Convergent evolution: the academic and policy roots of collaborative research.

Research, for all its claims to objectivity, cannot sit outside the inuence of broader systems of norms and rules. For instance, the rise in popular credibility of opinion polls, deliberative dialogues and other new techniques of consultation to measure public values and beliefs, happened in counterpoint to the decline in both the credibility and feasibility of elected representatives performing this function. As the daily dynamic of interactions among individuals, groups and institutions gradually changes societal systems of rules and norms, so too does the research process change and accommodate accordingly. Some authors have recently argued that we have reached a sea-change in science and technology with the accumulation of these accommodations.1,2 We have created a fundamental breakdown in the old differentiation of science experts from deferential non-experts. There is now a different and necessarily more cooperative relationship, they argue, between researchers, practitioners and lay persons in the production of scientiŽ c knowledge. A common trend in these scholarly works is the idea that research and knowledge production processes in society are evolving and departing from a monolithic and isolated view of science. Research and science have become contested terrain where multiple approaches and perspectives are legitimate and must learn to coexist. Such evolution blurs the frontiers between researchers, practitioners and citizens and pushes toward more interactions among these groups. This leads to an almost inevitable interest in collaborative research or partnerships in research. It is not easy to deŽne collaborative research precisely. As with any emerging trend, it can be related to different intellectual traditions. For the sake of this collection of papers, we deŽ ned collaborative research as a deliberate set of interactions and processes designed speciŽ cally to bring together those who study societal problems and issues (researchers) with those who act on or within those societal problems and issues (decision-makers, practitioners, citizens). Collaborative research implies the involvement of non-researchers in the conduct of research but excludes partnership when it is just for funding or access to research sites. In this context it is not necessarily, although often it is practically, multidisciplinary collaboration. Elsewhere the term ‘ongoing linkage and exchange’ has been used to describe the trend.3 The motivations of those engaged in collaborative research are multiple: