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Developing effective research collaborations: Strategies for building successful partnerships

Research collaborations have become increasingly popular in recent years, with more and more researchers recognizing the benefits of working together to achieve common research goals. Collaborative research offers a range of advantages, including increased funding opportunities, access to specialized expertise, and the potential for greater impact and reach of research outcomes. However, building successful partnerships requires careful planning and execution, as well as a willingness to overcome the challenges that can arise when working with others. In this article, we will explore the strategies for developing effective research collaborations and building successful partnerships.

Identify shared research interests and goals:

The first step in building a successful research collaboration is to identify shared research interests and goals. This requires careful consideration of the research areas that are of interest to all parties involved, as well as an understanding of the specific research questions that each party seeks to answer. This may involve conducting a thorough literature review to identify knowledge gaps or areas where additional research is needed. Once shared research interests and goals have been identified, a clear research plan can be developed that outlines the objectives, research methods, and expected outcomes of the collaboration.

Establish clear roles and responsibilities:

In order to avoid confusion and ensure that everyone involved in the research collaboration is working towards the same objectives, it is important to establish clear roles and responsibilities from the outset. This means clearly defining the tasks and responsibilities of each member of the research team, as well as outlining the timelines and milestones for the project. This can help to avoid duplication of effort, reduce the risk of misunderstandings, and ensure that everyone is aware of their contribution to the collaboration.

Foster open communication and collaboration:

Effective research collaborations require open communication and collaboration between all parties involved. This means creating a supportive and inclusive research environment where everyone feels comfortable sharing their ideas and perspectives, and where constructive feedback is encouraged. Regular meetings and check-ins can help to ensure that everyone is on track, and that any issues or concerns are addressed in a timely manner. Collaborative research platforms, such as shared online spaces or project management software, can also help to facilitate communication and collaboration among team members.

Build trust and mutual respect:

Building trust and mutual respect is essential for developing effective research collaborations. This means creating a culture of transparency and honesty, where everyone feels comfortable sharing their thoughts and concerns without fear of judgment or reprisal. It also means respecting the expertise and opinions of other team members, and being willing to compromise and find common ground when differences arise. By building trust and mutual respect, research collaborations can create a strong foundation for success and ensure that all members feel valued and supported.

Manage conflicts and challenges:

Despite the best planning and execution, conflicts and challenges can arise when working on collaborative research projects. These may include differences in research approaches or methodologies, competing priorities or interests, or misunderstandings about roles or responsibilities. Effective conflict management is essential for maintaining the momentum of the collaboration and ensuring that everyone remains focused on achieving the shared research goals. This may involve implementing clear conflict resolution protocols, establishing open lines of communication for addressing concerns, or seeking external mediation when necessary.

Research collaborations offer a range of benefits, from increased funding opportunities to access to specialized expertise and resources. However, building successful partnerships requires careful planning and execution, as well as a willingness to overcome the challenges that can arise when working with others. By following the strategies outlined in this article, researchers can develop effective research collaborations that are based on shared research interests and goals, clear roles and responsibilities, open communication and collaboration, trust and mutual respect, and effective conflict management. By doing so, they can increase the impact and reach of their research outcomes, and make meaningful contributions to their respective fields.

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10 Key Steps to Secure Effective Academic Research Collaboration

Oct 6, 2023 | Research FAQs

How Can I Effectively Collaborate with Other Researchers on a Project?

Research collaboration is a fundamental aspect of academia that has gained increasing prominence in recent years. It refers to the practice of multiple researchers working together on a common project, sharing their expertise, resources, and ideas to achieve a common goal. In today’s complex academic landscape, research collaboration has become indispensable, as it allows scholars to tackle complex problems, pool resources, and produce innovative solutions. In this article, we will explore the strategies, benefits, challenges, and key tips for effective research collaboration. Whether you are a student embarking on your first collaborative project or an experienced researcher seeking to enhance your collaboration skills, this guide will provide you with valuable insights and actionable advice.

10 Key Steps to Secure Effective Collaboration

#1 establish clear objectives and roles.

Successful research collaboration begins with a clear understanding of project objectives and the roles of each team member. Define the scope, goals, and expected outcomes of the project from the outset. For example, in a study on renewable energy sources, one researcher may focus on solar energy technology, while another specialises in wind energy. By delineating roles, you ensure that each team member contributes their unique expertise effectively.

The foundation of a successful research collaboration lies in the establishment of clear objectives and the definition of each team member’s roles. These objectives serve as guiding lights throughout the project, ensuring that everyone involved is on the same page. When embarking on a project, it’s essential to delineate the scope, goals, and expected outcomes right from the outset. For example, in a study centred around renewable energy sources, you might have one team member focusing on solar energy technology, while another specialises in wind energy. This clear division of responsibilities ensures that each team member can leverage their unique expertise effectively.

Example: The Human Genome Project, a monumental collaboration involving multiple research institutions, had a clear objective: to map and understand all the genes of the human genome. Different teams were responsible for various aspects of this ambitious project, from sequencing to data analysis.

#2 Select Complementary Team Members

Collaborative success often hinges on assembling a team with complementary skills, knowledge, and backgrounds. Seek individuals who bring diverse perspectives and expertise to the table. Collaborators should enhance, rather than duplicate, each other’s strengths.

The composition of your collaborative team plays a critical role in its success. Collaborative efforts thrive when the team members possess complementary skills, knowledge, and backgrounds. It’s not just about gathering a group of experts; it’s about finding individuals whose strengths bolster one another. Seek out collaborators who bring diverse perspectives to the table. Instead of duplicating skills, they should enhance each other’s strengths, resulting in a more robust and well-rounded research team.

Example: In a study examining the impact of climate change on coastal ecosystems, researchers with backgrounds in marine biology, environmental science, and climate modelling might collaborate to provide a comprehensive analysis.

#3 Establish Effective Communication Channels

Communication is the lifeblood of research collaboration. Choose efficient communication tools and platforms that facilitate seamless information sharing, such as project management software, video conferencing, and cloud-based document sharing. Regular meetings and updates are essential to keep the team aligned.

In the digital age, effective communication is the lifeblood of research collaboration. To ensure seamless information sharing, it’s imperative to choose communication tools and platforms that are both efficient and convenient. Project management software, video conferencing, and cloud-based document sharing are just a few examples. Regular meetings and updates are also crucial to keep the team aligned and informed about progress, challenges, and adjustments in the research process.

Example: Researchers from different time zones can use virtual collaboration tools like Slack or Microsoft Teams to ensure real-time communication and document sharing.

#4 Develop a Research Collaboration Agreement

A research collaboration agreement is a formal document that outlines the terms, responsibilities, and expectations of all collaborators. It helps prevent misunderstandings and conflicts by clearly defining issues like authorship, data ownership, and intellectual property rights.

A research collaboration agreement is more than a formality; it’s a safeguard for your project. This formal document outlines the terms, responsibilities, and expectations of all collaborators, preventing misunderstandings and conflicts down the line. 

Key issues, such as authorship, data ownership, and intellectual property rights, should be clearly defined. This agreement provides a solid foundation on which the collaboration can thrive.

Example: In a collaboration between a university and a pharmaceutical company to develop a new drug, the research collaboration agreement would specify how any resulting patents and royalties would be shared.

#5 Leverage Technology for Data Sharing

With the increasing volume of data in research, effective data sharing is crucial. Employ secure and standardised methods for data storage, access, and sharing to ensure data integrity and accessibility among collaborators .

With the exponential growth of data in research, effective data sharing is paramount. Collaborators should employ secure and standardised methods for data storage, access, and sharing. This not only ensures data integrity but also facilitates accessibility among team members. The right technology can make data management more efficient, allowing the team to focus on analysis and interpretation.

Example: Large-scale particle physics experiments, like those at CERN, rely on advanced data-sharing infrastructure to process and analyse vast amounts of data from experiments conducted by researchers worldwide.

#6 Foster a Collaborative Culture

Building a collaborative culture within your research team is vital. Encourage open dialogue, value diverse perspectives, and promote a culture of trust and respect. A positive collaborative environment enhances creativity and problem-solving.

Beyond logistics, building a collaborative culture within your research team is vital. Encouraging open dialogue, valuing diverse perspectives, and promoting a culture of trust and respect can transform your research environment. Such an atmosphere encourages creativity and problem-solving, as team members feel safe sharing ideas and taking calculated risks.

Example: The Linux operating system is a product of global collaboration, with thousands of developers contributing their expertise voluntarily, driven by a shared passion for open-source software.

#7 Manage Conflicts Effectively

Conflicts can arise in any collaborative situation. Address them promptly and constructively. Encourage team members to express concerns and work together to find solutions. A conflict resolution plan can help mitigate disputes.

No matter how well-organised a research collaboration is, conflicts can still arise. The key is to address them promptly and constructively. Encouraging team members to express concerns and work together to find solutions can turn conflicts into opportunities for growth. Having a pre-established conflict resolution plan in place can provide a roadmap for mitigating disputes, ensuring they don’t derail the project.

Example: In a research project studying the effects of a new medical treatment, disagreements among researchers on the interpretation of clinical trial results were resolved through impartial data analysis and discussion.

#8 Celebrate Achievements and Milestones

Recognise and celebrate the achievements and milestones reached throughout the collaboration. Acknowledging the contributions of team members fosters a sense of accomplishment and motivates continued collaboration.

Recognising and celebrating the achievements and milestones reached throughout the collaboration is essential for morale and motivation. Acknowledging the contributions of team members fosters a sense of accomplishment and a desire to continue collaborating on future endeavours.

These celebrations can be both formal, such as awards or acknowledgments in publications, and informal, like team gatherings or acknowledgments in meetings.

Example: In a collaborative effort to map the human brain, researchers marked significant discoveries and breakthroughs with publications, press releases, and public presentations.

#9 Evaluate and Reflect on the Collaboration

Periodically assess the progress and effectiveness of the collaboration. Collect feedback from team members to identify areas for improvement and make necessary adjustments to the research process .

Periodic reflection on the collaboration’s progress and effectiveness is necessary for continuous improvement. Collecting feedback from team members can reveal areas where adjustments are needed in the research process. This feedback loop ensures that the collaboration remains dynamic and responsive to changing circumstances and project requirements.

Example: Research institutions often conduct post-project evaluations to gauge the impact and success of collaboration, allowing for continuous improvement.

#10 Disseminate Findings and Share Knowledge

Effective research collaboration should culminate in the dissemination of findings to the academic community and beyond. Publish papers, present at conferences, and engage in knowledge-sharing activities to ensure the research has a meaningful impact.

Effective research collaboration culminates in the dissemination of findings to the academic community and beyond. Publishing papers, presenting at conferences, and engaging in knowledge-sharing activities are essential steps to ensure that the research has a meaningful impact. It’s the bridge that connects your collaborative efforts with the broader world, allowing others to benefit from your collective expertise and discoveries.

Example: Collaborative research in astronomy led to the publication of ground-breaking discoveries, such as the first image of a black hole, which captured global attention and expanded our understanding of the cosmos.

Key Collaboration Tips

Clear Communication : Maintain open and frequent communication with your collaborators to ensure everyone is on the same page.

Collaborative Tools : Utilise digital tools and platforms to streamline collaboration and data sharing.

Conflict Resolution : Develop a plan for addressing conflicts that may arise during the research collaboration.

Feedback Loop : Regularly seek feedback from team members to improve the collaboration’s efficiency and effectiveness.

Publication Plan : Discuss authorship and publication plans early in the project to avoid disputes later.

In the ever-evolving landscape of academia, research collaboration stands as a beacon of progress and innovation. It empowers scholars to pool their knowledge, skills, and resources, thereby tackling complex challenges and making substantial contributions to their fields. However, effective research collaboration demands careful planning, clear communication, and a commitment to nurturing a collaborative culture.

As you embark on your collaborative journey, remember the importance of defining clear objectives, selecting complementary team members, and establishing robust communication channels. Develop a research collaboration agreement, leverage technology for data sharing, and foster a culture of collaboration within your team. Be prepared to manage conflicts constructively and celebrate your achievements along the way. Regular evaluation and knowledge dissemination will ensure that your collaborative efforts have a lasting impact on your field.

Useful Resources

Research collaboration is not without its challenges, but with the right strategies and a dedicated team, you can overcome them and contribute to the advancement of knowledge. Embrace the opportunities that research collaboration offers, and may your collaborative endeavours lead to ground-breaking discoveries and meaningful contributions to your academic discipline.

Way With Words – Offers professional transcription services that can assist in research collaboration efforts by providing accurate and timely transcriptions of academic materials, interviews, and meetings.

Research Gate – A platform that connects researchers, providing access to a vast repository of academic papers and collaborative research opportunities.

Engagement Questions

• What challenges have you encountered in your research collaborations, and how did you address them?  
• How do you think emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence and data analytics, will impact the future of research collaboration?
• Can you share an example of a research collaboration that had a significant impact on your academic field, and what lessons can be drawn from it?

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Office of Undergraduate Research

Tips for successful collaborative research projects.

By Grace Vaidian, Peer Research Ambassador

Establish Clear Communication Channels  

I started my first collaborative research project as a sophomore. The project had a big scope, with the UConn School of Pharmacy, UConn Health, and St. Francis Hospital being involved. Various professors, clinicians, and undergraduates had to work together. This project was the first time I undertook research with a team. There was definitely a learning curve as I adjusted to the collaborative aspects of the study. One of the first things I learned was that the cornerstone of any successful collaboration is clear and open communication.   

Establishing effective channels for communication is essential, whether it’s through regular meetings or shared online platforms. Platforms like Google Workspace, Microsoft Teams, or project management tools such as Trello can enhance communication, facilitate document sharing, and streamline project organization.   

Define Roles and Responsibilities 

Collaboration with a partner came up again when I decided to apply for a Change Grant. I recruited a partner to help me with the project and balance the workload. One of the first things we did together was establish who was doing what. This allowed the process of starting the project once we received the grant to go very smoothly. Clearly defining the roles and responsibilities of each team member from the outset is vital to a group project. Establishing expectations regarding individual contributions, deadlines, and specific tasks helps in maintaining accountability and ensures that everyone plays a vital role in the project’s success.  

Establish a Clear Project Timeline 

 For the Change Grant, my project partner and I wrote out a timeline detailing when we wanted to have each goal done by. Since the project has many smaller subtasks, this was extremely helpful to keep everything on track. A well-structured timeline helps manage expectations and ensures that the project progresses smoothly, avoiding last-minute rushes and unnecessary stress.  

Embrace Diversity of Perspectives 

 Something I did not consider when starting my first collaborative project was how important the team members’ different perspectives would be. As time went on, I realized that our best solutions were products of group discussion. Encouraging open discussions and valuing the unique perspectives that each team member brings to the table can allow a project to thrive. Embracing diversity leads to a richer pool of ideas and fosters a dynamic and innovative research environment.  

Regular Check-ins and Progress Updates 

In line with establishing communication channels, schedule regular check-ins to discuss progress, address challenges, and provide updates. For my sophomore year research study, we had biweekly Teams meetings where we went over project progress. During those meetings we were able to identify weaknesses in our methods and implement necessary changes.   

Cultivate a Positive Team Culture 

Lastly, fostering a positive team culture is crucial for the success of collaborative research. I have seen this firsthand in the research lab I am currently in. I n the lab up to eight undergrads work together at a time. I noticed our tasks went smoother and we made less mistakes when we conversed and became friendly. A supportive and positive environment contributes to higher morale, increased productivity, and a more enjoyable research experience.  

Conclusion 

As an undergraduate navigating the realm of collaborative projects, I’ve come to realize the value of working on a team for research. Through effective collaboration, not only do you contribute to advancing your research, but you also cultivate skills that will serve you well in your academic and professional journey.  

Grace is a senior double majoring in Molecular & Cell Biology and Drugs, Disease, and Illness (Individualized Major).  Click here  to learn more about Grace. 

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Introduction to Collaboration

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‘Introduction to Collaboration’ introduces the idea of research collaboration and how becoming a more effective collaborator could help to further both your research and your career. Even if you’ve already participated in collaborative research, this course provides a useful introduction to the topic of research collaboration, as well as valuable context and advice around the pros and cons of collaborative projects and how they can help you reach your goals.

What you’ll learn

• Why collaborative research is becoming more prevalent
• The pros and cons of collaborating
• The specifics of collaborating with industry
• How collaborative projects can help advance your research and career

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• Interdisciplinary and international collaborations
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• Institutional support for research collaboration

Tulika Bose

Professor of Physics, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Senior Editor and Team Leader,  Nature , Springer Nature

Mark Hahnel

Founder, Figshare

W. John Kao

Chair Professor of Translational Medical Engineering, The University of Hong Kong  

Chief Editor, Nature Biomedical Engineering, Springer Nature

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Research Funding Manager (Data), Cancer Research UK  

Kathrin Zippel

Professor of Sociology, Northeastern University

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The course has additional insights through video interviews from:

Louise Ashton

Assistant Professor, School of Biological Sciences, The University of Hong Kong

J. Michael Cherry

Professor of Genetics, Stanford University

Adriane Esquivel Muelbert

Research Fellow, University of Birmingham

Brian Nosek

Executive Director, The Center for Open Science

George Pankiewicz

Unified Model Partnerships Manager, Met Office

Doris Schroeder

Director of Centre for Professional Ethics, UCLan School of Sport and Health Sciences

Malcolm Skingle

Director, Academic Liaison, GlaxoSmithKline

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How to collaborate more effectively: 5 tips for researchers

Participating in a collaborative effort can be extremely challenging. To get the most out of it, you need a strategic approach.

Andrea Aguilar

Credit: DrAfter123/Getty Images

28 January 2020

DrAfter123/Getty Images

A successful collaboration can achieve high-impact findings and give you access to new funding sources and expertise. It can also be a great opportunity to think about the tools and outputs that can make your research more accessible to your peers and the public.

Here are five tips to help you manage collaborative projects more efficiently, from the Nature Masterclasses + online course, Effective Collaboration in Research .

1. Be strategic – and don’t overcommit

It can be tempting to accept every offer to team up, but it’s not a quick, easy, or cheap way to achieve a goal.

Carefully assess the time and resources that would be required for a potential collaborative project and decide whether it fulfils a specific need in your research and if it will help you achieve your career objectives.

2. Create a collaboration agreement

Whether you’re setting up a research collaboration or participating in someone else’s project, it’s a good idea to record a framework in a formal document (“collaboration agreement”).

These contracts are often used in large and medium-sized collaborations, or in partnerships with industry, but you can choose to create a written collaboration agreement for a project of any size and scope.

“It sounds very dry and impersonal, but it’s a way to show that this is being done professionally and is done with good intention,” says John Kao, chair professor of translational medical engineering at the University of Hong Kong, in the Nature Masterclasses ’ online course on research collaboration.

“That transparency really helps to build trust.”

Your collaboration agreement can outline the key goals for the project, as well as timelines, roles and responsibilities, intellectual property, and authorship for any written outputs (especially publications).

Discussing, agreeing, and recording these things at an early stage helps to ensure that there are no surprises partway through the project.

3. Communicate your failures, not just your success

Clear and regular communication is crucial to the success of any research collaboration, and communicating delays or problems should not be seen as ‘admitting failure’.

Knowing about a delay as early as possible will be useful for the leader of the collaboration and will enable them to adapt the timeline or task-list accordingly.

Mark Hahnel, founder and CEO of online open access repository, Figshare, and expert contributor to the Nature Masterclasses ’ online course, says there is no such thing as too much communication in a collaborative project. “If you think you are over-communicating, you’re not,” says Hahnel. “Communication is only ever a good thing [in a collaboration].”

4. Embrace all types of outputs, not just papers

Common outputs of collaborative efforts include scientific publications, preprints, datasets, and conference presentations and posters. These will likely be built into your collaboration framework and management plan.

But you might decide to create further types of outputs to help you generate additional value and impact.

Creating a website can help you communicate your results to the public, and make your project more visible and accessible to other academics and potential collaborators. This can also be a good place to share other outputs you might create, such as images, maps, videos, or animations.

Interactive outputs such as simple video games and smartphone applications can also be good option, depending on the goals of your project.

Be sure to revisit your outputs regularly throughout your collaboration to see if there are any new opportunities that you might not have considered earlier. This becomes particularly important as you reach the end of a planned set of experiments or grant funding.

“We created a website where people can come and measure their own implicit biases,” Brian Nosek, executive director of the Center for Open Science and a Nature Masterclasses collaboration expert, says of one of his first psychology projects.

“It's a great instructional tool about this area of research and a great way to collect some data about how these biases might operate,” says Nosek. “The datasets generated from that have potential uses far beyond what we considered as the initial collaborative team.”

5. Learn what it takes to be a good team player

One of the great strengths of collaborative research is the innovation that comes from bringing together researchers of different backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. Sometimes it can seem hard to adapt to different ways of thinking and working, but being flexible and open to new ideas will pay dividends.

“Even though you might be the world expert on something, be prepared to allow yourself to think that you might not know everything about it,” says Nature Masterclasses collaboration expert, George Pankiewicz, a collaborations manager at the MET Office in the UK.

“There are others who will bring great insight. They may not be a world expert, but they may have something to contribute.”

For more tips on how to collaborate, see the Nature Masterclasses online course, Effective Collaboration in Research and try the one-hour free sample .

+ Disclosure: Nature Masterclasses are run by Nature Research, part of Springer Nature, which also publishes the Nature Index.

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Collaborative Science

It is essential for collaborating researchers to establish a clear management plan at the beginning of the endeavor in order to avoid the potential difficulties which they might otherwise encounter. This plan should include the goals and direction of the study, responsibilities of each contributor, research credit and ownership details, and publication technique. Team members must be open with one another, keeping colleagues informed of developments, changes and problems.

Transparency and communication are key to building successful research collaborations

Further reading

• How to build up big team science: A practical guide for large-scale collaborations Baumgartner, H. A., et al.,  Royal Society Open Science , 2023
• Adversarial collaboration Rakow, T., In O’Donohue, W., et al. (Eds.), Avoiding Questionable Research Practices in Applied Psychology, Springer, 2022
• Ghosted in science: How to move on when a potential collaborator suddenly stops responding Simha, A.,  Nature , May 26, 2023
• TSAG pilot Implementation study of team science trainings and interventions University of Wisconsin Institute for Clinical and Translational Research
• Enhancing the effectiveness of team science Cooke, N. J., & Hilton, M. L. (Eds.), The National Academies Press, 2015

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Home Market Research

Collaborative Research: What It Is, Types & Advantages

As the world becomes increasingly complex, collaboration has become more critical. Researchers must work together to solve complex problems and make informed decisions. Collaborative research is the key to developing solutions that can have a significant impact on society.

In the field of market research, collaborative research can take many forms. For example, a business might partner with a university to conduct research on consumer behavior. The business can provide real-world data and insights, while the university can provide the academic rigor and expertise needed to analyze the data and draw meaningful conclusions.

While research is the foundation for forming knowledge, collaboration is a strategy to deal with situations that seem challenging to solve individually. Therefore, this article aims to discuss the potentialities of collaborative research in practice, analyze how this collaboration can be developed, and reflect on problems that may arise during the development of these works. Let’s talk about that.

LEARN ABOUT: Action Research

What is Collaborative Research?

Collaborative research is a partnership between two or more parties who work together to achieve common goals. In the context of market research, it is a way for researchers from different backgrounds, such as industry and academia, to bridge the gap between the theoretical and the practical.

LEARN ABOUT: Theoretical Research

When done correctly, collaborative research can lead to groundbreaking discoveries and innovations that benefit everyone involved. It refers to subjects in which several entities -generally of a different nature- share an interest in the execution of a project, the effort to develop it, the risks, and ownership of the results according to their diverse contribution to obtaining them.

The grounds or principles from which this knowledge is built can be identified in two areas: on the one hand, the reflective and consolidated capacity of the teacher to carry out an analysis and, based on this, assess the results of their experience. On the other hand, the paradigm, schemes, models, and frames of reference support and endorse this functional knowledge’s construction.

Collaborative Research Types

Collaborative research can be either homogeneous or heterogeneous. Homogeneous research involves individuals or groups that share similar backgrounds or perspectives, while heterogeneous research involves individuals or groups with diverse backgrounds and perspectives. Both types of collaborative research have their advantages and can lead to new insights and discoveries.

1. Homogeneous

It occurs when the research team members are similar in terms of their backgrounds, expertise, and research interests. This type of collaborative research can be beneficial because team members may share similar perspectives and approaches to research, which can lead to more efficient and effective collaboration.

2. Heterogeneous

On the other hand, involves team members with diverse backgrounds, expertise, and research interests. While this type of collaboration can be more challenging, it can also lead to more innovative and creative research outcomes. Heterogeneous teams can bring different perspectives and ideas to the table, which can lead to new insights and approaches that might not have been possible with a more homogeneous team.

Various types of research can be considered collaborative. Some of the main types include participatory action research, community-based participatory research, and interdisciplinary research. Let’s explore them.

• Participatory action research involves researchers and community members working together to identify and address issues within the community. This type of research aims to empower the community and promote social change.
• Community-based participatory research involves community members and researchers working together to develop and conduct research that addresses the needs and concerns of the community. The community is an equal partner in the research process, and the ultimate goal is to improve the health and well-being of the community.
• Interdisciplinary research involves researchers from different disciplines working together to address a complex research question. This type of research allows for a more comprehensive understanding of the research problem and can lead to innovative solutions.

Collaborative research is a powerful approach that brings together individuals from diverse backgrounds to work towards a common goal. It promotes shared learning and innovation, ultimately leading to better outcomes than traditional research methods.

By combining the strengths of multiple perspectives, collaborative research creates a stronger foundation for the development of new ideas and solutions.

It’s essential to understand the different types of collaborative research and how they can contribute to advancing knowledge in various fields. With this understanding, we can begin to appreciate the value of collaborative research and its potential for creating positive change in the world.

Advantages & Disadvantages of Collaborative Research

One of the biggest advantages of collaborative research is that it allows businesses to tap into the expertise of researchers who have spent years studying a particular field. By working with experts in a particular field, businesses can gain a deeper understanding of the market and develop more effective strategies for success.

Another advantage of collaborative research is that it can help businesses stay ahead of the curve. By partnering with universities and other research institutions, businesses can gain early access to the latest research and technology. This can be a significant advantage in a rapidly changing market.

However, collaborative research is not without its challenges. For example, businesses and researchers may have different goals and priorities. Businesses are often focused on the bottom line, while researchers may be more concerned with the pursuit of knowledge. Additionally, different organizations may have different cultures and ways of working, which can lead to conflicts and misunderstandings.

Despite these challenges, collaborative research is a powerful tool that can drive innovation and change. By working together, businesses and researchers can create solutions that are more effective, efficient, and sustainable than those that either party could develop on their own.

Collaborative research is a critical tool for businesses and researchers in the field of market research. It allows for the creation of new ideas, technologies, and solutions that benefit society as a whole. With collaboration, we can bridge the gap between theory and practice and create a brighter future for all.

QuestionPro provides a platform where multiple researchers or team members can collaborate on a single survey or research project, share insights, and analyze data together in real time.

It offers various features such as customizable surveys, question branching, and skip logic that allows researchers to create complex surveys tailored to their research needs.

Join QuestionPro today for free and start conducting collaborative research with ease! Our platform offers a wide range of features and tools that will help you gather and analyze data, collaborate with your team members, and make informed decisions. Sign up now and take your research to the next level!

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Collaborative Research: Best Practices for Successful Partnerships

Collaborative research has been on the rise in the past decades. It holds particular significance in its potential to deal with complex research problems effectively. However, given the diverse group of people involved in a typical research project (across disciplines, institutions, or countries) and the varied goals and expectations that follow, the possibilities for challenges and difficulties are much more significant. Today, with the growing trend toward collaborative research projects , it is crucial for researchers to follow some basic guidelines that will help foster effective collaboration and lead to eventual success. The following section presents a discussion of the best practices that can be adopted for successful research partnerships.   

Table of Contents

Best practices for successful research partnerships  

Clear communication .

Clear, unambiguous, and regular communication and information sharing are crucial for successful research partnerships. This cannot be compromised as it can lead to confusion and misunderstanding. The criticality of effective communication becomes even more relevant in international collaborations. Experts suggest creating a schedule or a formal agreement that clearly outlines from the very start the roles and responsibilities of each collaborator, the timelines, authorship, intellectual property rights and other details pertaining to the research and study process.    

Further, team meetings are essential and must be organized regularly to ensure team members are aligned with the research goals and are able to provide updates on developments and challenges. This not only ensures that the research project stays on track but also lends a certain transparency and clarity to all collaborators. Also, creating a schedule or to-do list and updating it regularly ensures that the momentum of the project can be maintained. When establishing clear communication channels, it is essential that collaborators mutually decide on the frequency of communication, the agreeable method of communication (in person, via email or virtual communication), the point of contact, and the work-time cultures to be followed.     

Maintain a supportive environment

Cultivating mutual trust and respect is essential in making collaborative research projects work efficiently and productively. Where team members may be from different disciplines, institutions or regions depending on the type of collaboration, it is essential to leverage the diverse perspectives and skill sets that they bring to the table. Active listening, valuing diverse views, keeping an open mind, and encouraging constructive feedback are all needed to maintain a supportive environment in the  collaborative process.    

Foster an inclusive space for the team

For an effective research collaboration process, it is important to encourage interdisciplinary interactions and cross-pollination of ideas from the initial stages so that they can result in innovative, integrated, methodological, and conceptual frameworks. A culture of collaboration and knowledge sharing needs to be promoted to spark a healthy sharing of innovative ideas and concepts.    

Ensure effective project management

The creation of a project management framework and project plan is a helpful resource for effective collaborative research. Vagueness in roles and responsibilities or timelines can cause delays and hinder the progress of the research project. Hence, the project management framework should lay out the objectives, assign clear roles and responsibilities to each member, establish project deliverables and define clear timelines. These need to be discussed with all the team members at the planning stage itself so that everyone is aligned and agreeable to the expectations. These also need to be periodically reviewed so that necessary plan adjustments can be carried out, taking on board the views of the team members.    

Allocation and management of resources 

Equitable research partnerships need to be emphasized in collaborative research. Clearly defining research needs and allocating resources without disparities need to be ensured by both the team lead and funding agencies. In cooperative research, the presence and management of a wide variety of data is a challenge. Organizational mechanisms and measures need to be put in place to enable the sharing of such data with all the members and make select data accessible on public research sites. For efficient conduct of research, mechanisms for equipment usage by team members also need to be ensured.    

Addressing conflicts

Collaborative research can face numerous internal challenges and conflicts. For example, there may be strong disagreements among team members, or some members may feel that the project is not in line with the agreed goals and expectations, while some may feel the absence of clear communication. It is essential to be sensitive to these challenges and conflicts and address them proactively as they arise through open discussions and collaborative solutions. Wherever necessary, support from project mentors should also be enlisted.   

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5 Types of Research Collaboration

October 5, 2023

In a bygone era, nostalgically deemed “little science” researchers worked independently on projects that were only widely shared with others after completion. World War II, however, ushered in the age of “ big science ,” with a movement towards large-scale projects, often supported by outside funding, and conducted by teams of researchers.

Since then, these collaborative practices have continuously expanded alongside technology, global economics, and digital communication. Today, researchers work in diverse teams unbound by the limitations of geography, status, or even field of expertise.

Because contemporary research addresses complex global issues, sharing knowledge and resources through collaboration is vita l. By exploring the 5 main types of collaborative research, this article can help researchers prepare for developing these mutually rewarding partnerships.

1. Collaboration within an academic institution

This category includes various configurations of faculty, staff, administrators, and students who will collaborate on research projects. The situation may be as informal as senior students helping novices navigate the research process, or as formal as tenured faculty offering unique skills to complicated research questions.

While these teams may form within a single department, they develop between departments and across disciplines. One advantage of partnering within an institution is the ease of communication. It allows members to meet face to face regularly, review their progress, and make adjustments in real time.

2. Collaboration with other academic institutions

Collaboration between academic institutions typically forms when a Primary Investigator invites Junior researchers to help carry out various components in the research methods of an already funded project. Collaboration between institutions creates mutual benefits through the sharing of often expensive and limited resources, like specialized equipment and broader study participants.  

For Senior researchers, these partnerships often offer fortuitous insights and unique viewpoints that enrich the research process and ultimately improve the project’s outcomes. On the other hand, Junior researchers gain valuable experience, expand their professional network, and improve their credibility through association with an established research program.

3. Collaboration with a government entity

When policy makers and researchers share a common concern or question, collaboration can significantly improve the progression towards an outcome beneficial to society. The form and extent of these partnerships depends on both the contributions and the requirements of each participant.

Government agencies may act as financial collaborators by offering resources and funding opportunities for research projects related to specific interests and targeted goals. In other instances, they may solicit support from research experts to address a definitive issue, like COVID-19. 

While governmental organizations often post research collaboration opportunities, the possibilities are reciprocal. Researchers may also contact relevant agencies to submit proposals requesting cooperation on a project.

4. Collaboration with private industry

Rapidly changing businesses that thrive on innovation are pushing the scope and influence of collaboration between academic researchers and the private sector. In exchange for resources and visibility, researchers provide expertise in the development of new products and technologies.

Partnerships with academic researchers can further invigorate companies, extricating them from stagnant best practices by inciting continuous improvement. Overall, the skills and knowledge of both groups are essential to the transition from research to development of the advancements in products, methods, and services that drive society forward. 

5. Collaboration with international researchers

As globalization continues to alter the ways that people, organizations, and nations interact, the need for collaboration between international researchers and institutions grows. By broadening the cultural perspectives and applications of a research project, these partnerships increase the value of both the process and its outcomes.

Sometimes connections made during global conferences are nurtured into collaborative efforts. Students and junior researchers may forge relationships through study abroad and exchange programs. And, other times, researchers who share common goals and yet are separated by political borders and national objectives can find a common ground through collaboration.

Communication in collaboration

The success of every type of research collaboration hinges on the quality of communication between team members . While the forms of communication seem to expand daily, not all are appropriate or even plausible in every situation.

Because face to face interactions typically produce rich and meaningful results in real time, they are consistently worthwhile. Other modes of communication like phones, mail, digital platforms, and video conferencing should be used to supplement, not replace, in person meetings when collaborators are in close proximity to one another.

When differences in time and distance prevent face to face communication, collaborators must create synergy by updating one another on progress and setbacks, and sharing amended interpretations and objectives. The best way to accomplish these goals is by establishing several formal and informal contact options from the beginning with regularly scheduled meetings.

Bottom line

In this interconnected world, researchers must recognize the power of collaboration in the advancement of scientific knowledge and the discovery of global solutions. Through these collaborations, researchers break down geographical barriers, disciplinary boundaries, and institutional limitations to form diverse teams that work together to address complex research questions. 

Effective communication stands as the cornerstone of success through each step of the collaborative process, from initial team building to post-publication. While technology enables a range of communication methods, face-to-face interactions remain crucial for meaningful and rich results.

Through mutually rewarding partnerships, researchers can pave the way for the realization of innovations that positively impact humanity. By understanding the types of research collaboration, scientific knowledge will undoubtedly become more diverse, shaping an increasingly democratic and equitable world.

About the author

Charla Viera, MS

Charla Viera graduated from The University of Washington with a BA in Urban Studies and a BA in Environmental Studies. Her undergraduate research included household energy consumption and practical greywater systems. She later earned an MS in Library and Information Science from Texas Woman's University. Her graduate thesis focused on the role of libraries as community anchors in rural Texas communities.

Jonny Rhein

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5 ways that collaboration can further your research and your career

Author: guest contributor.

Collaborative research has become more prevalent globally over the past 50 years and researchers are increasingly required to work across disciplines, institutions and borders. With the goal of helping researchers make the most of these collaborations,  Nature Masterclasses  has launched a new online course called " Effective Collaboration in Research ." Read on for more information about the course and to learn how collaborating efficiently can help advance your research and your career.

Collaborative projects are inevitably associated with challenges that you might not experience with an individual research project. However, they can also offer many benefits. Here are just some of the ways in which collaborations can benefit your research and your career. 

• Maximise outputs. By combining expertise and resources you can answer bigger and more complex scientific questions and expand the breadth of your research. 
• Maximise impact. Research shows a positive correlation between collaborative papers and a high level of citations. For example, in one analysis of 28 million papers from the humanities and the natural, medical, and social sciences published between 1900 and 2011, papers with more authors received more citations, particularly if the authors were from different institutions 1 .
• Attract funding. Generating outputs that have an impact on policy, practice, industry, or the general public can increase your chances of getting funded. In addition, some funding bodies now give priority to international and industry-academia collaborations. For example, the EU Commission’s Horizon 2020 program, which offered nearly 80 billion Euros of funding between 2014 and 2020 for research projects tackling societal challenges, prioritized collaborative projects.
• Expand your network. Working collaboratively can help you meet potential future employers, mentors, and collaborators.
• Embrace the new. Collaborations are opportunities to learn new skills, make new friends, gain a new perspective, and join stimulating discussions and with experts in your field or complementary fields.

To help researchers maximise the benefits of collaborating, Nature Masterclasses has launched a new online course called " Effective Collaboration in Research ." The 8-hour course was developed with a panel of experts of researchers from across the international scientific community (academic and industry), Nature Research Editors, funding bodies and creators of collaborative tools for researchers—all of whom have extensive experience and expertise in conducting, publishing and funding collaborative research. 

The course includes a 1-hour free sample , enabling researchers to try the course for free after registering on Nature Masterclasses . Access to the full course requires a subscription; subscriptions are available to labs, departments and institutions. 

Nature Masterclasses is a Springer Nature product providing professional development training to researchers, via online courses and face-to-face workshops.

Claire Hodge is a Senior Marketing Manager at Nature Research. She is a member of the Researcher Services team, which provides services such as Nature Research Academies , Nature Research Editing Service and Nature Masterclasses to build the skills, confidence and careers of researchers.

Guest Contributors include Springer Nature staff and authors, industry experts, society partners, and many others. If you are interested in being a Guest Contributor, please contact us via email: [email protected] .

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• Indian J Pharmacol
• v.51(3); May-Jun 2019

Collaborative research in modern era: Need and challenges

Seema bansal.

Department of Pharmacology, PGIMER, Chandigarh, India

Saniya Mahendiratta

Subodh kumar, phulen sarma, ajay prakash, bikash medhi.

Most critically important scientific issues or innovative technologies can often be solved by working together of team of researchers from different backgrounds. The merging of different fields can make possible achieving of incredible goals. Collaborative research, therefore, can be defined as research involving coordination between the researchers, institutions, organizations, and/or communities. This cooperation can bring distinct expertise to a project. Collaboration can be classified as voluntary, consortia, federation, affiliation, and merger and can occur at five different levels: within disciplinary, interdisciplinary, multi-disciplinary, trans-disciplinary or national vs international. Collaborative research has the capabilities for exchanging ideas across disciplines, learning new skills, access to funding, higher quality of results, radical benefits, and personal factors such as fun and pleasure.

Need of Collaborative Research

Collaboration encourages the establishment of effective communication and partnerships and also offers equal opportunities among the team members. It honors and respects each member's individual and organizational style. Collaboration also increases the ethical conduct maintaining honesty, integrity, justice, transparency, and confidentiality.

Why Collaboration Required

Increased collaborations can save considerable time and money, and most often, breakthrough research comes through collaborative research rather than by adhering to tried and true methods. Further legislation, industry, and academia encouraged the collaboration between private sector and academia (e.g., the Bayh–Dole Patent Reform Act of 1980 is the United States legislation which allowed universities to negotiate patent rights with industrial partners).

Elements of Collaboration

• Collaboration establishes channels for open communication where participants need to be encouraged to take opportunities for the renewal of the older systems
• Engaging all partners and others where they should provide feedback and engage in self-reflection
• There should be an identification of stakeholders which can serve as the feedback loop as it will help better to understand cause and effect
• Collaboration also defines the clarity of roles and responsibilities
• To establish a professional environment and to respect different cultures of different organizations.

Various Forms of Collaborative Research

Mentor–mentee.

A mentor–mentee relationship is very crucial as the challenges experienced by the mentor will be faced by the mentees and it will be the duty of the current scientists to mentor the next generation of scientists. The mentor is responsible for holding regular meetings with mentees and to make sure that they are familiar with academic and nonacademic policies.

Collaborative research within disciplinary, interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and transdisciplinary

There are different kinds of collaboration such as intradisciplinary (team of researcher within the same department), interdisciplinary (team of researcher of different departments but different background), multidisciplinary (team of researcher of different background), or transdisciplinary (involvement of people from outside academia into the research process) and everyone aspire for common demands such as making of operational plans, communication between different research groups, sharing of credit and money, holding frequent meetings, and encouraging open communications.

Miscommunications can also be caused by working among different research disciplines and can be due to different understandings about science, vocabulary, or methods. Each and every working researcher has their own perspective of working, for example, some prefer verbal agreements and some consider written contracts. On the other hand, few are in favor of publishing every new finding and others prefer a single large publication after compilation of whole data.[ 1 ]

Challenges of collaboration

Collaborations can be a frequent source of problems. This can be due to many reasons such as sharing of credit and responsibility after joining of more than two people for a common purpose. Sometimes, collaborations do not get initiated due to unwillingness of sharing or working together. Sometimes, collaborations are often spoiled because of misunderstandings among the participants due to disagreement about what and when to publish and also due to discontent with a slow collaborator.

Global contribution of Indian scientists in research

According to Research Trends (2014), among the top 20 countries, on the basis of research output, India holds the position on the 12 th place, China on the 5 th place, Russia on the 10 th place, and Brazil on the 18 th place. On the contrary, ranking based on citations, India comes in the 19 th place, China in the 13 th place, Russia in the 17 th place, and Brazil in the 23 rd place. Among the Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) countries, in terms of total number of documents produced, China leads the research output, whereas India and South Africa dominate depending on citation per document. It is also seen that South Africa is involved in a number of international collaborations, followed by Russia, Brazil, India, and China. The USA and some European countries such as the UK, Germany, France, and Italy seem to have considerable collaborations among the BRICS nation, but very little partnership is realized. Of these, India and China are active participating nations, whereas Russia and Brazil do not seem to be very enthusiastic.[ 2 ]

Even according to comparison made by the research group, India takes the lead in terms of research quality even if China produces more number of papers than India. This is on the basis of citations per article (CPA) which was an average of 2.71 between 2006 and 2010 while that for China was 2.21. It is evident that India's CPA is far below than that of the US, i.e., 6.45; however, it is shown that it is tremendously improved for India in the past 5 years. This is due to major contribution in the field of chemistry to the scientific society which is around 38% and was relatively low in health sciences (3.5%).[ 3 ]

Impact of Indian collaborative research globally

The contribution of India toward research globally is quite influential and hence has achieved the 6 th rank for publication of research papers. This is growing at an annual rate of 14% and at global level at an average of 4%. India is actively involved in bilateral science and technology agreements with over 40 countries and has also participated in global megaprojects such as CERN, the Thirty Meter Telescope International Observatory, and Gates Grand Challenges. India also supports three science and technology centers: independent organizations established under intergovernmental bilateral agreements with France, Germany, and the USA. Moreover, the government contributes to international networks such as the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, the European Molecular Biology Organization, and the Human Frontier Science Program.

Challenges of Collaborative Research in India

Individual challenges.

There is a scarcity of competent researchers in India. Most of the researches going on in our country are not methodologically sound. As far as scholarship is considered, it is an individualized endeavor, and academic frameworks for recognition, rewards, and promotions are supposed at individual level. For the promotion and tenure process, single-authored publications are given more credit as compared to collaborative work. Intellectual property rights are the central issue and occur in various categories of members in collaborative research.

Institutional challenges

This is because of differences in different approaches among the collaborating partners. For example, if a collaboration occurs between industry and institutional level, discrepancies do occur between objectives, different hypothesis, cultural differences, and issues with technology.

Challenges regarding funds

The most important challenge is less funds granted for research to universities as compared to small elite research institutions. This leads to less focus on research and more on teaching by the universities resulting in separation of education and research. Due to funding restrictions, most of the significant work of Indian research is in theoretical domain. For example, a collaborative project was undertaken by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), in which a developmental study was conducted taking 30 HIV-positive patients and 18 HIV-related service providers for understanding of sexual risk-taking HIV-related disclosure and other behavioral patterns among HIV-positive individuals in Baroda, Gujarat. Patel et al .[ 4 ] shared that it took roughly 1½ years by the Institutional Review Board at Medical College of Baroda which was already reviewed by NIH, University of North Carolina, and ICMR, and as per the guidelines of ICMR, the compensation was also reduced to 500/day from 1000.

Systematic challenges

In India, the success of the scientists is prioritized by becoming an administrative head in research institutions rather than advancing research. Furthermore, the prevalence of ineptitude among the spectrum has made incompetent scientists to strengthen their weakness.

There is a culture of elitism in our Indian laboratories, where the manual work is done by laboratory assistants and scientists mostly just command orders.[ 5 ]

After thorough understanding of collaboration, it can be assumed that language, financial commitment, inadequate regulatory frameworks, and diverse interests are among the potential challenges in collaborative research. This can be successful if the collaborators respect each other and without involving their ego and also willing to give and take constructive criticism without being defensive. To conclude, the results of these collaborations will not only be seen in specific work done at the time of collaboration but also during the professional lifetimes of scholarship and publication.

• Open access
• Published: 20 January 2021

What makes a ‘successful’ collaborative research project between public health practitioners and academics? A mixed-methods review of funding applications submitted to a local intervention evaluation scheme

• Peter van der Graaf   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-2466-2792 1 ,
• Lindsay Blank 2 ,
• Eleanor Holding 2 &
• Elizabeth Goyder 2  

Health Research Policy and Systems volume  19 , Article number:  9 ( 2021 ) Cite this article

5062 Accesses

5 Citations

14 Altmetric

Metrics details

The national Public Health Practice Evaluation Scheme (PHPES) is a response-mode funded evaluation programme operated by the National Institute for Health Research School for Public Health Research (NIHR SPHR). The scheme enables public health professionals to work in partnership with SPHR researchers to conduct rigorous evaluations of their interventions. Our evaluation reviewed the learning from the first five years of PHPES (2013–2017) and how this was used to implement a revised scheme within the School.

We conducted a rapid review of applications and reports from 81 PHPES projects and sampled eight projects (including unfunded) to interview one researcher and one practitioner involved in each sampled project ( n  = 16) in order to identify factors that influence success of applications and effective delivery and dissemination of evaluations. Findings from the review and interviews were tested in an online survey with practitioners (applicants), researchers (principal investigators [PIs]) and PHPES panel members ( n  = 19) to explore the relative importance of these factors. Findings from the survey were synthesised and discussed for implications at a national workshop with wider stakeholders, including public members ( n  = 20).

Strengths : PHPES provides much needed resources for evaluation which often are not available locally, and produces useful evidence to understand where a programme is not delivering, which can be used to formatively develop interventions. Weaknesses : Objectives of PHPES were too narrowly focused on (cost-)effectiveness of interventions, while practitioners also valued implementation studies and process evaluations. Opportunities : PHPES provided opportunities for novel/promising but less developed ideas. More funded time to develop a protocol and ensure feasibility of the intervention prior to application could increase intervention delivery success rates. Threats : There can be tensions between researchers and practitioners, for example, on the need to show the 'success’ of the intervention, on the use of existing research evidence, and the importance of generalisability of findings and of generating peer-reviewed publications.

Conclusions

The success of collaborative research projects between public health practitioners (PHP) and researchers can be improved by funders being mindful of tensions related to (1) the scope of collaborations, (2) local versus national impact, and (3) increasing inequalities in access to funding. Our study and comparisons with related funding schemes demonstrate how these tensions can be successfully resolved.

Peer Review reports

Collaborative research projects between public health practitioners (PHP) and researchers are encouraged to increase the use of evidence in practice and decision-making. However, little is known about how to make collaborative research projects successful.

Previous research consistently suggests that research evidence is more likely to be used if users are engaged with researchers in defining the purpose and design of new research [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 ]. In particular, ‘sustained interactivity’ between researchers, policymakers and practitioners to support ongoing exchange, opportunities for personal two-way communication and partnership approaches is seen as important for making these partnerships work [ 5 , 9 ].

Interpersonal trust and ongoing communication channels have been identified as essential to the process of developing close collaboration between research producers and users [ 10 ]. Long-term commitments from, and sustainable funding for, research is required to build these relationships over time [ 2 ]. In contrast, short-term initiatives are unlikely to work given the likely pace of organisational change and scale of the challenges facing academia and local government.

We have previously identified the need for an increased mutual awareness of the structures and challenges under which PHPs and researchers work [ 11 ]. Opportunities for frequent and meaningful engagement between PHPs and researchers can help to overcome barriers to co-production of evidence. Collaborative models, such as the use of researchers embedded in practice, might facilitate this; however, flexible research funding schemes are needed to support these models.

The difficulties for collaborative research have been well documented in studies of knowledge transfer and knowledge exchange in health services [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 5 , 12 ]. These studies consistently demonstrates that there is no single consistent definition of what constitutes ‘evidence’. This ambiguity results in inconsistencies in terms of what is used and valued as research between PHPs and academics. Particularly in local authorities, the use of research and evidence is highly political, with prevailing ideologies shaping the way evidence is identified, interpreted and considered at a local level [ 13 , 14 ]. Linked to alignment with political ideologies, the timing of research is a key challenge for academics [ 15 ]. Research must be timely to fit with the notion of being able to influence and impact upon a specific ‘policy window’ and for evidence to be available when policymakers are likely to be receptive [ 16 ].

Experiences from various Collaborations for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care (England) to develop collaborative research in health demonstrate that these issues are persistent and require constant alignment of relationships, values, structures and processes for collaboration, with a need for developing a shared 'collaborative' identity and new communities within existing networks that provide bridges across organisational boundaries [ 17 , 18 ].

These experiences also suggest an ongoing need for dedicated funding programmes and spaces for researchers and PHPs to work together to generate research findings of greater utility to public health practice. Several research organisations in England have started to implement new services and programmes to create such opportunities.

One example is the Public Health Practitioner Evaluation Scheme (PHPES) run by the National Institute for Health Research School for Public Health Research (NIHR SPHR). PHPES [ 19 ] is a national, competitive scheme that offers PHPs support to evaluate local interventions in collaboration with SPHR researchers. The scheme was introduced in 2013 by SPHR to give access to researchers in its member organisations, which comprise eight leading public health research centres in England. PHPES aims to produce high-quality evidence needed by PHPs to improve population health and reduce health inequalities. PHPs can apply to the scheme for SPHR members to evaluate their local public health interventions. The scheme particularly focuses on local, rather than national, public health initiatives that have not been the subject of previous robust evaluations but which have potential applicability elsewhere and have secured operational funding for the research period.

No research exists to date on the evaluation of this scheme, and any assessment of the 'success’ of the scheme as a whole, or of individual projects, is complicated by the different priorities of stakeholders. To researchers, a successful proposal may be one that is funded; a successful project for researchers may be one that generates peer-reviewed journal papers or an impact case study, while a successful evaluation for many stakeholders is one that ‘proves’ a programme or intervention works. There might be additional disagreement between stakeholders as to whether generating evidence that an intervention does not achieve the intended outcomes or that suggests an intervention should be discontinued might equally constitute a successful evaluation. Clarifying from the start of collaborative applications what the shared expectations about ‘success’ are could therefore be crucial in achieving success from their different perspectives.

This paper reports on the evaluation of the NIHR SPHR PHPES and considers what makes collaborative research applications successful, or not, in the eyes of different stakeholders. We identify three tensions between practitioners and researchers that need to be resolved to maximise the potential for generating an impact on public health through these partnerships.

The study consisted of four work packages with the overall purpose of making recommendations to the SPHR executive on the scope and implementation of a future responsive research fund:

A rapid review of applications and reports from PHPES projects (2013–2017).

Detailed review of applications and reports of a sample of eight projects (including funded and unfunded projects), and semi-structured telephone interviews with at least one researcher and one practitioner involved in each sampled application/project.

Online survey of practitioners (applicants), researchers (principal investigators [PIs]) and PHPES panel members (academic, practitioner and lay reviewers).

National workshops with a wide range of PHPES stakeholders (including lay representatives/community members and Public Health England [PHE]).

The research was conducted over a 9-month period between April and December 2019. The four work packages are discussed in more detail below. The findings from each work package informed the design of the data collection tools in the next work package to maximise data integration and facilitate an iterative research design.

Work package 1: rapid review of all 81 applications and the project reports from 14 funded projects (April–June 2018)

The purpose of the review was to understand the scope of applications and more specifically to identify their original objectives in relation to generating generalisable findings and their dissemination/implementation. The review aimed to identify any common factors that are associated with (i) a successful application, (ii) an effectively delivered project and (iii) evidence of early impact (see Additional file 1 : File 1 for the data extraction template used in the document analysis).

Work package 2: individual in-depth interviews (mainly via telephone/Skype) (July–August 2018)

We sampled eight varied projects (from all applications potentially including funded and unfunded projects). The sampling frame/selection criteria were developed based on the review of documentation including applications and project reports. We selected six successful and two unsuccessful applications with representation from each SPHR members, aiming for a spread across topics and SPHR programmes. We interviewed one researcher and one practitioner involved in each sampled application/project. The lead researcher for each application was contacted first and, when they agreed to be interviewed, was asked for the contact details of their key practice partner, who was then approached for interview. In total, 34 researchers and practitioners were approached for interview; 14 people did not respond to the invitation and reminders (7 practitioners and 7 researchers), three people (2 academics and 1 practitioner) were not available for interviews during the fieldwork period, and two people had left the organisation they were working for at the time of their PHPES project and could not be reached.

Topic guides for practitioners and researchers (see Additional file 1 : Files 2 and 3) included factors that make for a successful application, potential tensions between responsiveness and generalisability, and mechanisms for impact on policy and practice. Interviews were audiotaped and transcribed and a thematic analysis undertaken using NVivo software. To ensure we captured the breadth of relevant views on the programme, we also shared these initial findings and sought views from academic colleagues at Imperial College London, who were not part of the SPHR at that time, and from the chair and members of the PHPES panel which reviewed applications.

Telephone interviews lasted between 30 and 75 min, with an average of about 45 min. All interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Transcripts were coded and analysed thematically using a coding framework [ 20 ] informed by the interview schedule and themes drawn from published literature. Verbatim quotes from participants are included to illustrate the main themes identified.

Work package 3: online survey of all applicants and their Local  Authority (LA) colleagues not involved in applications, PHPES researchers, PHPES reviewers and SPHR executive members (September–October 2018)

The online survey was developed based on work package (WP) 1 and 2 findings; it aimed to elicit views on the factors that influence applications/effective delivery/dissemination of evaluations and impact on policy and practice. Additional questions collected information on future research needs and priorities. The survey was modelled on a template developed for another SPHR evaluation project which reviewed public involvement in the first five years of the School [ 21 ]. The project’s public advisers contributed to the development of the survey, which also drew on interviews with SPHR researchers and members of the public involved in research. The template was adapted for use in this study to reflect the themes emerging from the interviews (see Additional file 1 : File 4).

The online survey was circulated widely among SPHR members, including the executive group, advisory board and administrators in each member organisation, with a request to cascade to their policy and practice partners and patient and public involvement (PPI) panels to ensure that a range of additional perspectives on the issues identified in the interviews was included and to identify any additional issues arising from projects not sampled. In spite of wide circulation of the email invitation and an email reminder two weeks before the closing date of the survey, only 19 completed questionnaires were returned. Given that the circulation included a large number of stakeholders (estimated at around 100–200), the survey response rate was 10–20% at most. Because of the low response rate and likely response bias, with responses more likely from those with the most experience with the programme, responses cannot be interpreted as reflecting overall views of stakeholders. The responses do however provide useful insight into the views of a wider range of stakeholders, in addition to the evidence from those directly involved in developing proposals and delivering projects.

Work package 4: exploring the implications of the study findings (September 2018)

Informed by findings from the first two work packages, a national workshop was organised in Sheffield to which a range of PHPES stakeholders (including lay representatives/community members/public health practitioners and other LA colleagues/PHE) were invited to discuss the implications of the findings and how they might inform a future responsive funding scheme. Through a series of interactive discussions, closely facilitated by the research team, participants were invited to reflect on future selection criteria, such as contributions to major public health problems, potential for impact and scalability, and assessment of evaluability, and on suggestions for co-producing knowledge within PHPES projects and measuring their impact on policy and practice (see Additional file 1 : File 5 for the programme of the national workshop).

The Public Health Practice Evaluation Scheme (PHPES) was conceived as a response mode-funded evaluation programme. Fourteen PHPES projects were supported during the first five years of the SPHR’s work, covering a wide range of topics, types of public health programmes, and evaluation designs and methods. During the first SPHR programme, between 2013 and 2017, there were 81 applications made to the PHPES, from which the 14 funded evaluations were selected by a national panel. All funded projects were delivered, although a number were delayed or needed to adapt their methods for practical reasons, including changes in the delivery of the evaluated interventions. Evidence of early impact on local practices and policy was identified in some project reports. The success rate of applications and the sampling of projects across work packages is summarised in Table 1 below. Although it is inevitably difficult to ascribe causality, and there is often a lack of specific evidence in Local Authority (LA) policy or commissioning documents, there was evidence of policy changes or roll-out of programmes both during and after evaluations. For example, the Sheffield Housing+ programme addressed operational issues identified by the evaluation and the roll-out of the Better Care Fund’s St Ives Falls Prevention Pilot in Cambridgeshire, which also happened during the pilot evaluation.

Document analysis

The initial analysis of 81 PHPES applications/projects for the document review illustrated a wide range of projects but also highlighted gaps in the collection of data about projects (such as lack of details on partners, funding and theme). Despite emphasis in the guidelines on the importance of prior contact with SPHR partners, none of the applications for funded projects provided details about support received from SPHR members, and the majority of applications did not record prior contact with SPHR researchers before submission.

Most proposals were evaluations of interventions that were newly established (24 out of 44 for which data were available). ‘Changing Behaviour’ was the most popular theme for applications (23 out of 47), with ‘Identifying cost-effective population health services’ being the least popular (7 out of 48). Themes were based on existing research programmes and cross-cutting themes with SPHR [ 21 ]. All SPHR members were listed as partners on applications, with Sheffield being the most prolific (8/43) and Cambridge and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine being the least involved, with one application each. The most common topics of applications related to obesity, including diet, weight and physical activity (15 in total), with the majority focused on adults or whole populations.

The findings of the document analysis informed the interview schedules for practitioners and researchers, as described in the second work package above.

Overall, the interview findings have been framed as a 'SWOT’ (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis of the PHPES. This framework was chosen as it provided a strategic tool for organising the themes from the analysis interview data, which facilitated the development of actionable recommendations for the SPHR Executive Board for the relaunch of the scheme (see ' Discussion ’ section). We will discuss each element in turn below.

Strengths : PHPES provides much needed resources for evaluation which often are not available locally, and produces useful evidence to understand where a programme is not delivering, which can be used to formatively develop interventions.

'Because we’re under such a lot of pressure, I think, in terms of how you allocate your resources and who’s doing what to their capacity, or do you lose posts. Having this piece of research strengthens your case to say that, look, this piece of public health involvement enlightens things, it’s well-evidenced and we should leave it alone rather than trying to mess with it and to say that it’s not a priority.’ (Practitioner, funded project)

Practitioners benefit from academics with specific knowledge within their field, and relationships between practice and academia are strengthened.

'It was not only towards the end of the project, but it was throughout the project that we were really into the intelligence of how the programme should be run. And not the programme that we are evaluating, but what to learn from [similar programmes] and how they should be run and what commissioners should think about when they are commissioning new programmes, if you like…. So, I think that has had a major impact into their decisions to fund the programmes in future.’ (Academic, funded project)

We found evidence in our evaluation that PHPES had generated some valuable case studies/exemplars of effective local evaluations with significant impact. In this study we did not set out to measure impact, and therefore we were dependent on what project teams reported (see examples provided above of the Sheffield Housing+ programme and the St Ives Falls Prevention Pilot in Cambridgeshire). However, all delivered projects identified local impact in their project reports.

Weaknesses : There may be a need to widen the objectives of PHPES beyond (cost-)effectiveness of interventions to address the needs of practitioners, such as evaluations focusing on the implementation of programmes. Currently, the scheme only funds evaluation of the effectiveness of interventions, while practitioners expressed a need for process evaluations of interventions that are currently being implemented and support in adapting and implementing evidence-based interventions in their local context.

'When the original bid went in, SPHR really wanted us to do a randomised trial and methodology, and we argued quite vociferously that that wasn’t appropriate. But I think we were always trying to, trying to keep an eye on heeding what SPHR might be looking for from a methodology point of view and what was needed practically in the project.’ (Practitioner, funded project)

More flexibility, for example around start and end dates to take into consideration any delays in the roll-out of the intervention, setting up of the project or any contractual issues within the practitioner institution, was also requested by practitioners and academics to account for this widening scope.

'The thing I still think should, and hopefully will, happen in next round is, in the end, it wasn’t an evaluation. Sorry, there wasn’t an intervention to evaluate. Because there was nobody recruited. And there are other projects that I know that just haven’t done what they are supposed to, because of delays, for example. Which is, in a way, a similar problem…. So, I think the main, big learning from this particular project is that rather than submitting a full evaluation thing and having set times on which you have to start, on which you have to do things, either it has to be more flexible, depending on what happens in practice.’ (Academic, funded project)

The need for flexibility relates to differences in timescales between academic research and public health decision-making, with specific ‘windows of opportunity’ [ 16 ] for inputting evidence that often do not align with the rigour of the research process, as emphasised in the literature [ 15 ].

Finally, there was a request for more feedback on unfunded projects. Even if applications to the scheme were unsuccessful, practitioners and academics valued feedback on their proposals to improve future submissions and utilise the academic expertise from reviewers to improve their monitoring and self-evaluation of interventions.

'If I know there is more transparent feedback on learning and a proper guideline that comes with the proposal, which I think is quite important, and maybe a scoring rate so when we apply, we know exactly what we need to meet and where we fail to meet that, because that’s what the MRC (Medical Research  Council)  does, they score and they explain to you where you’re scoring lower and higher. And it will be time-consuming for the funders, but I hope they understand it’s important for people who spend months. Especially if you go to the second phase, maybe it’s going to be too much for them if they have many applications in the first round, but after the second round it’s important to get more precise feedback, I think.’ (Academic, unfunded project)

We found no specific information in guidance documents provided by SPHR to PHPES on feedback, which might be illustrative of a lack of attention to feedback mechanisms in the development of the scheme. However, previous studies have highlighted that these mechanisms are a foundation stone for collaborative research and can help to maintain relationships between PHPs and academic research. Where these connections were lacking, this resulted in a focus on knowledge production and transfer, rather than co-production [ 17 ].

Opportunities : Better-developed interventions were more likely to be funded. Therefore, the scheme could encourage novel/promising but less developed ideas. To support these ideas, funded time to develop a protocol and ensure feasibility of the intervention prior to application could increase intervention delivery success rates.

'I think the short form was great to get things going, and identify promising ideas, but actually then you need 6 months to write a proper protocol. And if we’d had that time, you’d realise that all the things that this agency, this intervention, were promising, actually weren’t there.’ (Academic, funded project)

Participants were in favour of a two-stage application process to select the most promising and novel ideas.

'It is the old-style R&D [research and development], you know? We are reinventing how NIHR started. But we’ve got to remember why it stopped, which was that a lot of money was wasted on things that weren’t any good. So we’ve got to have a bit of a more critical evaluation and have a two-stage process whereby we can sort of knock on the head things which aren’t going to be any good.’ (Academic, funded project)

Participants also identified potential for working with regional public health research hubs in collaboration with Public Health England and the National Institute for Health Research, either face-to-face, for instance through workshops, or online through phinder, a digital portal that connects public health practice and research, to advertise ideas for research collaborations.

Threats : In the interviews, some participants expressed concerns that there may be a risk of increasing inequalities, as applications clustered around SPHR partner institutions.

'So I think there’s a danger—dare I even mention equality?—as to those boroughs that have invested in their public health team…they will benefit from PHPES [...] And you will know that in some public health departments they have one consultant. It’s like, why, when other public health departments have maybe four consultants… So, that sort of variation means that for the smaller departments it is quite difficult, if they’re fire-fighting, to have the time and the energy and the headspace to even think about academic work. And if you can’t think about academic work, then the whole bit about… my earlier bit about improving practice and improving what we do locally, you don’t get as much of an opportunity.’ (Practitioner, funded project)

Some researchers feel there may be pressure of practitioners’ organisations to show 'success’ of the intervention. There can be tensions between researchers and practitioners, for example on the use of existing research evidence and the importance of generalisability of findings and of generating peer-reviewed publications.

'It’s a bit about a culture clash between the world of academia and public health practice in many ways. So some of it is a bit clichéd in about timescales and academic purity, value, pragmatism and all that, so there’s a bit of battle in there… And so colleagues at [this LA] who are living and breathing delivery of the programme day to day, I think really struggled working with the academics. Because whilst they were absolutely up for the notion of having an independent robust academic evaluation of the programme done, they were also deeply anxious about what it would say to ensure that, obviously wanting it to clearly show the positive impact of the programme, I guess, to be honest.’ (Practitioner, funded project)

In sum, our SWOT analysis indicates that the PHPES scheme provides much needed resources for evaluation, with practitioners benefitting from academics with specific knowledge within their field. However, participants criticised the limited scope of the scheme (cost-effectiveness of well-established intervention) and identified opportunities for early engagement and support for PHP and academics, with a wider and more flexible focus that would also help to address threats of unequal access to support from SPHR centres. These interview findings were used to generate specific questions for the online survey and were shared at the national workshop held on 19 September.

Online survey

The online survey was completed by 19 people before the closing date of 1st October. Eight respondents (42%) had been previously involved in PHPES. Both practitioners (4) and researchers (9) engaged in the first and second phases of SPHR completed the survey. Researchers were linked to various member organisations, including the Universities of Bristol, Exeter and Sheffield, University College London (UCL), the LiLaC collaboration between the Universities of Liverpool and Lancaster, and the Fuse [Centre for Translational Research in Public Health] collaboration.

