Research Impact Metrics: Qualitative Evaluation

A guide for those wanting to use research impact metrics for evaluation, analytics, and reviews, e.g., promotion & tenure.

Resources for Qualitative Evaluation & Narrative CVs

As academia begins and continues on a path of research assessment reform, qualitative evaluation and narrative reports / CVs will become increasingly common and important for funding decisions, reviews, promotion, and tenure. As a result, it is crucial faculty and researchers have the necessary tools and training available to show the value and impact of their work beyond publication and citation counts and through narrative and qualitative measures.

Narrative CV: resources to help you write one
This course, from the University of Glasgow, is for anyone writing a narrative CV for a grant, Fellowship or job application. In particular, this course is directed at early-career researchers to show their qualitative assessment of their work and the impact of their work beyond citations and other quantitative measures.

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This course (25 min) looks at:

The thinking behind a move towards narrative CV and assessment formats: how the research landscape and research assessment practices are evolving and efforts to develop fairer assessment approaches
Advice and tips on what to include in a more narrative format
Examples from real narrative CVs, written by early-career researchers
Narratives The uses and evaluation of researchers’ narrative CVs
The use of narrative CVs is growing rapidly across research systems, as part of a wider shift towards responsible research assessment. Building on earlier scoping by DORA, the partners involved in the NARRATIVES project have aligned in identifying three modules of greatest interest to the group.

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The first module will develop an inventory of challenges related to the implementation of narrative CVs across different funding organisations, and strategies to tackle them. For this purpose, we will synthesise information that has already been collected by participating organisations as well as create additional evidence through focus groups and interviews.
The second module will focus on learning effects among reviewers handling narrative CVs over consecutive funding rounds. The aim here is to study conditions that facilitate making optimal use of the affordances of narrative CVs. We will collect empirical material through participant observation in review panels, through interviews, as well as through surveys with reviewers.
The third module will investigate the effects of narrative CVs on the diversity of funding recipients. To do this we will conduct an experiment to compare the effects of using a narrative CV rather than a regular CV. This will be done by splitting a cohort of applicants by CV type, and comparing outcomes.
Using Narrative CVs: Process optimization and bias mitigation
In this report, the authors consolidate the key learnings from a workshop hosted by DORA and Funding Organisations for Gender Equality Community of Practice (FORGEN CoP) on the adoption of narrative CVs for funding organizations.

Last Updated: Mar 4, 2025 3:39 PM
URL: https://guides.lib.vt.edu/research-metrics
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Subjects: General interest

Tags: altmetrics, bibliometrics, research assessment, research evaluation, research impact