Making visible efforts made and measures implemented to improve research culture, evaluation, and leadership quality is important to gain support and function as a role model. Do good and talk about it!

Leading open discussions can help create a more collaborative environment by allowing team members to share not only their successes, but also their "failures." This helps build respect and trust within the research team by being open about it and providing support when things don't always go smoothly.

Contributions from researchers can be considered as a whole or as a portfolio. Cluster appointments can help institutions think about hiring in terms of their larger academic portfolio. They are also a proven strategy for increasing diversity.

Track record evaluation acts as one of the most powerful gate keepers in academia. Institutions and funders can develop their CV requirements alongside their evaluation practices:

• Define clearly what role CVs play in the overall evaluation and how they are weighted alongside other documents such as project proposals, for example. For each section of a CV, make sure the person filling it in and the one evaluating it understand exactly what it should contain and how it should be evaluated by providing both with the same guidelines.
• Distinguish between achievements realized by the researcher and those endowed upon them by others in order to minimize the Matthew effect in evaluators.
• In order to not reward established researchers perpetually, prioritize current and directly relevant information over historical achievements, even when those may be more prestigious.
• Less is more. Limit the number of achievements and outputs in CVs.
• Recognize and reward a wide range of outputs to foster a more diverse and inclusive research culture. Singling out one type of output, such as publications for example, discounts the richness of research and the many forms through which it can impact academia and society.
• Balance and control incentives. Many laudable policies and incentives bear unintended hidden risks if they are not carefully balanced and implemented. For example, only allowing open access publications on CVs submitted to funding organizations may have opportunity costs if equally valuable aspects such as advancing teaching, diversity and equality, collaboration, sustainability, reproducibility or public engagement are not explicitly required to obtain funding.
• Use the academic age not the biological age of researchers. Including a researcher’s biological age in a CV propagates biases and can discriminate against women, younger and older researchers.
• Encourage narratives instead of lists. Incorporate a narrative section into a CV. Listed items can provide a quick and wellstructured overview but they also entice evaluators to count instead of read, which in turn can favor snap judgements over indepth evaluation.
• Use metrics cautiously. Implement metrics carefully to avoid misuse and make sure evaluators are well aware of their respective definitions and limitations.
• Use established open and interoperable data standards and systems. CV data is valuable as it allows for the analysis of an institution’s policy and performance as well as researcher career statistics.