Respondents thought that meetings between practice partners and academics prior to developing PHPES applications would most likely increase the chances of successful research collaborations. These meetings could help to clarify expectations about the contributions of each partner in the project and what to do when these expectations were not met (conflict resolution). Giving practitioners an active role in the research process would also make collaborations more likely and successful. These factors were mirrored in the responses to the question of what makes collaborative research more unlikely, with no engagement between practitioners and researchers prior to submission, lack of support from academics and no active involvement from practitioners in the research process deemed as reducing the likelihood of successful collaborations. In addition, the evaluation of interventions that were still under development or implemented only recently were judged to impact negatively on the success of PHPES projects (see Table 2 ).

Therefore, the top three priorities emerging from the survey centred on facilitating mutual understanding of expectations by encouraging practitioners and academics to meet up before submitting proposals, and providing practitioners with support from member organisations to work up their ideas into feasible projects on sufficiently established public health practices (Fig.  1 ). Most respondents agreed that dedicated support from an SPHR member was essential to developing ideas into feasible submissions. The strongest disagreement focused on whether only practitioners should be allowed to submit ideas to PHPES, with almost all respondents agreeing that researchers should also be able to present their suggestions for research.

Priorities for collaborative research between PHPs and academics ( n  = 19)

National workshop

The results of the online survey were verified and expanded upon in the national workshop. The workshop discussions focused on three questions around the key objectives, scope and scale of PHPES.

Key objective : Participants recommended a balance in funded projects that generated both local and generalisable knowledge. Transferability of knowledge was suggested as a key selection criterion for future projects.

Scope: Expand the focus beyond effectiveness of intervention studies to include implementation research and qualitative process evaluations, but linked to the new SPHR themes to identify available expertise within member organisations.

Scale : Fund a mix of large-scale (comparative) projects and small-scale projects in favour of a larger number of small-scale projects to ensure good spread of projects across regions and member organisations.

In this paper we reviewed the learning from PHPES (2013–2017) and use this to develop recommendations for a revised scheme within the current SPHR programme (2017–2022). We frame our discussion of the study findings in the wider context of similar funding schemes for which the lessons learnt from this evaluation are also relevant.

Key findings: factors making applications more successful

The combined findings from the document analysis, interviews and online survey and workshop suggest that the PHPES is valued by both practitioners and researchers. However, participants criticised the limited scope of the scheme (cost-effectiveness of well-established intervention) and identified opportunities for early engagement and support for PHP from academics, with a wider and more flexible focus that would also help to address threats of unequal access to support from SPHR centres.

Our evaluation of PHPES highlights that the success of collaborative research projects between public health practitioners (PHP) and researchers can be improved by organising regional development workshops to explore the feasibility of ideas and clarify expectations; providing variable levels of funding to projects at different stages of development, including smaller scoping studies; and by dedicating more resources for disseminating findings across the PHP community nationally, as well as to practice partners involved in the projects locally.

Three tensions in collaborative research projects

Our study also indicates that collaborative research projects can increase tensions between practitioners and researchers. We discuss three tensions below, related to (1) the scope of collaborations, (2) local versus national impact and (3) increasing inequalities in access to funding.

Scope of collaborations

Applications were more successful if they evaluated the (cost-)effectiveness of more developed interventions, while evaluation of more novel but less well-established interventions were less likely to be funded. While this is understandable from a risk management perspective (interventions under development might also be harder to evaluate), practitioners emphasised a need for risk-taking and experimenting with new types of interventions despite the lack of evidence to support them. PHPES can provide a unique opportunity for funding the evaluation of these projects, to develop their evidence base (including proving that they are not worthy of further development), before applying to other funding programmes for scaling up the interventions, which often demand an established evidence base and proof of concept.

This tension also threw up questions about the scope of PHPES: cost-effectiveness analysis was more often successful but not always feasible for the novel interventions and evidence needs that practitioners expressed through our research. Practitioners welcomed a widening of the scope of PHPES to include qualitative process evaluations and implementation studies to support the development of less established interventions.

Although the eligibility criteria in guidance documents provided to applicants do not explicitly state that other types of projects are not allowed, Footnote 1 the guidance assumes that applicants will be most interested in cost-effectiveness evaluations of existing interventions by stating this explicitly in the PHPES offer ‘to provide evidence on the cost-effectiveness of your work that others can use’, which has potentially steered applicants in this direction.

The limited scope of PHPES points to differences between PHPs and academic researchers in the type of evidence that is valued. This finding builds on previous studies stressing the need for constant alignment of values and expectations around evidence between PHPs and academics [ 18 ], with our study suggesting a widening of scope for evidence collected and research methods in research collaborations.

Local versus national impact

Related to this question was another tension about maximising the impact from collaborative projects. Practitioners were keen for the project to provide them with evidence for local impact: how to make the project work here, how can we change local practice and inform local policies? Researchers, on the other hand, wanted to ensure that findings of projects were generalisable at the national level and focused on publishing the research in national and international academic journals, which were deemed much less relevant for dissemination by practitioners. This led to tensions between practitioners and researchers on some projects about the need for generalisable findings, where to publish them and how much use existing research evidence would be for the project.

These tensions relate to differences in expectations about what counts as evidence and how research findings will be used, illustrating the need for expectation management from the start of collaborative research and taking time to build a ‘collaborative identity’, as suggested in previous studies [ 18 ].

The participants at the national workshop who reflected on these issues suggested that to maximise the potential impact of PHPES projects, applications should explicitly outline both the relevance to the local context and the potential generalisability of the findings at a national level. This concept of transferability was suggested as a means of capturing both dimensions: relevance to local context and potential for application elsewhere. This could be included as a criterion for funding in future PHPES rounds. In addition, more resources within the scheme could be dedicated to dissemination and mobilisation of findings across the public health practice community nationally, as well as practice partners involved in the projects locally.

Increasing inequalities in access to funding

Finally, successful applications appeared to cluster around SPHR partner institutions, based on geographical proximity of applicants to researchers, which made it easier for practitioners to approach researchers with ideas for applications and gain advice on the feasibility and potential design of suggested evaluations. However, this has the potential to increase inequalities in the geographical distribution of research funding and missed opportunities to evaluate novel interventions developed in locations further from academic public health departments. Therefore, workshop participants suggested provision of regional evaluation development workshops for those interested in applying to PHPES or other sources of funding to explore the feasibility of ideas and clarify expectations between practitioners and researchers. Regional development workshops could be held to facilitate prior development of ideas between researchers and practitioners before formally applying to PHPES and could be supported by regional public health research hubs (developed and supported by regional PHE centres) and advertised via the NIHR phinder website.

These workshops could also help to build relationships and trust between practitioners and researchers, which are key to the success of any collaboration [ 17 ]. Developing these relationships before a project is funded may be equally important as ensuring a good working relationship during the project. Opportunity for early discussions may determine whether tensions can be resolved or are allowed to threaten effective delivery and dissemination of a project.

How do other funders address these tensions?

In addressing questions about scope, impact and equality, PHPES could learn from other funding schemes across the United Kingdom that aim to facilitate collaborative research between practitioners and academics working in public health.

NIHR PHIRST

NIHR recently launched a call for local authorities to submit initiatives for evaluation by two nationally operating responsive research teams [ 22 ]. The Public Health Research Programme appointed two academic teams (the ‘PHIRST teams’) that are ready to work with local authorities on priority initiatives. The academic teams are fully funded to co-design and undertake robust and independent research in partnership with local authorities and their partners (NIHR PHR).

The scheme addresses the tension of inequality of applications by requiring the teams to operate on a national scale, and not only on a geographical basis with partners that they are already working with. The onus is put on the responsive academic teams to demonstrate 'the team’s geographical reach and understanding of structures within countries and across countries’ [ 22 ]. Team are required to develop a strategy for how to respond if they are asked to conduct a piece of research in a geographical location they are less familiar with. The ability to work across the United Kingdom and not just within the team’s immediate geographic location is an essential requirement of the scheme and supports less well connected local authorities in developing collaborative research proposals with academic researchers.

Although new projects are funded by PHIRST on an annual basis, evaluations can take place over the 3-year lifespan of the teams, providing flexibility to evaluation start and end dates to both local authorities and the researchers, depending on changes in local contexts.

Another example is the Applied Partnership Awards (APA) scheme that is operated by the Health Research Board in Ireland (HRB) [ 23 ]. APA awards encourage partnership-based, co-funded research applications, led by a knowledge user from a practice organisation to address a nationally relevant issue that can be applied to the knowledge user organisation within two years. The scheme requires that knowledge users are involved as active partners throughout the research process and that the knowledge users are willing to invest time and resources to the successful completion of the research. A unique feature of this award scheme is that salary-related funding may be requested from the HRB to enable the release time for knowledge users.

The scheme solves the tension of scope identified in this study by requiring applicants to develop research projects in response to nationally relevant priority areas; however, the teams of researchers and knowledge users need to ensure that the findings from the research have a direct impact on the decision-making of the lead knowledge user’s organisation. Therefore, the team has to provide documented evidence in their application, demonstrating that the proposed research is explicitly linked to evidence needs of the knowledge user organisation.

Moreover, applications need to include a clear and concise knowledge translation plan that highlights how the research findings will be applied by the knowledge user organisation. This solution also addresses the tension of local versus national impact by prioritising local impact that is explicitly linked to national priorities and hence has relevance beyond the local context.

Both schemes hold important lessons for funders on how to address existing and ongoing tensions in developing research by asking research teams to develop clear strategies for responsive research beyond their geographical comfort zones, and by balancing a focus on national priorities with findings that can be directly implemented in local organisations through a dedicated knowledge translation plan and buy-out of time for lead knowledge users.

What happened next with SPHR PHPES?

All members have been active participants in PHPES applications in the past before joining the evaluation team for the PHPES project. During the evaluation, we feed back emerging findings to the SPHR Executive Board, which include both academic and practice partners, to inform their thinking about the design and launch of PHPES in future rounds.

The recommendations made in the final report of the PHPES evaluation submitted to the SPHR Executive Board have been implemented in the redesign of the PHPES call launched in February 2019. For example, an additional stage to support regional brokerage between practitioners and SPHR members in order to explore the feasibility of ideas and mutual expectations between partners was introduced in the application process. In addition, the scope of the scheme was broadened, as recommended in our report, to include a wider range of research designs, such as implementation projects and process evaluations.

We helped to significantly revise the guidance for PHPES applicants following the evaluation recommendations and promoted the redesigned scheme and guidelines at the SPHR Annual Scientific Meeting through a poster display and interactive workshop for both researchers and practitioners. During the workshop, five practice partners pitched their ideas for PHPES application, which were subsequently taken forward in follow-up discussion with SPHR members.

To support the additional regional brokerage stage, we organised two regional PHPES workshops (one in Sheffield and one in Newcastle) to support early conversations between practitioners and researchers about ideas for applications, which were well attended and resulted in various applications being submitted to stage 1 of the scheme. Finally, research team members joined as members of the national panel, which reviewed 16 submitted stage 2 applications, supporting the panel with insights from the research.

While the evaluation generated valuable recommendations for improving the design and delivery of PHPES, active involvement from the research team in disseminating and implementing the findings (such as drafting new application forms and guidance, organising regional development workshops, reviewing new applications) proved essential to the effective implementation of the recommendations. This holds true for the PHPES itself: active engagement between researcher and PHPs before, during and after the development and delivery of a study is important in maximising the potential for having an impact on local PH practice.

Strengths and limitations

We found it challenging to involve practitioners in the research at all levels, particularly those who had been involved in applications that had not been funded. Even for funded projects, a number of the practice partners had left the position they held at the time of the PHPES project and could not be contacted. Other practitioners, despite planning to attend the national workshop, had to cancel due to other commitments on the day. They were replaced by lay participants who were recruited from a local public involvement panel established to support public health research. This ensured lay input into the development of the project as well as input into the scope of the findings.

The focus of the PHPES evaluation and of this paper is on the experiences of PHPs and academic researchers engaging in collaborative research through the scheme, and therefore limited data were included on the perspective of the funder (such as SPHR core staff). One of the interviewed academics was also the lead for PHPES within SPHR; however, the interview focused on her experiences in projects within the scheme and not on the operation of the scheme itself. As a result, data were not available on the rationale for the scope and feedback mechanisms in PHPES, which were identified as tensions (weaknesses) in this study. We have tried to address this gap by reviewing guidance documentation provided to PHPES applications over the years. However, we found limited data on the funder perspective in these documents to provide insight on the identified tensions. Future research could more clearly include the funders’ perspectives when evaluating similar schemes.

Our study highlights that the PHPES, a responsive funding scheme, provides much needed resources for evaluation which often are not available locally, and produces useful evidence which can be used to formatively develop interventions. Practitioners benefit from academics with specific knowledge within their field, and relationships between practice and academia are strengthened.

Furthermore, our evaluation suggests that the success of collaborative research applications between PHP and researchers can be improved by the following: organising regional development workshops to explore the feasibility of ideas and clarify expectations (which reduce inequality in success rates); providing variable levels of funding to projects at different stages of development, including smaller scoping studies (to increase the scope of collaborations with a focus on transferability of findings from local to national contexts); and dedicating more resources for disseminating findings across the PHP community nationally, as well as to practice partners involved in the projects locally. This makes it possible to support both transferability and ongoing relationship-building between academics and practitioners.

The implementation of these recommendations in the relaunch of PHPES in February 2019 suggests that the scheme has been successful in increasing access to the scheme, widening the scope of collaborations and improving the potential transferability of research findings, with a better balance between local priorities and national relevance, based on earlier conversations between practitioners and academics.

Funders that are keen to support collaborative research between PHP and academics need to be mindful of three tensions in developing applications, related to (1) the scope of collaborations, (2) local versus national impact and (3) increasing inequality in access to research funding. Our study and comparisons with related funding schemes demonstrate how these tensions can be successfully addressed by providing practical solutions. These solutions illustrate how differences in expectations, values, processes and structures can be aligned between the PHP and academic. The need for this alignment has been identified in previous studies but limited evidence is available on how to do this in practice, particularly in the context of funding research collaborations at a local level.

To be eligible for SPHR PHPES funding, applications need to aim to improve population health and/or reduce health inequalities, have the potential to be of benefit in other parts of England, and have secure funding for the duration of the evaluation (normally around 2 years),

Abbreviations

Health Research Board Applied Partnership Awards

Local Authorities

Medical Research Council

National Institute for Health Research Public Health Intervention Responsive Studies Teams

National Institute for Health Research School for Public Health Research

Public health practitioners

Public Health Practice Evaluation Scheme

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank our respondents who gave up their time to contribute to this study, and Susan Bowett at Newcastle University for her support in the initial stages of the study.

This project was funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) School for Public Health Research (SPHR), Grant Reference Number PD-SPH-2015. The views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care.

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LG conceived the idea for the study, developed the study design and sought funding from the National School of Public Health Research, with input from all authors. Data collection and analysis were undertaken by LB and EH. Data interpretation was supported by all authors. The paper was drafted by PvdG and was commented on by all authors. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Additional file 1: file 1..

Data extraction template for document analysis. File 2. Interview schedule for SPHR practitioners. File 3. Interview schedule for SPHR researchers. File 4. Online survey. File 5. Programme national workshop.

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van der Graaf, P., Blank, L., Holding, E. et al. What makes a ‘successful’ collaborative research project between public health practitioners and academics? A mixed-methods review of funding applications submitted to a local intervention evaluation scheme. Health Res Policy Sys 19 , 9 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12961-020-00671-0

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Managing collaborative research: insights from a multi-consortium programme on climate adaptation across Africa and South Asia

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Collaborative research requires synergy among diverse partners, overall direction, and flexibility at multiple levels. There is a need to learn from practical experience in fostering cooperation towards research outcomes, coordinating geographically dispersed teams, and bridging distinct incentives and ways of working. This article reflects on the experience of the Collaborative Adaptation Research Initiative in Africa and Asia (CARIAA), a multi-consortium programme which sought to build resilience to regional climate change. Participants valued the consortium as a network that provided connections with distinct sources of expertise, as a means to gain experience and skills beyond the remit of their home organisation. Consortia were seen as an avenue for reaching scale both in terms of working across regions, as well as in terms of moving research into practice. CARIAA began with programme-level guidance on climate hotspots and collaboration, alongside consortium-level visions on research agenda and design. Consortia created and implemented work plans defining each organisation’s role and responsibilities and coordinated activities across numerous partners, dispersed locations, and diverse cultural settings. Nested committees provided coherence and autonomy at the programme, consortium, and activity-level. Each level had some discretion in how to deploy funding, creating multiple collaborative spaces that served to further interconnect participants. The experience of CARIAA affirms documented strategies for collaborative research, including project vision, partner compatibility, skilled managers, and multi-level planning. Collaborative research also needs an ability to revise membership and structures as needed in response to changing involvement of partners over time.

