Drafting Your First Tri‑Agency Narrative CV (May 13, 2026)

The Key to the Narrative CV:

🔑 – The key to a compelling narrative CV is to tell the story of what happens after you have published and mobilized your research findings.

An output is a thing you made to share your research. It could be peer-reviewed or public-facing; it could be a traditional academic output or something totally novel. A traditional CV is usually a list of outputs.

An outcome is the intangible benefit that accrues to an individual or community as a result of their encountering and applying your ideas in their context. In my article for University Affairs, “Answering the “So what?” in SSHRC applications,” I share a four-part strategy for articulating the scholarly outcomes of a proposed project. This four-part strategy is also relevant for non-SSHRC researchers. That four-part strategy should help you to articulate the scholarly outcomes of your work; I hope you will already have ideas for how to talk about the benefits to specific populations, occupations, patient groups, or communities outside of academia.

Finally, impact is a piece of evidence or other proxy that gestures toward an outcome. Since outcomes are intangible, impacts are the footprint they leave behind, from which we can estimate the size and weight of the person who left it.

Note: different people have different definitions of the terms “outcome” and “impact”, and neither the CIHR glossary nor the NSERC glossary nor the SSHRC glossary define these terms, so if you have a preferred alternate definition such as the one supplied by UCalgary, that’s fine, and as long as your narrative CV talks about outcomes and impacts, I’m happy.

Examples of outputs:

  • Journal articles.
  • Monographs or co-authored books.
  • Edited collections or special issue of a journal.
  • Conference presentations or posters.
  • Reports, white papers, or policy briefs.
  • Curricular materials, datasets, or software tools.
  • Op-eds, podcast episodes, YouTube videos, or social media channels.
  • Patents or inventions.
  • Exhibitions or performances.
  • Workshops or webinars delivered.
  • Blogs, newsletters, or social media threads.
  • Clinical trials protocols or lab manuals.
  • Open-source code repositories.
  • Artistic works, exhibitions, or compositions.
  • Technical manuals or prototypes.

Examples of outcomes:

  • Adoption of methodological innovations by peers.
  • Policy uptake by agencies reshaping guidelines.
  • Classroom implementation by teachers using new resources.
  • Improved practitioner skills from evidence-based protocols.
  • Enhanced awareness or attitudes among clinicians.
  • Network effects sparking interdisciplinary collaborations.
  • Changes in public behavior from awareness campaigns.
  • Shifts in organizational practices after training workshops.
  • Increased stakeholder engagement with policy recommendations.
  • Behavioral adaptations in clinical or lab settings.
  • Greater equity in community programs influenced by research.
  • Professional development for peers adopting new tools.
  • Cultural shifts in disciplinary approaches or norms.
  • Improved decision-making by policymakers or educators.
  • Heightened community resilience from applied guidelines.

Examples of impact measures or evidence of outcomes:

  • Citation counts.
  • Extensive citation in review articles, meta-analyses, guidelines or best practice documents.
  • Invitations for keynotes or advisory roles based on research.
  • Citation across diverse neighbouring subfields (or across diverse species, populations, conditions, regions, centuries, genres, etc)
  • Discussions in journals or roundtables at conferences focused on your work.
  • Awards, prizes, fellowships, and invited talks and keynotes.
  • Policy citations or legislative references (see Sage Policy Profiles).
  • Usage metrics, such as downloads of open-access datasets.
  • Media coverage or op-ed republications.
  • Adoption statistics, like schools implementing curricular materials.
  • Surveys showing practitioner changes, such as nurses reporting higher job satisfaction.
  • Download or view counts for podcasts and webinars.
  • Number of organizations adopting guidelines or protocols.
  • Funding secured by others using your methodologies.
  • Pre/post surveys measuring attitude or knowledge shifts.
  • Patent citations or licensed technologies.
  • Community program participation rates post-intervention.

The Elements of the Tri-Agency CV:

Personal Statement:

  • Describe your program of research, your current role, and any relevant backstory. Don’t tell the chronological story of your various roles; instead, focus on where you are now, and provide only the background necessary to help the reader understand how you got there. For most researchers, grad school is going to be too long ago to be relevant here.
  • Optionally, you might also here speak to specific innovations, areas of influence, career highlights, or non-academic experiences that make you particularly great at your work.
  • Provide a curated, selected, strategic & focused overview of your career and the context that your peer reviewers need to understand it. Remember that “strong evidence appear[s] less persuasive when it is bundled with weaker evidence” (Lambert & Peytcheva, 2019)

Most Significant Contributions and Experiences:

  • A contribution is a cluster of outputs, outcomes, and impacts. Describe the big picture that the puzzle pieces of your outputs collectively depict, and then describe most important the outcomes and impacts associated with that big picture. Conclude by citing relevant outputs.
  • An experience is something you’ve done (or a set of things you’ve done) to develop a particular skill.
  • This section will be 3-4 pages long. Most people will list three or more contributions or experiences. I anticipate you won’t have room to list more than 6 contributions or experiences.

Supervisory and Mentorship Activities:

  • Provide an overview of your supervisory and mentorship activities by degree level, including honours, thesis, and dissertation supervisees as well as research assistants
  • Provide any necessary details about your institutional context (e.g. if your department doesn’t have a doctoral program)
  • Detail students’ outputs, pairing those details with a description of career outcomes and impact metrics (e.g. awards, scholarship, fellowships)
  • Show that you know which demographic groups are underrepresented in your discipline, and describe the evidence-based strategies you use to ensure that students from underrepresented and equity-deserving groups feel welcome and included in your discipline specifically and academic research generally

Letitia’s Templates and Examples:

Template Narrative CVs:

Fake, Example Most Significant Contributions:

Peer Reviewers’ Perspectives:

External Resources:

PEP-CV

“The Peer Exchange Platform for Narrative-style CVs (PEP-CV) is a free and open resource for everyone in research and innovation to add to existing guidance on narrative CVs. As a not-for-profit initiative, the PEP-CV platform is a collaborative effort among funders, institutions, and researchers that fosters a culture of collaboration, mutual learning, and expands national and international networks for research and innovation staff.” (source: DORA)

Resources related to outcomes and impact measures:

Resources related to equity and inclusion in research practice: