Research communication and uptake

The true test of research is whether people use it – for reference, for influence, and most importantly, for change.  DFID funds cutting-edge research across a wide variety of development topics. We believe that this knowledge should be made available, accessible and useable in order to bring about the most effective kind of development that is based on evidence.

We recognise that policy-making processes are complex and research is just one of many competing influences. We think that it is important therefore, to encourage researchers to be strategic and purposeful in the ways that they try to communicate their research. And we help to bridge the gaps in information flows between national and international researchers and policymakers, in order to encourage the use of research.

Communication between academics, development policy makers, international media and international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) is generally weak. Very few developing countries have well connected research communities and many national researchers are cut off from international debates. Therefore we support international networks which promote the communication and use of evidence in international development. 

We are committed to research that is Open Access, meaning that the full text of any articles, technical reports and conference proceedings that are produced by DFID-funded researchers, should be fully accessible to all audiences and not only in  academic journals. Public access to research data is vital and the distribution of research results should be a central component of any research. 

DFID supports a broad range of programmes that aim to address the above commitment. These include support to organisations that synthesise and communicate research to different audiences, that test the use of different media to communicate research, and that look at ways to engage researchers, the media and policy makers. For example, these include:

• The Supporting Science journalism in the developing world (SjCOOP) programme provides training and mentoring of science journalists, helps establish national and regional science journalists associations and builds relationships between scientists and the media for more effective reporting of science and research in developing countries. 
• SciDev.Net: a leading online resource for news and analysis about science and technology of relevance to the developing world which had 1.67 million visitors in 2010. The team also provide support to science communicators and researchers within developing countries.
• DFID’s Research for Development portal (R4D) provides free, open access to more than 30,000 DFID-funded research documents and project information, and 3,000 researchers and research organisations working across all development sectors around the world. 
• The Programme for the Enhancement of Research Information (PERii) works with an international network of researchers, editors, publishers, librarians, and policy makers to improve access to information needed by researchers to conduct research and publish results. It helps developing countries to directly negotiate with publishers for low cost or free access to more than 45,000 academic journals and supports researchers from developing countries to write, publish and communicate their work. It is operational in more than 80 countries throughout Africa, Asia and Latin America.

We also aim to practice what we preach internally within DFID.  We have dedicated in-house evidence brokers to synthesise the best of global research evidence and share key findings with staff in the UK and in our country offices and have also commissioned a series of international development systematic reviews.  We are serious about using evidence in our decision-making and are taking steps to enable staff to appraise and use evidence in all that we do.