Narrative CV
The narrative CV is a flexible CV format that describes a researcher’s contributions and achievements and their contexts, impacts and significance.
Review this short orientation before you begin drafting your own. A first draft can take a day or more, so you should allow time before your deadline.
On this page
Why narrative CVs exist
A narrative CV asks you to describe your research contributions in your own words — not just list them. It was developed in response to a growing recognition that traditional CVs, with their rows of publications and metrics, miss most of what makes research valuable.
Tri-agency funders in Canada (SSHRC, NSERC, CIHR) and the Fonds de recherche du Québec (FRQ) adopted narrative formats to address a specific problem: impact that matters most is often the hardest to count. Partnerships, mentorship, policy influence, community work, creative practice — none of these translate well into citation counts or journal rankings.
The core shift — A traditional CV lists your outputs without context. A narrative CV describes what you did, what changed because of it, and why that matters.
The shift toward narrative formats is part of a broader global movement in research assessment — sometimes called "responsible research assessment." Key initiatives behind this shift include the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), the Leiden Manifesto, and the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA).
In Canada, the Tri-agency is gradually implementing the narrative Tri-agency CV (TCV) requirement over a few years. It replaces or supplements the Canadian Common CV (CCV) in specific competitions. The FRQ in Québec developed its own parallel format (CV-FRQ) with similar principles, and now requires it for all grant applications.
The practical implication: reviewers are now explicitly asked to evaluate contributions qualitatively, not just count outputs. Your job in the narrative CV is to make that evaluation easy for them by describing what you did, what your specific role was, who was affected, and what evidence exists.
Funders that currently use narrative CV formats:
- SSHRC
- NSERC
- CIHR
- FRQ (Québec)
- UKRI (UK)
- NWO (Netherlands)
- NIH (USA)
- FNR (Luxembourg)
Always check specific program guidelines — not every competition from these funders uses the narrative format yet.
The three sections
The Tri-agency CV (TCV) and CV-FRQ are both organized around three sections. You do not have to write them in order — most researchers find it easier to start with their contributions, then mentorship, then write the personal statement (in the CV-FRQ, "The candidate's background and skills") last.
Section 1
Personal statement
Your research identity: who you are, what drives your work, and where you are headed. Written last, but appears first.
Section 2
Most significant contributions and experiences
Up to 10 contributions or experiences that relate to your application. Choose the ones most relevant to the funding opportunity, which may differ from your most recent work.
Section 3
Supervisory and mentorship activities
How you have supported the development of other researchers, trainees, students, and collaborators.
Contributions go well beyond publications. The TCV instructions explicitly invite a wide range of outputs and activities. A contribution can be a single output or a collection of related work presented together. You can include:
- Journal articles, books, book chapters, reports
- Datasets, software, open-access resources
- Policy briefs, technical reports, submissions to government consultations
- Community partnerships, co-designed research projects
- Creative works, performances, exhibitions, films
- Methods or frameworks you developed that others have adopted
- Training programs, workshops, or curricula you created
- Patents, licences, spin-off ventures
- Grants you led that enabled others' research
- Media coverage, public engagement, or science communication work
The question to ask is which contributions best support this application and what each one changed. A short list of well-explained contributions is stronger than a long list.
This section is broader than formal graduate supervision. It includes any role in which you supported someone else's development as a researcher or professional:
- Graduate supervision (master's and doctoral)
- Postdoctoral supervision
- Undergraduate research mentoring (honours theses, research assistants)
- Informal mentoring of early-career researchers or colleagues
- Community researcher training and capacity building
- Industry or government collaborator development
- Equity, diversity, and inclusion practices in your lab or team
- Peer mentoring, committee work, or writing retreats you organized
If you are early in your career, or your discipline does not include graduate supervision, describe any informal support, training, or inclusive practices in your research environment. Context matters — reviewers are trained to read this section with career stage in mind.
TCV vs CV-FRQ — key differences
If you are applying to a Tri-agency program, you will use the TCV. If you are applying to a Fonds de recherche du Québec program, you will use the CV-FRQ. The structure is similar, but a few practical differences matter.
| Feature | Tri-agency CV (TCV) | CV-FRQ |
|---|---|---|
| Funders | SSHRC, NSERC, CIHR | Fonds de recherche du Québec (FRQ), all three sectors: Nature et technologies, Santé, Société et culture |
| Focus of the first section | Your expertise relative to this specific opportunity or project | Your expertise relative to this specific opportunity or project, your fit with the program's objectives, and how your work complements the team |
| Hyperlinks | Not permitted: the CV must be self-contained. The one exception is a link to an audio or visual creative output, where the funding opportunity allows it. Reviewers are not guaranteed to open it. | Permitted as bibliographic references when directly related to a contribution. Links cannot replace information that belongs in the application. |
| Section names | Personal statement Most significant contributions and experiences Supervisory and mentorship activities |
Parcours et compétences de la personne candidate Contributions et expériences les plus importantes Activités de supervision et de mentorat |
| Language | English or French | French or English*. The FRQ application form itself must be completed in French. * Some FRQ programs, so far those run in partnership with Quebec ministries, require every document in French, attachments included. Check the program rules, or contact your Advisor, Research Development. |
You must use the agency's template.
Prepare your TCV or CV-FRQ in the current version of the template your agency provides, and keep the formatting it sets. Do not exceed the page limit (5 pages if in English, 6 pages if in French). The FRQ is especially strict about formatting and page limits.
Formatting also differs between the three Tri-agency partners: SSHRC requires 12-point Arial, and NSERC and CIHR require 12-point Times New Roman. See the formatting note below before you start.
The three Tri-agency partners do not use the same formatting rules, so the agency you are applying to decides the format of your TCV. Each agency also sets its own file-size limit.
- SSHRC requires 12-point Arial in black type. You can use different fonts and sizes in tables, figures and legends, as long as the text is readable when the page is viewed at 100%.
- CIHR requires 12-point Times New Roman. You can use different fonts and sizes in tables, figures and legends, as long as the text is readable when the page is viewed at 100%.
- NSERC requires 12-point Times New Roman. You can use a smaller font size in tables and figures, as long as the text is readable, except in tables or figures that list references. References must be in 12-point Times New Roman wherever they appear.
- The CV-FRQ requires 12-point Times New Roman, with margins of at least 2 cm, your name in the header and the document title in the footer.
None of them accept condensed fonts, and all of them require you to use the agency's own template.
Not sure which one you need? Check the specific program's application guide. If you are applying to both a Tri-agency and an FRQ competition, you will need to prepare both — but most of your content will transfer with minor adjustments.
How it differs from a traditional CV
The main change is rhetorical. A narrative CV asks you to explain your contributions as well as list them, and to make your own role visible in each one.
| Dimension | Traditional CV | Narrative CV |
|---|---|---|
| Structure | Chronological lists by category | Thematic descriptions by contribution |
| Voice | Passive or implied ("published," "presented") | Active, first-person ("I developed," "I led") |
| What it shows | Volume and recency of outputs | Quality, significance, and effect of contributions |
| Your role | Often unclear (team authorship, collaborative work) | Explicitly stated for each contribution |
| Evidence of impact | Citation counts, journal rankings, h-index | Qualitative and quantitative evidence of real-world effect |
| Scope | Exhaustive inventory | Curated selection (up to 10 contributions or experiences) |
Yes. The Tri-agency instructions ask you to explain your role in each contribution and leave the grammatical person open. Concordia recommends the first person because it states your role most directly. If every sentence says "we," reviewers cannot tell what you did.
In our narrative CV workshops, we suggest replacing "we" with "I," or with a phrase such as "I led a team that developed the protocol." You can acknowledge collaboration and still make your own contribution clear.
Many researchers — particularly those trained in disciplines with strong norms around collective authorship, or those from cultures where self-promotion feels uncomfortable — find this the hardest shift to make. It is worth sitting with that discomfort, because reviewers will be asking "what did this person do?" for every entry.
