Background: Academic researchers are occupying more varied roles as both knowledge producers and knowledge brokers in policymaking spaces beyond the national level. As the local arena presents different dimensions to the knowledge-policy-practice nexus, an assessment of the interaction of evidence and policy at this scale is warranted. Aims and…

Collaborative projects designed to generate research evidence involve knowledge exchange (KE) which hinges on the expectations and practices within the collaborating organisations. Existing literature about academic-police collaborations, and why they break down, has largely focused on different knowledge agendas, research timeframes and…

Background: Oman has prioritised enhanced efforts for supporting evidence-informed policymaking (EIPM), including establishing a knowledge translation department in the Omani Ministry of Health (MOH). Aim and objective: Our aim was to gather insights to guide the process of activating this department. Methods: We conducted a document review and…

Organising and participating in Knowledge Exchange (KE) events represent a considerable commitment by social science academics. Yet academics' participation in KE activities is not professionally rewarded as are other academic endeavours, so why do they do it? Understanding academics' perspectives regarding their own motivations for engaging in KE…

Background: Timely access to relevant and trustworthy research findings is an important facilitator of research use. But the relational aspects of evidence generation, mobilisation and use have been insufficiently explored. Aims and objectives: Our aim is to describe the strategic communicative and relational work of two intermediary organisations…

Background: Fuse was established in 2008 as one of five public health research centres of excellence in the UK funded by the UK Clinical Research Centres collaboration. The centre works across five universities in the North East of England. This is an innovative collaboration and enables the pooling of research expertise. A prime focus of the…

Civil society organisations increasingly mediate the creation and exchange of evidence in their activities with policy-makers and practitioners. This article extends knowledge on evidence in policy-making settings to civil society contexts. As an exploratory and qualitative study, it shows how nine UK-based organisations working on issues…

The Cultural Exchange Inventory (CEI) is a 15-item instrument designed to measure the process (7 items) and outcomes (8 items) of exchanges of knowledge, attitudes and practices between members of different organisations collaborating in implementing evidence-based practice. We conducted principal axis factor analyses and parallel analyses of data…

This article investigates the role of locally based research and development units (R&Ds) focusing on health and social services. Nearly 300 local R&Ds are funded by the Swedish government with the intention to facilitate knowledge transfer and development of high quality and effective health and social care organisations. Based on…

Calls for evidence-based policy often fail to recognise the fundamentally political nature of policy making. Policy makers must identify, evaluate and utilise evidence to solve policy problems in the face of competing priorities and political agendas. Evidence should inform but cannot determine policy choices. This paper draws on theories of…

Expectations for impacts from research create demand for effective knowledge exchange between academic and non-academic settings. This complex process may be facilitated by "knowledge intermediaries." Learning from evaluation can advance recognition of their diverse roles and enhance these interactive relationships connecting research,…

Health system managers and policy makers need timely access to high quality, policy-relevant systematic reviews. Our objectives were to obtain managers' and policy makers' feedback about user-friendly summaries of systematic reviews and about tools related to supporting or assessing their use. Our interviews identified that participants prefer key…

This paper considers the different approaches to undertake knowledge exchange between academia and the third sector from three practitioner perspectives. London South Bank University (LSBU), as part of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and Third Sector Research Centre (TSRC) Social Enterprise Capacity Building Cluster (CBC), has been…