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Introduction

Collaborative research is becoming increasingly commonplace and seeks to apply a transdisciplinary approach to real-world issues. Together with funding for large consortia, this trend requires not only integrating across diverse theories and methods but managing across diverse organisations and geographies. This article looks at one multi-consortium research programme focused on regional environmental change and how it coordinated large teams, provided incentives for research collaboration, and managed itself adaptively. It provides an example of what collaborative research looks like in practice, combining insights on how to structure arrangements among participants and how to foster their interaction during the lifespan of a research programme based on multiple consortia.

More than one billion people live in river deltas, semi-arid lands, and glacier- and snowpack-dependent basins in Africa and Asia, regions where climate exposure and biophysical and social vulnerability coincide to create areas at high risk of climate change (De Souza et al. 2015 ). The Collaborative Adaptation Research Initiative in Africa and Asia (CARIAA, 2012–2019) was designed to support collaboration and learning within and between four transdisciplinary research consortia that sought to build resilience in these climate hotspots Footnote 1 .

A research consortium is a model of collaboration that brings together multiple individuals or organisations that are otherwise independent of one another, to address a common set of questions using a defined structure and governance model (Gonsalves 2014 ). Four consortia were formed in response to a call for proposals, identifying a lead or convening organisation, along with four other core partner organisations, which jointly convened or subcontracted a broader set of between four and 20 additional partners. Consortia constituted bounded intra-organisational networks, with membership delineated through formal contracting and specified tasks under joint work plans. Each consortium was managed by a principal investigator and coordinator hosted at the lead organisation, together with a set of co-principal investigators, one for each core partner organisation. All partners in a given consortium shared a common set of research objectives and a conceptual framework and identified high-level synthesis questions that transcended individual research projects. In addition, CARIAA was managed as a single programme including the four consortia and a variety of cross-consortia activities, with higher-order outcomes and common sets of synthesis questions toward which participants from all four consortia collaborated.

Over 5 years, CARIAA contributed to over 20 local or national adaptation plans and strategies and to over a dozen policies in 11 countries (Lafontaine et al. 2018 ). Outcomes included piloting adaptation technologies such as flood-resistant housing, informing the Bangladesh Delta Plan 2100, enhancing the capacity for vulnerability and risk assessment at the district level in Botswana, identifying investments to improve climate resilience in livestock value chains, and distinguishing the different impacts of + 1.5 °C and + 2 °C warming in hotspots.

The goal of CARIAA was to develop robust evidence on how to increase the resilience of vulnerable populations and their livelihoods in climate change hotspots. To this end, CARIAA sought to generate high-quality research; encourage its uptake through stakeholder engagement; and increase capacity to design, communicate, and use research and evidence. By mid-2019, CARIAA had produced 945 research outputs including 121 peer-reviewed journal articles and held 285 events reaching more than 9500 stakeholders, while 268 individuals benefited from capacity building such as graduate degrees, postdoctoral positions, and internships.

This article reflects on this programme in order to contribute to the literature on, and inform the practice of, collaborative research projects on regional environmental change. We share how the programme sought to coordinate and manage large teams, provide incentives for collaboration, and manage itself adaptively. We identify structural challenges such as power asymmetries within large-scale consortia and reflect on mechanisms to promote cooperation among partners in achieving research outcomes. While underpinned by empirical evidence, including surveys of consortia participants, as authors, we also critically reflect on our experience in managing CARIAA. All six authors served in the CARIAA programme management committee and contributed to several of the collaborative activities described below. Four of the authors served as coordinators in each of the research consortia, while the remaining two were based at the research funding agency that managed the programme. Collectively, we bring detailed knowledge of the inner workings of the consortia and programme, refined through reflective workshops during implementation, and tempered by writing this article more than a year after the programme closed (cf Gaziulusoy et al. 2016 ).

The next section summarises key insights from the existing literature on collaborative research, including a set of paradoxes facing managers. This is followed by a brief overview of the programme structure and our methodology. The experience of implementing CARIAA is described as approaches to supporting collaboration, namely, creating synergy among diverse partners, providing direction despite limited formal authority, and offering flexibility and funding at multiple levels. Situating CARIAA within the existing literature allows us to restate the paradoxes facing managers, the strategies used to confront them, and offer advice for adaptively managing future programmes. A concluding section restates our observations on coordination, incentives, and management within a multi-consortium programme.

Managing collaborative research

Collaborative and multi-scale research is necessary for effectively tackling regional challenges and producing evidence for policy responses at appropriate scales (Cochrane et al. 2017 ). There is recognition that transdisciplinary approaches are necessary to address wicked problems. Transdisciplinary teams seek to surpass the knowledge and ability of any single individual (Mauser et al. 2013 ). Such teams have several features, including a focus on praxis and the ability to navigate different perceptions or experiences of reality (Lotrecchiano and Misra 2018 ). Yet in practice the diverse nature of the teams required also brings significant challenges related to convening and managing research, which are not unique to climate change adaptation (e.g. Ayre et al. 2018 ; Gaziulusoy et al. 2016 ). Research project management in these contexts requires providing a sense of joint purpose, as well as breaking a larger purpose into smaller tasks and integrating these back together into a whole (König et al. 2013 ; Kenis and Raab 2020 ). vom Brocke and Lippe ( 2015 ) identify three paradoxes in collaborative research projects that have implications for how such projects are managed, and we unpack each of these below.

Their first paradox for research managers relates to the need to support the integration of diverse perceptions, values, and knowledge, yet the inclusion of diverse partners requires novel management structures and processes to deal with inter-cultural, inter-organisational, and inter-disciplinary differences. The potential barriers to collaboration that such management needs to overcome include differences in foundational training among team members, diverse and changing career paths, geographic dispersion, and limited ability for participants to grasp the breadth and complexity of the programme and its membership (Lang et al. 2012 ). Diverse partners and ambitious goals can also further exacerbate clashing perspectives on methodological standards, problem framing, and research design, including choices regarding units of analysis, ontology, and methods (Scholz and Steiner 2015 ; National Research Council 2015 ). Further barriers to collaboration that managers need to navigate include differences in working styles and differing institutional incentives and approaches to recognition (Boon et al. 2014 ; Varshney et al. 2016 ). If unmanaged, the transaction costs to individuals involved can discourage them from wanting to be part of an ambitious collaborative research agenda (Cummings et al. 2013 ).

Second, managers in large collaborative projects have limited authority over partners, who are autonomous and subject to their own organisational demands, yet the project vision and integrating results require commitment from all participants. Coordination is needed to commit diverse partners to a common purpose and hold themselves mutually accountable for performance (Cheruvelil et al. 2014 ), a task made harder by both the number of partners as well as their heterogeneity (often including both academic and non-academic partners). The existing literature has not given much attention to the perspectives of researchers and the basis on which they choose to collaborate, particularly within north-south arrangements that address multi-country partners and settings. Trust is foundational to decisions to collaborate (Cundill et al. 2019 ). Researchers frequently choose to collaborate with people they have worked with before (ESPA Directorate 2018 ). Managers play a key role in facilitating trust, by providing transparency in information and decision-making, as well as establishing norms of cooperation, including sanctions when they are not adhered to (Harris and Lyon 2013 ). A variety of factors associated with management styles affect the extent to which researchers commit to the larger goals of a collaborative research effort. Among these factors are the presence of effective leaders with an overall vision; respect for the needs, interests, and agendas of all partners; and an overall sense of justice and fairness in collaboration including clarity of roles, recognition in authorship, and benefits for communities involved in the research (Parker and Kingori 2016 ).

Third, research managers must offer flexibility given the multiple perspectives and complex issues at play and yet need tight management and firm structures to provide direction to diffuse teams and the pursuit of shared outcomes (vom Brocke and Lippe 2015 ). Collaborative management needs to create processes for group decision-making, handling conflict, and establishing procedures to assign credit and authorship over the works produced (Bozeman et al. 2015 ). This necessitates aligning incentives to bring together actors across scientific disciplines, knowledge domains, and policy and practice, although the mechanisms for achieving this are poorly understood. Managing collaborative research requires adaptive strategies as well as flexible funding to respond to the evolving and emergent nature of work (Gaziulusoy et al. 2016 ). Managers of projects and programmes need to invest intentional and ongoing effort to create and strengthen collaborative structures that balance flexibility (Pearce et al. 2009 ), which may include multi-level management committees to enable effective communication and identify where adaptive management may be required to meet the overall aim.

The literature has begun to identify how to organise large-scale programmes to foster for collaboration, learning, and synthesis (Harvey et al. 2017 ; Cochrane and Cundill 2018 ). Key issues that need to be addressed by managers, in addition to those described previously, include power asymmetries between partners, balancing different leadership styles, supporting the cooperation of parties with different aims and incentives, and, in large-scale collaborations in particular, addressing these issues through multi-layered features in design (Cundill et al. 2019 ; Lonsdale and Goldthorpe 2012 ; Jones et al. 2018 ). There is comparatively little evidence on how to put the emerging theory into practice on a day-to-day basis. This includes the role of managers in implementing these design features, fostering cooperation among diverse partners in achieving the research outcomes, effective approaches to coordinating geographically dispersed teams, and bridging distinct incentives and ways of working within collaborative research programmes. Given the literature, our contribution is to situate the experience of implementing CARIAA within the three paradoxes mentioned above to provide advice on managing collaborative research.

Structure and methodology

CARIAA’s formal structure centred on different committees for the overall programme and each research consortium. At the programme level, a management committee brought together the principal investigators and coordinators from the four consortia, to shape the agenda for learning reviews and decide on collaborative subprojects. These learning reviews were held each year from 2015 to 2018 and involved an in-person gathering of over a dozen participants from each of the four consortia. Such learning reviews served to share findings and celebrate achievements from each consortium, consolidate programme-level methods and tools—such as the theory of change and approach to research uptake—, and provide an open space for participants to share their work and explore opportunities to work across consortia.

At the consortium level, each convened a steering committee that brought together the co-principal investigators from the core partners to oversee budgeting, monitor research progress, and provide guidance on research uptake. Both the programme- and consortium-level committees met virtually once a month and in-person at least once per year. Each consortium created additional fora to coordinate among partners within a region or work on related activities, serving to further interconnect the overall programme through working groups, subprojects, and stakeholder engagement (see supplemental material).

This overall structure, and the extent to which it facilitated collaboration, serves as the focus of this article. The observations, quotes, and data described in the next section are based on responses to distinct surveys covering the 460 participants involved in the programme, as well as participant observation by the authors. Each consortium adopted a distinct approach to participant surveys. Within ASSAR, surveys were conducted at the midterm and end of the consortium (September 2016 and November 2018) which received 61 and 82 responses respectively. Questions focused on what respondents considered to be the most valuable and most challenging aspects of being part of that consortium. The surveys consisted of closed- and open-ended questions and were administered through Google Forms (Scodanibbio 2017 ). Survey responses were analysed inductively using thematic analysis, with codes developed iteratively. DECCMA conducted the same survey of its membership on a single occasion during the final year (February 2018) and collected 17 responses across a range of participants from co-investigators to early career researchers and practitioners. PRISE and HI-AWARE each used a different survey that emphasised monitoring or capacity building, and which gathered 18 and 62 responses, respectively. Further evidence comes from focus group discussions held with a broader set of CARIAA participants during programme-wide learning reviews in 2017 and 2018 Footnote 2 , as well as final technical reports produced for each research consortium (ASSAR 2019 ; DECCMA 2018 ; HI-AWARE 2018 ; PRISE 2019 ).

A limitation of our work is that each consortium adopted a distinct approach to implementing the participant surveys, which limits the ability to compile results across the programme. While we did not use formal social network analysis, CARIAA did have bounded membership and structures, providing an opportunity to learn from the consortia and programme as an experiment in inter-organisational networks (Burton and Obel 2018 ).

Approaches to supporting collaboration

Each consortium adopted a unique approach to organising its research activities and field sites (Table 1 ). DECCMA adopted the most uniform approach and methodology, working comparatively across two smaller deltas and one large transboundary delta. HI-AWARE involved twelve field sites across basins shared among the four contiguous countries in the Hindu Kush Himalaya mountains. ASSAR and PRISE were more geographically dispersed, using regional clusters or projects. Each consortium brought together the complementary strength of universities, think tanks, NGOs, and government agencies. The size, authority, and duration of the consortia were expected to contribute to research uptake and impact in building climate resilience. Consortia were “large” in terms of research activities and diverse geography, as well as the number of partners and their standing in the communities of research and practice. For example, collectively partners had ready access to villagers in remote locations as well as national officials in diverse countries. The sizable budgets and duration of the projects were expected to help build and sustain relationships with external actors over time.

Consortia included up to five core partners, convened in response to the research funding agencies’ original call for proposals, and sought out additional partners as needed to provide further reach or fulfil gaps within the work plan. This distinction created two tiers of participating organisations. Core partners enjoyed direct access to funding through grant agreements with the research funding agency and were formal members of consortium management. Meanwhile, additional partners were positioned as subcontractors, with more circumscribed set of responsibilities, and without a direct voice in consortium steering committees.

The structure of the programme did not permit the addition of new organisations as a core partner over the lifetime of a consortium. The expectation was that the core partners would remain locked in throughout the 5 years, yet two of the consortia lost a core partner early in the programme, with implications for reduced access to certain field sites and reorientation of responsibilities and budget. Another consortium experienced strained relationships among core partners over research design, which was eventually addressed through external facilitation and involvement of senior leadership from each organisation. The final consortium remained stable throughout the programme, aided by providing some autonomy to its regional nodes, each of which was led by a different core partner. These experiences suggest an opportunity to invest more time and effort in consolidating partnership, beyond refining research design and budgeting.

This section reflects on three aspects of implementing CARIAA inspired by the above-noted paradoxes in collaborative research projects. The first concerns efforts to realise synergy among diverse partners through efforts to address inter-cultural, inter-organisational, and inter-disciplinary differences. The second concerns efforts to provide direction and integrate contributions across diffuse teams to pursue shared outcomes, despite limited authority given that responsibility was distributed across partners. The third concerns the flexibility required for adaptive management through access to funding at multiple levels and fostering the creation of collaborative spaces when needed. Together, these aspects draw together the tasks of coordinating consortia to ensure agreement on research design and sustain arrangements among partners, the incentives that motivated partners—including forms of reward and recognition to harness diverse competencies—and managing through nested levels of shared leadership to guide consortia and respond to emergent opportunities.

Create synergy among diverse partners

Consortia sought to connect individuals and organisations that complemented each other. For example, ASSAR’s core partners brought complementary strengths on capacity building, on gender and social science, and on governance and climate science. Each consortium brought together diverse expertise and experience. Some participants had established track records authoring peer-reviewed publications and contributing to the scientific community, while others were graduate students. In particular, ASSAR participants appreciated “bringing in competencies that may not be the realm of researchers” such as skills in how to communicate to different audiences, think about how to influence policy, or lead change on the ground. Working with international experts across disciplinary boundaries was also widely appreciated as a benefit of working in consortia.

Each consortium operated across a unique set of countries and cultural settings. As recognised by one respondent, “all members of the consortium work in different ways (e.g. work culture, organisation structure)”. PRISE operated in West Africa and included both English and French within consortium management and quality review of publications. One participant noted the value of working “with a broad range of researchers and support staff with varied expertise and from different cultural backgrounds, all bringing with them strong knowledge basis and experiences that I have been able to learn from”. HI-AWARE noted that diversity among its partner organisations offered opportunities, yet cautioned that openness, intention, and patience were required for such diversity to be genuinely valued and understood.

Consortia needed to understand and respond to what motivated its partners. PRISE explicitly designed its work plan to provide activities and outputs that were recognised by each participant’s home organisation and aligned with their individual career paths. HI-AWARE probed partner motivations with respect to academic traditions, including differences in training and career paths among researchers from different countries. Some graduate students found that being involved in consortium activities distracted them from concentrating fully on their dissertation, even while providing exposure to new approaches. A similar tension arose between the academic demand to publish to advance one’s career and the administrative demand within the consortium to dedicate time to reporting, monitoring, and meetings. Nonetheless, many early career researchers reported high levels of satisfaction, mentioning the opportunities for mentorship outside of their home institutions, opportunities to contribute toward synthesis activities, and building social networks that were more global in scope. ASSAR found it important to ensure the inclusion of a sufficient number of senior researchers to ensure the quality of research produced and to mentor early career participants.

