Abstract

The academic community has become increasingly concerned about biases in research evaluation, and particularly researcher evaluation. This concern is reflected in a number of initiatives, such as the Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), the Leiden Manifesto, the Metric Tide and more recently the work initiated by the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA). These initiatives highlight the importance to further stimulate the development and exchange new criteria, procedures, and tools for recognising and rewarding scientific excellence based on principles of quality, integrity, diversity, and openness. Alongside these initiatives, a number of recommendations have been made, including the use of narrative CVs.
Up until recently, researchers were building their CVs on the traditional indicators. The narrative CV makes it possible to diversify the evaluation criteria and, for example, to value mentoring, participation in committees, collaborating behind the scenes on big projects, contribution to the open science movement or working at the intersection of several disciplines. ERC moved towards the narrative CV for the calls of the 2024 work programme. The outcomes of this change are only recently visible with the first evaluations and decisions coming in from the calls of 2024.
In this session, we will explore the goals of the narrative CV, compare it to the goals of ERC and with the help of AI see if the change is visible in the evaluations received from calls before and after the move to the narrative CV in ERC single fellow grants. We ask if the evaluated indicators of research impact of an applicant have indeed widened and if the focus on the publications and especially their quantity over quality still remains. In the end we reflect what the possible longer-term consequences of this paradigm change might have on the applicants, us RMAs and ultimately ERC goals. The participants will take away a wider understanding of the purpose of a narrative CV and its impact on one of the biggest funders in the world for excellence grants.