An actor-specific guideline for quality assurance in transdisciplinary research

Transdisciplinarity has a long tradition – both in terms of academic discourse and research practice. The proliferation of transdisciplinary research (TDR) has, however, only progressed moderately up until now. The main reason for this is the lack of a generally accepted quality standard for TDR. In addition to meeting the quality standards of excellence of ‘normal science’, TDR is supposed to respond to a variety of societal demands. Establishing a quality standard that incorporates these requirements would only be possible in the long-term as it calls for far reaching changes on both an institutional level as well as that of science as a whole. Building up a practice of quality assurance in TDR today lays the necessary foundation to bring about such changes. The aim of this paper is to present a ready-to-use quality guideline which we intend will contribute to that foundation. The guideline is customized to such TDR that aims to bring specific knowledge to bear on policy issues relating to sustainable development. The guideline addresses three groups of actors: researchers, program mangers or donors and policymakers. It shows these actors what they can do specifically to assure the quality of the transdisciplinary research process. 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. * Corresponding author at: ISOE-Institute for Social-Ecological Research, Hamburger Allee 45, 60486 Frankfurt/Main, Germany. Tel.: +49 69 707 69 19 0; fax: +49 69 707 69 19 11. E-mail address: [email protected] (T. Jahn).