I think it's been about a decade. Because it is a significant evolution, it's been embraced by the community incrementally and growingly, I would say, and perhaps with some leadership from the funding agencies.
Indeed, over the past decade, the funding agencies have been looking to recognize that bibliometric indicators, which were much relied on in certain fields, are not necessarily a definitive assessment of the quality of the work. It certainly can be seen as having been published in a prestigious journal, but to therefore conclude on its high quality can sometimes be a bit of an erroneous shortcut. By moving away from those types of metrics, what we're trying to say is that it's not just the quantitative aspects of the research or its impact that we want to measure, but the qualitative aspects.
One way this will come to the fore even more is that the funding agencies have indicated that they would move away from the type of CV template that researchers submit along with applications, in which they describe and list, at length, publications, for instance. The narrative CV, as it's sometimes referred to, allows a researcher to select what they wish to highlight and describe in more qualitative terms what the impact has been, what motivated the research, what results were achieved and how it can be of benefit.
Moving from a quantification of the productivity of a researcher as an indicator of the excellence of a researcher to a more qualitative consideration is definitely an evolution. I will wait and see how the research community reacts to that change, but it is something that has been talked about for a bit of time. It has been used by the NIH in the U.S., as well as by the UKRI in the U.K. Some will be looking forward to it and some might be a bit surprised by it.