Given the extra burden required to collaborate with others, why did people and organisations choose to join a research consortium? In our surveys, participants revealed that they valued the ability to exchange perspectives and approaches across different geographical regions and engage with researchers across the world. More than 80% of DECCMA and ASSAR respondents rated their consortium as being beneficial to their work. ASSAR respondents connected their individual level of satisfaction with how the consortium provided professional growth, gains in skills and knowledge, and an ability to deliver on collective goals. Meanwhile, 93% of PRISE respondents agreed that building resilience in climate change hotspots required a scale of effort that exceeded what their organisations could achieve by working in isolation. Generalising from these responses, consortia were valued as a network that provided connections with distinct sources of expertise, the means to gain experience and skills, and avenues for working at a scale beyond the remit of their home organisations and countries.

In terms of creating synergy among diverse partners, the programme intentionally sought to foster participation by women and by individuals from the global south as authors. Nearly half (44%) of authors within CARIAA were women, which exceeds the level within IPCC reports, where women were 38% of authors in the special report on + 1.5 °C warming (SR15), and one-third of the authors named to the sixth assessment report. Most principal investigators were men, yet gender balance was stronger among the consortium coordinators (2 women and 2 men in most years) and among all participants (202 women out of 461 total participants). Ninety-six of peer-reviewed papers in CARIAA were co-authored, with 56% of these papers having co-authors based in different countries. Approximately 47% of all lead authors on these papers were based in the global south.

Consortia were seen as an avenue for working at scale, both in terms of geography as well as in terms of moving research into practice. In terms of geography, each consortium included organisations in the countries where it worked. These partners facilitated access to field sites and local communities, provided a grounded understanding of context, and enhanced the legitimacy and local ownership of the consortium’s activities, for example, navigating the regulatory requirements for conducting research. Extending across multiple countries, consortia were expected to connect research at multiple locations as well as compiling more comprehensive evidence across similar landscapes (O’Neill 2020 ). In terms of practice, each consortium was seen as an avenue for scaling science into local and national policy processes and implementing adaptation options on the ground. To engage potential audiences for research uptake, consortia included partners with skills in public communications, policy engagement, and community development. As one participant noted, consortia benefited by “choosing partners that already have well-established networks and higher-level government positions”.

Provide direction despite limited authority

Each consortium provided a common understanding of methods, research design, and each partner’s role in a variety of ways. Three of the consortia opted to permit some tailoring of methods and datasets between activities or regions. Early in the programme, the research funding agency required each consortium to prepare a work plan detailing the activities to be performed and deliverables to be created. In hindsight, this process jumped quickly to defining milestones and budgets and could have benefitted by ensuring clarity on direction, including partner expectations of the work and a common understanding of the ideas underpinning the research design. One respondent felt that “too much time [was] spent in conveying ideas and convincing scientists and partners having different subject backgrounds”, suggesting that there could have been more clarity and consensus. Early meetings benefit from a focus on trust-building between partners, agreeing to a joint vision and framing of what is desired, how work is to be undertaken, and how to deal with conflict and risk.

Participants across all four consortia struggled with competing demands on time. Over one-third of CARIAA participants reported that they faced different expectations within the consortium and their home institutions. One respondent cautioned that working in consortia “requires lots of time for relationship building, keeping everyone in the loop”. Surveys in the two semi-arid consortia pointed to the logistical challenges of working remotely and the time required for reporting. Respondents felt overwhelmed by multiple deadlines, demands, and information overload. As many activities involved multiple participants, any one member was often dependent upon others for needed inputs, giving rise to occasional bottlenecks and delays. Respondents noted moments when progress was constrained waiting for contributions from other partners. One participant recognised her/his role in the workflow, describing bottlenecks in “obtaining the necessary inputs from consortium members… and delivering results on time so other researchers in the consortium team could carry on with their assignments”. Email-based communication was insufficient for following up with colleagues, as participants could become less responsive over time, further compounding the frustration felt by colleagues over missed deadlines or unmet expectations.

Trust was challenged when a participant or organisation failed to fulfil their role. Within their home organisations, individuals could defer to the formal authority of senior personnel to intervene when issues arose. Yet consortia did not necessarily have such backstops if collaboration was not working. Participants mainly looked to principal investigators as a source of intellectual leadership, focusing research activities and ensuring rigour in the methods and publications. Principal investigators were supported by co-investigators from each of the core partner institutions. This form of leadership, however, meant that when problems were faced between partners, or when deadlines were not complied with, principal investigators lacked the teeth to enforce compliance. In the case of problems between partners, DECCMA relied on its monthly management committee and regular in-country meetings to rapidly identify and resolve issues arising. Within PRISE, in addition to monthly steering committee meetings, the consortium’s interlinked set of projects encouraged both more autonomous distribution of work and distinct links of mutual responsibilities among partner organisations. Collaboration across countries and organisations meant that partners relied on each other for delivery across the consortium, on the one hand creating a web of accountability yet adding to the complexity of arrangements.

Collectively, the consortium leaders shaped the experience of participants. In the words of one respondent, “leaders either inspire or de-motivate staff members, and either promote or hinder effective working environments. Their actions... have a direct bearing on the project's overall productivity and success”. Each consortium also had a coordinator who convened consortium-level committees, monitored and reported on research progress, and organised internal communication. Coordinators actively participated in cross-consortium arrangements for collaboration and knowledge sharing. These positions demanded a substantial time commitment, exceeding that allocated in consortium budgets or provided by their home organisations. They were also limited in the extent to which they could exercise formal leadership.

Periodic face-to-face meetings were crucial avenues where progress could be made in research outputs, decision-making and problem-solving between partners. These meetings were convened within each consortium, as well as across the programme as a whole. Each of these events involved dozens of participants, representing a sizable investment of time and budget. Yet such meetings were vital for coordination: creating a common understanding of progress and next steps, as well as increasing trust and deepening interpersonal relationships among participants. Such events helped supplement internal communications and virtual meetings, which were limited by uneven or unreliable access to the internet. One respondent noted that trust was “slow to develop due to the lack of time spent together. [Webconferencing] and emails take much longer to develop trust than handshakes and hugs”. Whereas partners could more readily follow up with phone calls or in-person with nearby colleagues, it was more difficult to elicit a response from partners located in faraway countries and time zones. Having met in person made it easier for participants to sustain their collaboration through online engagement. With time and experience, colleagues grew to appreciate each other’s expertise and empathise with each other’s needs, passions, and character. By the end of the programme, one participant noted that the consortium “had a genuine sense of family and community”.

Internal communications also helped to ensure transparency and foster a sense of belonging. A common knowledge management platform became an online location for participants across the programme to share files, convene web conferences, and coordinate schedules. Based on the Google Suite software, this platform provided a means to bridge the organisational firewalls that normally separated partners. It also provided access to working documents and manuscripts in preparation across the programme. Quarterly newsletters at the programme level and weekly digests at the consortium level kept participants informed about recent events and publications, as well as forthcoming meetings. Newsletters and digests also became a means to celebrate achievements and foster the identity of being part of the consortium, programme, or activity. Given the dispersed nature of a consortium, these efforts were vital in keeping partners engaged and motivated, particularly those participants who had fewer opportunities for face-to-face interactions.

A sign of successful coordination was that each individual cultivated their own unique role and contribution while feeling part of a greater whole. While at the start of the programme, participants identified only with their home organisations, over time they came to see themselves as part of a consortium contributing to a joint work plan. As each consortium matured, participants also identified with collaborative spaces within the broader programme. Thus, a participant could see herself as part of the Sustainable Development Policy Institute, as a partner organisation, part of PRISE as a consortium, and part of the cross-programme collaborative space on migration research.

Offer flexibility and funding at multiple levels

Given the number of partners and activities involved, it was initially daunting to manage a single research consortium, much less the overall programme comprising multiple consortia. Distributed leadership and nested committees provided coherence and autonomy at different levels, able to deploy adaptive funding to support emergent opportunities. Multiple collaborative spaces interconnected consortia through working groups, subprojects, and stakeholder engagement. Together, these nested levels of management created a pattern of relationships akin to a scale-free network. Each node or partner had detailed information from one level down, understanding a discrete set of activities and partners. Subsidiary levels also enjoyed some autonomy, while higher levels assembled the larger picture of consortium- and programme-wide progress. While the challenge of coordinating a consortium or programme can potentially rise precipitously with an increasing number of partners, each of the nested committees had a tractable span of control and membership. Each tended to involve 12 or fewer individuals, which proved conducive to reaching decisions and fostering trust.

Access to research funding was key. The consortium budget was divided into separate grant agreements, one for each of the core partners. This enabled funding to flow to multiple countries yet complicated the task of tracking financial progress across the consortium, as partners prepared separate reports on their spending. As consortium plans evolved and currency exchange rate fluctuated, significant time and diplomacy were required to renegotiate budgets and reallocate funding. Additional participants were dependent on core partners for access to funding. As one respondent cautioned, opportunities were sometimes skewed in favour of core partners. Compared with core members, additional participants were less involved in consortia management and had a narrower set of responsibilities.

Yet the use of adaptive funding provided a means for committees to respond to emergent opportunities for collaboration. Within consortia, PRISE provided funding opportunities for young researchers, while HI-AWARE tested a set of pilot technologies in communities. ASSAR provided small grants for working groups to develop cross-regional syntheses, respond to the needs of local communities, and follow through on ideas emerging from scenario planning processes. Having the option to tap into adaptive funding through different levels was vital for CARIAA’s geographically dispersed teams. One DECCMA participant noted the importance of “recognising that international collaboration cannot happen effectively without allocating a significant amount of resources (human, financial and time)”. Specific items mentioned included training, supporting delivery of research, data collection and data cleaning, analysis and peer review of findings, and authoring papers.

At the programme level, 9% of the overall budget was set aside for the broad purpose of “research integration”. The precise purpose and use of this budget were refined during programme implementation. The programme management committee decided how to allocate these funds, responding flexibly to new or unforeseen opportunities and fostering synergy among the four research consortia. In general, these funds created different collaborative spaces that convened participants from different consortia, either through ad hoc working groups or through successful bids to periodic calls for proposals open to the broader set of CARIAA participants. Specific efforts that were supported included stakeholder engagement platforms to reach national policy audiences in five countries where more than one consortium was present; communities of practice related to economics, research uptake, and systematic review; and collaborative subprojects that brought together consortia results on migration, gender, and adaptation pathways. This adaptive budgeting was also used to convene additional activity and research synthesis in response to the call for contributions to the IPCC special report on + 1.5 °C warming (Conway et al. 2019 ) and to compare changes in women’s agency associated with environmental stress across hotspots (Rao et al. 2019 ).

Such collaborative spaces served to interconnect the research consortia, creating further links in the network beyond the formal structure. This increased the connectivity among participants, providing multiple ties to the programme and encouraging additional outputs and syntheses of related activities. Yet it also generated additional workload and new demands on participants. In the final year, collaborative spaces were limited by time, as participants were already fully committed to delivering on their consortium activities. Invariably, certain partner organisations and individual participants became responsible for a variety of tasks. Large workloads and multiple responsibilities were particularly pronounced for the principal investigator and the lead organisation within each consortium. They tended to have a dual role both as a leader (tracking the consortium work plan, convening the steering committee, and participating in programme management) while also being responsible for their own distinct set of activities and deliverables.

Revisiting the paradoxes

Despite growing consideration of programme design for collaboration and learning, there is comparatively little evidence on how to put the emerging theory into practice. Based on our experience in implementing CARIAA, this includes practical steps to coordinate diverse partners in achieving the research outcomes, to create incentives for working together that also enable participants to advance within their home organisations, and to manage geographically dispersed teams by providing some degree of autonomy at multiple levels and adaptive access to funding. Our experience suggests options for restating the “paradoxes” of collaborative research projects (vom Brocke and Lippe 2015 ). CARIAA began with programme-level guidance on climate hotspots and collaboration, alongside consortium-level visions on research agenda and design. With these entry points, managers sought to realise synergy among diverse partners through initial and ongoing efforts to address inter-cultural, inter-organisational, and inter-disciplinary differences. Managers had to provide direction and integrate contributions across diffuse teams to pursue shared outcomes despite limited authority given that responsibility was distributed across partners. The flexibility required for adaptive management was facilitated by access to funding at multiple levels that allowed some opportunity for self-organisation and the creation of collaborative spaces when needed.

In implementing CARIAA, we unintentionally rediscovered the four general strategies for managing collaborative research projects identified by vom Brocke and Lippe ( 2015 ). First is to acknowledge the central role of project vision. While the daily minutiae of coordinating the programme and its consortia were daunting, the work was greatly aided by the overall focus on climate hotspots and a set of consistent research agendas. Second is to ensure partner compatibility and collaborative working style. Each research consortium intentionally sought out distinct partners that contributed to the project vision, both creating incentives to work together and responding to diverse interests among participants. Third is to allow for flexible, multi-level planning and monitoring. Intentional funding for emergent collaborative spaces as well as distinct structures at the programme, consortium, and project level afforded CARIAA opportunities for adaptive management.

Fourth is to appoint skilled project managers. Leadership at various levels was essential for fostering a common sense of purpose and identity. A leader is valued not only for her or his intellectual standing but for being genuinely interested in the relationships and tasks underpinning the collaboration (Parker and Kingori 2016 ). Within CARIAA, accountability ran upwards (from additional partners thru core partners to the research funding agency) and horizontally (networks across participants involved in collaborative spaces). Underpinning these was a mutual commitment to common purpose, at the consortium and programme level, predicated not on formal authority but leadership through motivation and soft skills. Principal investigators need to foster dialogue among participants and create mutual accountability, while coordinators cover diverse tasks ranging from internal communication and knowledge management to fulfilling administration processes to meet the requirements of the funding body (vom Brocke and Lippe 2015 ). Delegated and participative leadership needs to be collective and nurtured across a programme.

The networked structures of consortia and the programme were partially planned and partially emergent. The consortia were planned in their focus on climate change hotspots and the research funding agency’s requirement for an initial set of five core partners. Yet their structure also emerged as research activities and field sites were identified, and as consortia brought on additional partners and negotiated their respective roles. The programme anticipated the creation of collaborative spaces to bring different subsets of consortia participants together to work across hotspots and on common research interests. Yet the exact nature of these spaces emerged during the programme and changed as each refined their purpose and deliverables, responding to internal interest among participants and external opportunities for research uptake. The consortia and collaborative spaces formed for-purpose structures, or scaffolding, for participants to interact and perform together. By the final learning review, participants identified with the analogy of jazz improvisation, seeing themselves as musicians using the evolving structure of the consortia and programme as temporary stages upon which to unleash their creative and scientific energy, spontaneously jamming with colleagues in real time to produce novel melodies. The structure enabled participants to be attentive to each other’s work and find ways of making their own contribution to a collective work or performance.

Yet CARIAA was not without its challenges. The programme was perhaps over-engineered, with some redundancy and bottlenecks among different levels and collaborative spaces. Certain individuals became key in multiple nodes of the network, placing significant demands on their time and energy. For example, principal investigators convened the steering committee of their consortium, participated in collaborative management at the programme level, and had their own individual research responsibilities. Coordinators were similarly stretched across organising their consortium, participating in various programme-level working groups, and making their own individual contributions to work plans. Pleas to lighten reporting requirements and schedules were common in the final year of the programme, and the workload involved would not have been sustainable into the longer term. Moving forward, future programmes could lighten this workload, to distribute it among more people, or provide more support to critical individuals or nodes within the network.

Future programmes could also plan for consolidating a programme’s legacy. While the end of the CARIAA programme dissolved the consortia, participants sought to retain and reconfigure the relationships they wished to pursue further. This period also highlights a potential role for multi-consortium programmes in providing a legacy platform, to ensure outputs and data remain available into the future, as well as to nurture relationships among former partners and stakeholders. While it is tempting to simply move on to the next funding opportunity, there is value in maintaining a minimal structure following the programme to monitor ongoing research publications, synthesis, and stakeholder interest.

Future programmes could also include processes to facilitate the entry, exit, and changing involvement of partners over time. CARIAA could have better addressed the tension between core and additional partners and been more agile to accommodate changes in membership over the course of the programme. A multi-consortium programme should expect and enable revisions in its membership, including the ability to recognise increasing levels of involvement as initially peripheral partners or early career participants gain greater responsibility over time. In addition to incorporating new participants over time, it is useful to revisit the capacity of member organisations when there are changes in key personnel. There are limits to the ability to simply incorporate new partners, as those who joined CARIAA later found it difficult to understand the multiple activities, reporting requirements, and acronyms used by the existing participants. Staff recruitment and replacement became increasingly difficult over time, given the limited opportunity available to newcomers to shape the direction of the work and the need to use other people’s data.

