Do narrative CVs tell the right story?

The problem in the UK is an emphasis on funding rather than citations. The reason that I have not made it to Professor is that my funding record is rather modest. However, since my work is computational, I have still been able to publish the papers needed to keep my Russell Group employer happy. However, there are thus many instances of promotions where the individual concerned has a worse citation record than mine but brings in substantial amounts of grant income. My career has been that of the all-rounder but this has not done me any good so I think that there is a place for a diverse range of academics and the main aim must be to avoid a "one size fits all" approach.

Just remind me, how used we to assess research outputs 100 years ago, 1921, and if it was different, what in HE has changed to necessitate this shift in assessment regime? And why has it changed? Hmmmmm....

I would like to make a few points here: 1. I absolutely agree with the need to look at the whole picture, especially when we are talking about established senior faculty. You need to be good, or at least able, in all areas, otherwise you are not qualified to be a professor. It always depresses me when I see CVs of 50+ researchers who obviously have done absolutely nothing in their careers except pushing their own research. 2. Having said this, I am absolutely agains this type of narrative CV ideas described here. Without doubt it will advantage only smooth talking white men like myself ( I am not convinced by the evidence presented to the contrary). 3. The IF discussion seems to be very narrow and naive, focusing on a number only. Every time I publish in a high IF journal there so much extra work going into that, and about 90% of that extra work directly relates to the "multi-dimensional types of excellence we need in universities and research". It is about putting your work in a bigger context, valorising it for researcher in adjacent fields and for society at large, and providing more popular content as press releases and follow up articles in magazines and other popular science outlets. And not to forget having all these items scrutinized and quality stamped by a number of highly skilled professionals. 4. While it is true that not all ground breaking research is published in the highest IF journals this doesn’t necessarily put the high IF journals at fault. If you have done ground breaking research it is your duty as a scientist to make it go has high IF as possible in order for society at large to profit faster. But it takes a lot of extra effort, and obviously it is also a bit of risk as the peer review system is what it is, for good and bad. Sometimes ground breaking research gets rejected, just as publishers will reject novels that will become best-sellers. It’s only human.