Moving research into action to address compounding global crises

We need great science to help lead us out of the compounding crises emerging from conflict, intensifying natural disasters, deepening inequalities and the rapid expansion of digital technologies — to name just a few — and towards the sustainable and inclusive world envisioned by IDRC’s Strategy 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The best science is rooted in local solutions. Too often, tremendous research results don’t find their way into the hands of the people who can put them into action.

At IDRC, we champion applied, localized research and encourage local innovation to solve pressing development challenges. We recognize the power of working with others to drive positive change. And we respect the fact that those experiencing a challenge are best placed to identify and implement the solution.

We are reinvigorating this approach, built over more than 50 years as a research-for-development funder, by strengthening our commitment to increase the impact of the research we fund, including by working with our research partners to ensure their work is positioned for use. 

Our direction 

What do we mean when we say that we need to do more to move research into action? As funders, we have a responsibility to help create the conditions that enable research uptake and use. The research teams we fund in the Global South play a leading role in positioning their research for use by those who can apply it to advance development outcomes. This reflects our belief that to be effective, development solutions must be informed by Southern perspectives and expertise. We must enable increased uptake and use by prioritizing locally led research, understanding how and why research is used in different contexts and adapting our funding processes to better involve knowledge users in the research. 

What this means in practice 

We are taking several tangible steps, based on experience, to better position the research we fund to achieve impact. These steps include localizing knowledge translation, investing in learning from the experiences of moving research into action and adapting our funding processes to better enable researchers and knowledge users to work together.

Localizing knowledge translation  

Knowledge translation is the process of moving research-generated evidence into action, including policy changes, improved practices, product development or behaviour change. Knowledge translation strategies and tactics must be appropriate for different outcomes and contexts. IDRC is not prescriptive about what these strategies should look like. Rather, in assessing proposals for funding, we ask critical questions to ensure the proposed resources (such as time, personnel and budgets) are suitable for achieving research use and desired outcomes. We support our research partners to define, adjust and navigate research-into-action efforts based on their knowledge and experience. 

Localization is fundamental across knowledge production and use. Its importance was highlighted in a July 2023 Perspectives article by Roula El-Rifai, a senior program specialist with our Democratic Inclusive Governance team, in which she argued that localizing knowledge production is the only way to support workable solutions to development challenges.  

Investing equally in local knowledge production and use is key to achieving real-world impact. And we need to continue enabling our research partners to build and work in multidisciplinary networks that integrate feminist and intersectional approaches. For policy, practice and behaviour changes to be effective and sustainable, it’s critical that they be representative and inclusive.

For example, as part of the initial application procedure for the Climate Adaptation and Resilience (CLARE) initiative jointly funded by IDRC and the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, interested research teams had to clearly describe the impact pathway of their proposed project, in line with the Adaptation Research for Impact Principles. Proposals had to explain how the research questions were needs-driven and solutions-oriented, as well as spell out approaches to knowledge co-production and transdisciplinary engagement in the formulation of research questions, the choice of research methods and the selection of outputs. Proposals identified specific windows of opportunity for impact on policy and/or practice, and how the project was positioned to seize those opportunities. Importantly, the reviews assessed whether the resources proposed were appropriate for supporting the planned impact pathway.

Investing in, and learning from, ‘research-on-research use’ 

We are committed to evidence-based approaches to actionable research. We will contribute to the science of ‘research use’, including through commissioning research and documenting lessons from our practice for the benefit of development broadly.

Organized under the Transforming Evidence Funders Network, public and private funders are convening to advance a research agenda on research use, seeking to unite pockets of academic scholarship across disciplines, regions and policy sectors to achieve greater field-level impact. Given that we ourselves fund research across disciplines and regions, IDRC is well placed to invest in more research to advance the broad fields of knowledge translation and scaling science.

Scaling is an important supplement to knowledge translation, moving beyond identifying intended knowledge users in a specific context (beyond the original project boundaries) to requiring researchers and innovators to consider the full range of initiators, enablers, competitors and impacted stakeholders who will support or hinder downstream results. IDRC programs not only work to scale the positive impacts of innovation, but we have also been carefully studying how scaling unfolds. A Scaling Playbook (available on our website) draws on this learning to help researchers put their scaling intentions into action.

Adapting our funding processes 

Evidence suggests that research co-produced with users and beneficiaries can enable more innovative and relevant science, improve research quality and result in better impact. While the concept goes by many names (e.g., integrated knowledge translation, engaged research, research-practice partnerships), we use ‘co-production’ as an umbrella term for collaborative models where researchers work on equal ground with those who can use or benefit from the research to generate knowledge in partnership.

A recent call to funders highlights the promise of co-production to make progress on pressing global issues. The call recognizes the important role funders play in resourcing research ecosystems and notes that funders are uniquely positioned to incentivize problem-solving approaches that involve those closest to the problem. A study on knowledge translation in the Global South also recommends that funders create more space for the co-production of research and change agendas. To be more systematic in how we incentivize and support co-production, we developed an approach for designing, managing and evaluating collaborative research called Research Quality Plus for Co-Production, which specifically prioritizes meaningful researcher-knowledge user partnerships throughout research design, research conduct and the sharing of research findings.

For example, when IDRC and Global Affairs Canada designed the Scaling Care Innovations in Africa initiative, a two-stage call for proposals allowed shortlisted applicants to benefit from small grants and additional time to cement project partnerships and co-design research agendas. We are also investing more intentionally in organizations and networks that link knowledge producers and users. The Step Change initiative, co-funded with the Government of the Netherlands, aims to strengthen the capacity of climate knowledge brokers to support locally led adaptation. It takes the position that an all-of-society response is needed to accelerate equitable and locally led adaptation to climate change, and that many forms of knowledge are needed, including practical, policy, scientific, local and Indigenous knowledge.

Our goal 

By investing intentionally and systematically in moving research into action, we intend to create positive change in research-for-development practice and contribute to development outcomes in support of the SDGs. We will do this by prioritizing the generation and use of locally led research, understanding how and why research-generated evidence is used in specific contexts and adapting our funding processes to better engage knowledge users.

To achieve our Strategy 2030 goal of contributing to a more sustainable and inclusive world, we need to focus on how we fund research as much as on what we fund. By co-producing research with users and beneficiaries, investing more systematically in moving research into action and giving greater priority to scaling the positive impacts of research, we can, collectively, support impact-driven science in ways that will help address and overcome compounding global crises.