A radical option would be to reconfigure the research consortia to address mounting issues related to size, complexity, and workload. Beyond the flexibility to more easily permit the entry and exit of partners, a programme could nurture collaborative subprojects as stand-alone entities. This would allow the consortia to scale down or reconfigure themselves to address their more unique activities and themes. For example, after CARIAA, cross-consortium work continued on topics such as how people adapt to exposure to heat stress in Asia, the implications of gender and social difference for adaptive capacity, and on the use of migration as an adaptation response. If the research consortia had continued, channelling such work into spinoff projects could have enabled the consortia to refocus on their research vision and on the topics on which they continued to have a more unique contribution, which in CARIAA included private sector adaptation, the barriers to adaptation, or broadening work within the same hotspots. Future research programmes need an ongoing ability to form, dissolve, and reform relationships, not only in creating and modifying collaborative spaces but extending to revisiting the initial formation of the research consortia.

This article describes the experience of the CARIAA programme which supported collaborative research examining regional environmental change across Africa and Asia. Evidence from surveys and focus group discussions with participants was used to make observations on the coordination of research consortia, incentives for collaborative research, and collaborative management at multiple levels. Each consortium assembled unique and complementary competencies of researchers, think tanks, non-governmental organisations, and government agencies. Each consortium tailored its own internal structure, field sites, and research activities. Participants appreciated investments made to establish and nurture teamwork yet faced competing demands on their time and experienced frustration when colleagues failed to deliver on their commitments in a timely fashion. Participants chose to join a consortium for the opportunity to conduct transdisciplinary research addressing the real-world challenge of climate change, to work across different geographical regions and with researchers across the world. Each consortium provided an avenue for scaling science into local and national policy processes and implementing adaptation options on the ground. Yet consortia needed to understand and respond to what motivates individuals and organisations, providing opportunities and recognition that contribute to participants’ diverse career paths and organisational interests. Nested committees provided coherence and autonomy at the programme, consortium, and activity level. Each level had some discretion to deploy funding and respond to emergent opportunities for collaboration. Multiple collaborative spaces enabled participants to work together on areas of common interest, increasing the number of connections within CARIAA as an inter-organisational network.

The experience of implementing CARIAA provides additional support for previous findings on managing collaborative research projects. Key among these are the need to ensure partner compatibility and collaborative working style and permitting flexible multi-level planning. Stepping beyond the established literature, the CARIAA experience offers insights on the design and implementation of future consortium-based research programmes: permit the networked structure within and among consortia to evolve as research activities and field sites are identified, as partners negotiate their respective roles, and collaborative spaces bring together different subsets of participants. Overcome barriers to collaboration by investing in structure, function, and leadership within and across research consortia. Recall that researchers choose to work with colleagues they trust, and with whom they devise practices and rules. Collaborative research is becoming increasingly commonplace and seeks to apply a transdisciplinary approach to real-world issues. At the same time, multi-consortium programmes require building partnerships to coordinate activities at a regional scale. Those that lead such large geographically dispersed teams need to utilise hard and soft systems to foster collaborative research that not only integrates across diverse theories and methods but connects diverse organisations.

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Acknowledgements

Marie-Eve Landry and Sarah Czunyi provided technical support for data curation and project administration.

This work was carried out with financial support from the Government of the United Kingdom - Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) and the International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, Canada.

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Currie-Alder, B., Cundill, G., Scodanibbio, L. et al. Managing collaborative research: insights from a multi-consortium programme on climate adaptation across Africa and South Asia. Reg Environ Change 20 , 117 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-020-01702-w

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List of Recent Awards

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Planning International Collaboration

University of Rochester, Fedchenko: Eco-Biography of a Glacier

Syracuse University, Taj of the Raj?: Decolonizing the Imperial Collections, Architecture, and Gardens of the Victoria Memorial Hall, Kolkata

Rutgers University, Unboxing Artificial Intelligence: An International Collaboration Bringing Humanities Perspectives to AI

University of Colorado, Empire of Correspondence

Emory University, Tango in the Humanities: Examining a Multidimensional Art Form Across Disciplinary and Geographic Boundaries

University of South Dakota, Philosophy and Money: A Historical and Interdisciplinary Consideration of Economies and Worldviews

Manuscript Preparation

Marquette University, Spanish Civil War and Visual Culture

Pennsylvania State University, Sovereign Kin: A History of the Cherokee Nation

Scholarly Digital Projects

Purdue University, Mapping London’s Theater Districts, 1576-1642

University of Arizona, Shared Churches in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1800

When you are ready to apply, register for an account with SAM.gov and  Grants.gov ; both are required. If you already have completed the registrations, make sure they are current. 

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Projects Funded by this Grant Program

Notre-Dame in Color 

Collaborative Humanitarian Protection Programme: project summary

A collection of summaries of research projects funded under the Collaborative Humanitarian Protection Programme.

Collaborative Humanitarian Protection Programme: project summary (PDF)

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This report represents a collection of summaries of research projects funded under the AHRC-FCDO funded Collaborative Humanitarian Protection Programme.

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Corporate lab by NTU, Alibaba to develop tech solutions to help Singapore firms be greener

SINGAPORE - More technology-based solutions will be unlocked to solve real-world problems and help companies be more sustainable with the launch of a new corporate lab that will bring together up to 200 scientists and engineers from the public and private sectors.

The project by Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and Alibaba Group aims to drive collaboration between industry and public sector researchers.

Called the Alibaba-NTU Global e-Sustainability CorpLab, or Angel, it was launched on Sept 12 by Deputy Prime Minister and National Research Foundation (NRF) chairman Heng Swee Keat. NRF is also supporting the new corporate lab.

DPM Heng said in his speech at the launch: “Corporate labs like this one have an important role in Singapore’s research, innovation and enterprise ecosystem.

“By bringing like-minded research and enterprise partners together, they develop new breakthroughs and actionable solutions that can be brought to market.”

He added: “The work done at the Angel corporate lab sits at the intersection of two of the biggest transformations of our time – the digital revolution and the green transition. Just as the future of sustainability will be artificial intelligence (AI)-driven, the future of computing must also be greener.”

He noted that AI technologies can help reduce emissions from optimising energy grids to developing sustainable supply chains. AI models can also analyse environmental data, identify areas for improvement, and enable more efficient, data-driven decision making.

However, digitalisation itself could leave a significant carbon footprint, he said.

Hence, Angel will look into developing and trialling new digital technologies that prioritise sustainable ecosystems and lifestyles. This is especially vital as the global use of AI technologies is expected to increase and drive up the power demand of data centres.

Projects will include tackling key environmental issues such as reducing carbon emissions in supply chains, promoting environmentally friendly behaviour and advancing healthcare models for an ageing population, NTU and Alibaba said in a statement.

The collaboration between the two organisations will span over five years, and will see a joint team of up to 200 scientists and engineers working together to advance global research efforts in 10 areas.

These areas include energy-efficient AI algorithms, green cloud computing, sustainability standards and metrics, sustainable living and digital technologies for ageing and health.

NTU president Professor Ho Teck Hua said: “Our new corporate lab will pave the way for users to gain access and benefit from AI-powered applications at lower costs while ensuring sustainable computing growth for future generations.”

He noted that NTU has also set up joint labs with global powerhouses like Rolls-Royce, Continental and Delta Electronics, including leading Singapore multinationals like Singtel and ST Engineering.

Mr Wu Zeming, Alibaba Group’s chief technology officer, said: “Global demand for green technologies provides ample business opportunities. Looking ahead, Angel will play a pivotal role in driving technological breakthroughs for sustainable digital innovations and unlocking commercialisation opportunities with innovative business models, bringing value beyond business – ultimately contributing to a better, more sustainable world.”

Angel will have two key research pillars in green technologies and sustainable lifestyles.

Under green technologies, it will focus on developing technologies that are more sustainable and make smart digital technologies readily available to businesses, including small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

For sustainable lifestyles, Angel will use digital technologies to empower consumers and SMEs to adopt more sustainable options.

For example, e-commerce platforms can promote eco-conscious behaviours by suggesting energy-efficient appliances, reusable products, or green delivery options, NTU and Alibaba said.

The corporate lab will also focus on nurturing a pipeline of talents for Singapore by developing trained staff who will be proficient in technical skills and in good sustainable development practices, they added.

NTU’s vice-president for industry, Professor Lam Khin Yong, added: “Industry-academia collaborations are vital for driving innovation, and sustainable development.

“This collaboration prepares our students to tackle 21st-century challenges. We are excited to combine our strengths in research and technology, with a particular focus on green technologies and the promotion of sustainable lifestyles, all aimed at fostering a healthier, greener society.”

Mr Chris Tung, Alibaba Group president for strategic development, said: “Together, we aim to enhance our smart technology solutions and collaboratively create innovative, future-ready solutions that will make a significant impact.”

The new lab also aligns with the university’s sustainability goals. NTU aims to develop sustainable innovations and achieve carbon neutrality by 2035.

Singapore currently has more than 20 corporate labs across institutions, DPM Heng noted.

He said: “Singapore hopes to serve as a pathfinder, enabling partners from all over the world to leverage our ecosystem and develop solutions that can be scaled regionally and globally.”

He also encouraged more companies to deepen collaborations with universities and research institutions, especially in critical areas like the digital economy and sustainability.

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Prof Vijay Subramanian awarded $7.5M MURI to rethink game theory in dynamic environments

The interactions of today’s world are increasingly complex, as humans regularly interface with semi- and fully-autonomous artificial intelligence (AI) systems. Michigan is taking the lead on improving our understanding, and predicting the outcomes, of these interactions through a $7.5M, five year Multidisciplinary University Research Initiatives (MURI) called New Game Theory for New Agents: Foundations and Learning Algorithms for Decision-Making Mixed-Agents.

“There are lots of different agents that are interacting, including the usual players––humans––which could be big entities, like corporations, governments, or other institutions,” explained Vijay Subramanian , associate professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and project director. “But in today’s world, we have these new AI agents as well. What we want to understand is: how do these computational agents interact?”

Game theory models how individuals strategize and make decisions, either collaboratively or competitively. Each player should attempt to maximize their progress toward an individual or shared goal, using the information available to them. This information could include the rules of the game––such as in poker, Go, or trading in the stock market––as well as any knowledge about the other players’ goals or intentions. When none of the players can improve their outcomes by changing their decisions alone, the game has reached a state called equilibrium.

Over several decades, researchers in economics, mathematics, computer science,  engineering, and even biology have developed game theory to predict the outcomes and equilibria of various scenarios. Now, AI systems are overtaking humans in their ability to quickly handle and process huge amounts of data, adding an element of the unknown into these assessments.

Our goal is to transcend existing theory and develop new theory that can address this mixture of autonomous, semi-autonomous, algorithmic, and human agents. Vijay Subramanian

“The existing theory makes very stringent assumptions on the computing or reasoning capabilities of agents––and the AI agents that I mentioned need not have all of those,” said Subramanian. “Our goal is to transcend that and develop new theory that can address this mixture of autonomous, semi-autonomous, algorithmic, and human agents.”

If the research team can predict the outcomes of interactions that involve AI agents, they can design environments and projects to be carried out more efficiently and accurately.

One real-world example of a scenario that would benefit from this type of analysis is the rescue and cleanup operations in a disaster zone––say, after an earthquake or airstrike. In a modern disaster zone, humans may work together with robots to clear debris from the area and provide medical care to injured survivors. 

“In this case, those robots are AI agents, but they get signals from and have to follow the humans. And the humans have to react to these agents as well,” Subramanian said. “It’s important to understand how such systems would perform and come up with an algorithm to get the system to achieve your goals.”

“You will have some agents that are more capable and some that are less capable,” he added, “Can the more capable agents direct the systems toward achieving their objectives more often?”

In addition to the complexities introduced by the presence of multiple types of agents, the players must anticipate or react to any environmental changes produced by their actions. For example, in the context of rescue and cleanup operations in a disaster zone, as the area is cleared, it may become easier for humans and robots to move around; conversely, further obstacles could be created by falling debris that restricts movement or alters the number of workers.

These types of complex scenarios have presented challenges to existing game theory. Subramanian’s team aims to bring together the many years of game theory development that incorporate dynamic settings with the mixed capabilities of today’s AI agents.

Other examples of modern multi-agent systems include combatting poachers ; assessing the likelihood of and thereafter preventing systemic failures in the financial system, like the Great Depression (1930s) and the Great Recession (2000s); and deploying fleets of automated cars.

“We are thinking of the methodology being composed of three core components,” Subramanian said, “Agents have to form the models of each other, the environment, and themselves. Based on that, we have to create algorithms that estimate those models and make decisions. And thereafter, we must understand what the outcomes result in. These three things together predict equilibria––their interplay will determine what happens in the game.”

These steps happen in a loop, helping the researchers predict the outcomes of their modeled scenarios. If the outcome doesn’t satisfy their goals, they can change the algorithms, the communication between agents, or the incentives to direct the result toward preferred configurations.

The research will be conducted with MURI collaborators Dirk Bergemann (Yale University), Avrim Blum (Toyota Technological Institute Chicago), Rahul Jain (University of Southern California), Elchanan Mossel (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Milind Tambe (Harvard University), Omer Tamuz (California Institute of Technology), and Eva Tardos (Cornell University).

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90 day fiancé: jamal reveals shocking new collaboration with kim menzies after the single life.

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20 Best Reality TV Shows Right Now

The golden bachelor's theresa nist attempts to make heartbreaker gerry turner jealous with impressive workout routine, big brother 26 week 8 power of veto ceremony results (spoilers).

90 Day: The Single Life star Jamal Menzies has unveiled a jaw-dropping video featuring his mom Kim Menzies and the “ 90 Day Bad Boys .” Kim from San Diego was introduced in 90 Day Fiancé: Before the 90 Days season 5 as the lovestruck fangirl of Usman “Sojaboy” Umar . While Kim and Usman’s love story didn’t work out, Kim’s son Jamal won hearts in the few scenes he was featured in, and it was enough for him to get a chance to romance Veronica Rodriguez on Single Life . Unfortunately, Jamal ruined his reputation with his arrogant attitude on the show.

Surprisingly, Jamal Menzies is being praised for including his mom, Kim Menzies, in his latest parody video with friends Josh Weinstein and Rob Warne.

Jamal shocked 90 Day Fiancé fans when he posted a video featuring Kim with him and the “ 90 Day Bad Boys ” Josh and Rob as they parodied “You’re The One That I Want” from Grease . Kim, dressed in all black, effortlessly played the part of Olivia Newton-John’s Sandy Olsson and asked Josh to “ shape up ” because she needed “ a man. ” While Josh and Rob wooed Kim with their best John Travolta impressions, Jamal jokingly made a disgusted face and watched his mom from the sidelines. The video brought a smile to everyone watching, including cast members.

What Jamal & Kim Menzies’ New Collaboration Means

Will the "90 day bad boys" get their own spin-off.

Jamal, Josh, and Rob are an odd trio who first bonded when they attended an event in Texas in April 2024. The meet and greet was a success and their playboy reputation in the franchise made fans call them the “ bad boys ” who were looking for trouble. Interestingly, it wasn’t the last time that the three were spotted together. The first time might have been work-related, but Jamal, Josh, and Rob soon started hanging out more often and even going on vacations. They outdid themselves by parodying Boyz II Men for a hilarious Instagram Reel in July 2024.

Reality TV is more popular than ever. With so many to choose from, here are some of the best reality TV shows to stream or watch right now.

Jamal, Josh, and Rob even collaborated with Jovi Dufren for one of their recent videos. However, when it comes to Kimberly, who is their biggest supporter from day 1, things get a little different. Jamal only got his big 90 Day Fiancé break because of Kimberly, and he’s now a prominent cast member. He’s frequently seen on Pillow Talk when he’s not breaking hearts on The Single Life. Kim and Jamal along with the “ 90 Day Bad Boys ” make a great team, and nothing’s stopping the network from roping them in for a special musical spin-off .

Our Take On 90 Day Bad Boys’ New Video

Jamal appreciates what his mom did for his career.

The franchise has always loved to innovate. What started as a show about international brides coming to the U.S. on a K-1 visa has branched out in so many different directions, with more than 20 spin-offs. “ 90 Day Bad Boys ” shows how the cast members consider themselves to be each other’s family and hang out with each other, irrespective of what their storylines are like, making them look less like the “ villains ” they are. Jamal may have crushed Veronica’s heart on 90 Day: The Single Life , but when it comes to his friends and mom, he is the star.

90 Day Fiancé: Before The 90 Days airs Sundays at 8 p.m. EDT on TLC.

Source: 90 Day Bad Boys /Instagram

90 Day: The Single Life

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90 Day: The Single Life is one of TLC's many spinoffs of 90 Day Fiancé . In this companion show, singles are pulled back into the dating world after their previous relationships ended in disaster. The Single Life follows couples as they start relationships with new people but struggle to move on from past romantic partners completely.

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