Use actual responsibilities, decision records and operational support evidence. Explain who performs the work and who directs it.
Give publications an appropriate role
A publication can show contribution or context but may not establish current authority or daily duties. Connect each record to the fact it supports. Do not use professional recognition to conceal an unresolved role description.
Budget and resource-allocation decisions, together with records showing who assigns tasks to whom, distinguish a person who sets research direction from one who mainly executes it, since a title like director of research can describe either role depending on the organization. Meeting minutes that show direction being set, priorities chosen and projects approved or rejected are different evidence from laboratory notebooks or technical output showing an individual person's own research work, and both should be present if both activities genuinely occur. A title alone does not resolve which side of that division applies, particularly where the same person historically did hands-on work and only recently moved toward oversight.
Describing the current balance in plain terms - primarily directing others' work, primarily performing the work personally, or a genuine mix with specific examples of each - gives an officer something concrete rather than a label to interpret on its own. Assigning specific decisions in the record to a name, rather than describing responsibility in the passive voice, makes clear which person actually held it.