The Swiss National Science Foundation’s ‘narrative’ template seeks evidence of applicants’ wider contributions to science.
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Requiring CVs to follow a standard format will also help evaluators to assess and compare applicants, notes Martin von Arx, a scientific collaborator at the SNSF, and one of the study’s co-authors. The agency will tweak the SciCV format, taking into consideration the results of the pilot, before rolling it out in its final form in October, von Arx says. It will continue to collect data on SciCV as more grant applicants use it, he says.
Anaïs Llorens, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of California, Berkeley, says that the SNSF’s initiative is a step in the right direction. She argues that the standard CV format is now outdated because it relies exclusively on scientific productivity.