her personal statement – both in terms of the impacts on her research, and the impact she has had on the growth of her department. Likewise for a more established researcher who takes on a senior administrative role in a university’s research office for many years, for example. Or for a Black researcher whose supervisory and mentorship role for many Black students is disproportionately time-consuming and emotionally demanding, for example. Or for any researcher who has taken on an overburden of teaching while still being an active researcher. In such circumstances, providing details about the reasons for research delays experienced by the applicant is essential.

Tables and charts can be used in both the narrative TCV and the narrative CV-FRQ. 

In the TCV, these have different formatting requirements than the rest of the TCV. “You may use other fonts and font sizes for text in tables, charts, figures, graphs and legends only, as long as it is legible when the page is viewed at 100%” (CIHR formatting instructions).

In the CV-FRQ, the formatting requirements are not yet specified.

Tables, etc. can be a very useful tool for presenting a synoptic look at a contribution’s content and/or impact, for example. And they can likewise give reviewers’ eyes a visual break from extended narrative, which many reviewers will likely appreciate. 

Be careful not to reach a point where you’re demanding more of reviewers, rather than facilitating their reading. If you note 10 contributions, and give each an accompanying visual element, you’re probably going too far. Likewise, if you use a table to cram extra information in with a smaller font – reviewers are not likely to appreciate this, especially if they’ve already read half a dozen other narrative CVs (a bibliographic table at the end, if you use one, being an exception). Be sure that any visual elements in your narrative CV are substantially different from those that you included in your research proposal.

Including 2-3 judiciously constructed tables, illustrations, graphs, etc. is probably a good idea, especially if the conventions of your discipline make that expected within narrative presentation of a contribution. Don’t force it if it’s not necessary though.

Ensure that your TCV remains within the permitted file size when adding such visual elements. At present (April 2025) CIHR permits 30 MB, SSHRC 5 MB, NSERC and FRQ not yet announced.

Yes, you can include brief lists for such purposes, and interrupting the narrative to draw attention to such important recognition – and to give reviewers a breather from the narrative – can be a very effective strategy. 

In general, it is important to find ways to punctuate and accentuate key aspects and impacts of contributions, and occasionally “jumping out of the story” with significant facts, in a list, is one of them. But do not use many brief lists, and do not use long lists at all.

This is a huge question, and one we’re giving separate focus to at Concordia. We don’t have an answer for this question yet, but we have identified one general net positive and one general net negative of using generative AI for narrative CVs:

• Net negative: the writing generally isn’t compelling. It’s flat in intangible but unmistakable ways, no matter how much you tell the AI to “make it more compelling”.
• Net positive: it helps meet a major equity challenge presented by a narrative CV that must be written in either French or English – applicants in Canada who have not yet mastered either language can generate a narrative TCV or CV-FRQ that is passable.

We will get back to you as soon as we have more to offer with respect to both tools and guidance on this question. And we are very much hoping to discuss this and develop guidance collaboratively with anyone who is interested. Please email us at: impact@concordia.ca  

For now, please remember that if you use generative AI for any element of your application, including your TCV, you must specify that you have done so, and how, in your application.

For the CV-FRQ: the Fonds de recherche du Québec (FRQ), for its part, notes that for all elements of applications to the FRQ, “applicants using generative AI tools in the preparation of a funding application should...do so responsibly, in particular by referring to guides in the field. Particular attention should be paid to the proper recognition of contributions and the risk of plagiarism” (translated from the French).

Yes. Maintaining a traditional CV is still imperative, both during the transition period to the TCV at the Tri-agency, and to the CV-FRQ at the Fonds de recherche du Québec (FRQ), and afterward. There are several reasons for this, including:

1. During the transition period, many grant applications at the Tri-agency and the FRQ will require a traditional CV (Canadian Common CV, SSHRC CV, etc.). 
2. Even after the transition to the narrative CV is complete, when all grant applications to the Tri-agency and FRQ require them, researchers still need a way to track all of their contributions as they happen. Maintaining a traditional CV is a good way to do this. Remember that your narrative CV must be tailored to each research proposal: having a complete record of your individual contributions to draw from will be essential when modifying or rewriting your TCV or your CV-FRQ.
3. Other than for the Tri-agency and FRQ, many external opportunities will still require a traditional CV. This includes almost all dossiers for external prizes, nominations to prestigious societies (such as the Royal Society of Canada), faculty job applications, and journal peer-review and editorial positions.  

Maintaining an ORCID profile is perhaps the most convenient way to keep your traditional CV up to date. And it will have the additional benefit of making your traditional CV available to any reviewers who might be searching for it (we know from surveys of European reviewers that evaluating narrative CVs presents challenges that many reviewers resolve by turning to online resources like ORCID).

It is likely going to require a lot of trial and error to figure out how research offices and grant facilitators can best support researchers developing their narrative CVs.

If there is time for research advisors or grant facilitators to work one-on-one with a researcher to develop their narrative CV, having their traditional CV to refer to seems like a good idea. But it would also be helpful to then have someone who has not read the researcher’s traditional CV review their completed narrative CV. This is important because it will be evaluated in the same way by a peer-reviewer. 

This brings up a challenge that university research offices are going to be facing: time. On one hand, solid narrative CV-development strategies would, in a perfect world, involve both workshops and one-on-one work between grant facilitators and researchers over several weeks. On the other hand, we need to formulate strategies for the frequent occasions in which a research advisor or grant facilitator needs to review dozens of narrative CVs – and the accompanying research proposals – in just a few days.

Particularly given the sheer volume involved in the first big wave of narrative TCV and CV-FRQ development, it may be more feasible for research offices to develop the one-on-one strategies for narrative CV development as strategies that researchers can engage in with their colleagues, while the offices themselves develop and deliver workshops for groups of researchers, as well as asynchronous tools researchers can use independently and individually. It also seems advisable to move up, perhaps considerably, internal deadlines for review of applications by research advisors and grant facilitators, when the applications require narrative CVs.

As we develop tools, it seems important to keep both the challenges and the opportunities of the narrative-style CV front of mind, and try to mitigate the former without diminishing the latter. More detailed templates may be helpful, but if they’re too “cookie-cutter”, they’ll risk both making the narrative dry and eclipsing the opportunities presented by the narrative CV form – for example, being able to showcase one’s currently invisible labor as an essential piece of the research ecosystem.

There are a number of existing tools that can provide great support for researchers developing their narrative CVs. Among the most pertinent and user-friendly is the Researcher Impact Framework, developed by Giovanna Lima and Sarah Bowman.

Nuanced prompt questions seem like a very promising strategy for the narrative CV. Generating these will require trial and error, and a collaboration between university research offices in Canada would greatly facilitate the development of a bank of such questions that could be accessed by all researchers. 

Examples of well-crafted narrative CVs should not take long to be available. Just as many researchers now link to a PDF of their traditional CVs on their faculty webpages, they could be encouraged (though of course not obliged) to link to their most recent narrative CVs as well, once they have been developed. This would likewise generate a bank of narrative CV examples that could be accessed by all researchers. It would also calibrate how “personal” the “personal statement” should be in the TCV, for example: barring exceptional circumstances, narrative CVs, just like traditional CVs, should only contain information that a researcher is comfortable making public.