Citation counts are one form of evidence, but they systematically undervalue applied, community-engaged, and practice-based research. Reviewers of Tri-agency applications are asked to disregard the Journal Impact Factor and other journal-based metrics. DORA also treats the h-index and career-total citation counts as unreliable measures of an individual's work. The citation count for a single article or book can support a qualitative account of that work. Other forms of evidence include:
- Adoption: "This method was adopted by [organization] for…"
- Policy uptake: "Cited in [government body]'s [year] guidelines as…"
- Media coverage: "Featured in [outlet], reaching an estimated [audience]"
- Partnership outcomes: "Led to [number] follow-on collaborations with [sectors]"
- Teaching integration: "Used as a teaching resource in [number] institutions"
- Community acknowledgement: "[Organization] credited this work with…"
- Independent replication: "Replicated by research groups in [locations]"
- Career outcomes of trainees: "Three former graduate students now hold [roles]"
Qualitative evidence is explicitly invited by the TCV format. A well-placed sentence describing real-world uptake is often more compelling than a citation count.
Common concerns
Researchers raise these concerns in almost every narrative CV workshop we run. You are not alone in thinking any of them.
Concern
I don't have enough impact yet — this format will make that obvious.
Reality
Reviewers evaluate contributions relative to career stage. Early-career researchers are not expected to have the same scope as senior colleagues. Describe what you have done and what you are building toward.
Concern
My research is fundamental — I can't point to real-world impact.
Reality
Fundamental research has impact on knowledge, methods, fields, and the people you train. Academic impact — influencing how others think, what gets studied, how problems get framed — counts fully.
Concern
My best contributions were collaborative — I can't claim them individually.
Reality
You can and should describe collaborative work. The task is to clarify your specific role within it — what decisions you made, what you developed, what you were responsible for — while acknowledging the team context.
Concern
Describing my own work this way feels like self-promotion.
Reality
You are not inventing impact — you are making visible what already happened. Reviewers can assess only what you describe. Describing your work clearly is a professional responsibility, not a personality trait.
A narrative CV suits interdisciplinary work better than a traditional CV does. You can describe what your contributions mean in each field they touch, without fitting them to a single discipline's metrics.
Practically: name the relevant communities, explain the significance in plain language, and let the evidence span multiple fields. You do not need to pick one home discipline and pretend the rest of your work does not exist.
What reviewers look for
Reviewers are not scoring your productivity. They are asking: Does this researcher know what their work has contributed, and can they explain it clearly to someone outside their immediate field?
The Tri-agency instructions ask you to explain "the impact, significance, usefulness, and your role" in each contribution. Four qualities help reviewers find them in your CV:
Reviewers need to identify your contribution specifically. If every sentence uses "we," they cannot. Be precise: "I designed the study," "I developed the algorithm," "I led the community consultation process." You can acknowledge the team in the same sentence — just make your role explicit.
A 2025 UK study of 27 narrative CVs found that reviewers rated both the CV and the researcher more highly when the writing showed less passivity or avoidance of ownership, and used fewer negations (Fasoli et al., 2025, Writing and Evaluating Narrative CVs).
"Widely cited" means less than "cited in 47 studies across clinical, policy, and engineering applications." "Worked with communities" means less than "co-designed a food security protocol with three community organizations, later adopted into a municipal food policy." These examples are illustrative.
Specificity is not bragging — it is evidence. Vague claims read as weak because they are unverifiable. Named outcomes, organizations, and numbers give reviewers something concrete to evaluate.
Describe not just what you did, but what it made possible. What existed before your work that was incomplete, incorrect, or absent? What changed? What can others now do or know that they could not before?
This does not require hyperbole. A modest, precise claim — "This dataset is the first longitudinal record of X in the Y region, and has since been used by three government agencies and two international research groups" — is far more powerful than a broad assertion about importance.
The best narrative CVs read as a coherent body of work, not a set of disconnected items. The personal statement frames the whole. The contributions are curated, not exhaustive. Together they answer the question: "What is this researcher building, and why does it matter?"
You do not have to force all your work into a single theme — researchers whose work genuinely spans several areas can describe that breadth as a form of strength. But the narrative should feel intentional, not accidental.
If you have questions about your narrative CV, please contact the Pathways to Impact team at impact@concordia.ca.
Last reviewed: September 2026. This guide gives Concordia's advice and is not an official position of the Tri-agency or the Fonds de recherche du Québec. The instructions for your funding opportunity take precedence.