The FRQ narrative CV (CV-FRQ): how to prepare it

By Basile Chrétien · PharmD, MSc, MPH · September 16, 2026 · 7 min read

What the Fonds de recherche du Québec asks for in its CV descriptif: three sections, six pages in French or five in English, up to ten contributions with an audience and an impact for each. And how to write one from the research record you already have.

Since its 2025-2026 competitions the Fonds de recherche du Québec (FRQ) has asked applicants for a narrative CV, called the CV descriptif or CV-FRQ, in place of the Canadian Common CV. The document is short. It has three fixed sections, and the committee reads it for what you say a piece of work changed rather than for how much you list. This guide goes through the FRQ instructions section by section, links the official documents, and then explains how to write the CV from the record you already have.

What the CV-FRQ is

The FRQ presents the CV-FRQ as a way to show your expertise and relevant skills through a broad range of contributions, not only publications. You write it in the FRQ Word template and attach it as a PDF to the FRQnet application form. The form itself collects your education, employment history, languages and current position, so the CV does not repeat them. The three sections always come in this order:

• Première section : Parcours et compétences de la personne candidate (in the English template, Section 1: Background and skills). How your academic, professional or personal background prepares you to carry out the proposed research and to meet the programme's criteria.
• Deuxième section : Contributions et expériences les plus importantes (Section 2: Most significant contributions and experiences). Up to ten contributions or experiences, each with its impact, your role, its period and its audience.
• Troisième section : Activités de supervision et de mentorat (Section 3: Supervisory and mentorship activities). How you have trained and mentored students, postdoctoral researchers and highly qualified personnel.

The rules

• Six pages at most in French, five in English. The two templates differ only in language and length.
• Use the FRQ Word template, follow the FRQnet presentation standards for attachments, and upload a PDF.
• There is no word limit. The FRQ suggests subsections that follow the programme's evaluation criteria. Bullet points and tables are allowed.
• If a section does not apply to you, write s/o (sans objet), or N/A in the English template.
• Leave out sensitive personal information (medical, financial or otherwise private), photos, and anything that could harm you or someone else.
• Read the objectives and evaluation criteria of the programme before you write. Everything in the CV should answer them.

Official documents

• FRQ CV: the FRQ's page (English)
• FRQ CV instructions, English edition (PDF, November 2025)
• FRQ CV Word template, English
• CV-FRQ instructions, French edition (PDF, July 2025)
• Tri-agency CV (SSHRC page, with the template and instructions)
• Tri-agency CV at CIHR, and the granting councils' message on the transition

Section 1: background and skills

Put here the expertise or experience that shows you can carry out the project, the activities that show leadership, earlier collaborations or results on the research theme, the concrete effects of your past work, prizes and scholarships, and skills you acquired through personal experience. Write it for the programme in front of you. The evaluator reads this section against the call's criteria, so use their order and their vocabulary.

Section 2: up to ten contributions

This section carries the document. A contribution need not be one publication. It can be a set of closely related outputs, for example a paper, the dataset behind it and the guideline that used it. The FRQ list of what counts is long: publications of every kind, knowledge mobilisation such as media work, podcasts and public lectures, review and assessment work, community service, artistic creation, data infrastructure and cohorts, intellectual property, conference organisation, partnerships, memoranda that shaped a policy or a standard of practice, software and tools, and open science in the UNESCO sense. For each contribution give:

• the date or period;
• the audience: A for the academic community, B for the practice community, C for the general public, one letter or several;
• your role, stated plainly;
• the impact, significance and value of the work, with something the reader can check, such as a DOI, a report, a registry entry or a policy that cites it.

For publications the FRQ asks for APA style or another standard recognised in your discipline. Put your own name in bold, and the names of the co-investigators on the application. Add an asterisk after the name of every person you supervised (Nom, Prénom*), from undergraduates to postdoctoral researchers and highly qualified personnel. Do not repeat here what you said in the first section.

Section 3: supervision and mentorship

Describe how you have trained the next generation: supervision of college and university students at every level, of postdoctoral researchers and of highly qualified personnel; teaching and training workshops; formal or informal mentorship of early-career researchers, colleagues and partners; outreach that brings students into research; training in methods or knowledge systems, Indigenous knowledge included; and work on safe, equitable and inclusive research environments. A career outside academia counts as much as one inside it.

Showing impact without inflating it

Applicants new to narrative CVs ask how to prove that a contribution mattered, and evaluators new to the format ask the same thing. A narrative claim is checked by something the reader can follow, not by a number. Take the sentence "this paper documented the signal that led the regulator to amend the product monograph in 2023". A reader can verify it if the paper has a DOI, the monograph has a date and the regulator's decision is public. A citation count or an h-index says nothing about that chain, and the FRQ instructions never ask for one.

So write the chain: the output, what it changed, and where that change is recorded, with the identifiers. Where a contribution reached practitioners or the public (audiences B and C), say through what: a clinical guideline, a ministry report, a training programme, a series of interviews. Where you cannot document an effect, describe the significance of the work and your role in it, and stop there. An evaluator can tell a documented effect from a claimed one.

Preparing it with SigmaCV

SigmaCV builds your full academic CV from open research data (ORCID, OpenAlex, Crossref, DataCite and others) and lets you apply funder layouts to it, reversibly. Two of those layouts are the CV-FRQ in French and in English. Each shows the three FRQ sections under the FRQ's own headings and hides everything else, since the FRQnet form collects the rest. You write prose in each section, and a claim can point at an entry of your record through an evidence link, so the reader lands on the DOI.

1. Sign in with ORCID and let the record build. Mark what is not yours and add missing works by DOI.
2. Apply the CV-FRQ layout, French or English, from the CV model picker. The previous layout is saved as a preset.
3. Write the three sections. Under each one the evidence panel lists your publications, datasets, supervision records and other outputs you can cite with an evidence link. Keep an eye on the character count and the page count against the six or five page limit.
4. Export to DOCX, paste the sections into the FRQ Word template, check the presentation rules, and attach the PDF in FRQnet.

Build your CV from your ORCID record, free

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