As an applied research agency, Forest Research has a unique bridging role between the research community, policymakers and land managers. Effective knowledge exchange and research impact are critical to our purpose, ensuring our activities makes a difference and providing a rationale for our work and the basis of our contracts with key customers.
We have learnt much in recent years about going beyond one-way communication (or knowledge transfer) and engaging throughout the research process to ensure our outputs are accessible and useful, and ultimately make a positive contribution to the environment, economy, and society.
Knowledge Exchange and Impact Strategy
We have a new Knowledge Exchange and Impact Strategy, structured around three broad themes.
- Stakeholder engagement – to ensure our stakeholders can interact effectively with us to improve the quality, relevance, uptake and impact of our research.
We have Knowledge Exchange and Impact Plans for all core-funded projects and programmes, a successful new Forest Science Seminar series, and run regular thematic workshops where research findings can be interpreted, and their implications discussed with policy colleagues.
- Research capability – to ensure research disciplines and teams work together and have the capacity to deliver high-quality, relevant outputs.
We collaborate with land managers and the public, through citizen science, reporting pests and diseases, forest monitoring, testing decision-support tools and facilitating networks of practitioners to share insights from innovation.
- Evaluation and learning – to elicit feedback from our customers and other stakeholders to monitor, evaluate and communicate our impact.
This ensures that together we identify and respond to new opportunities to support innovation, resilience and delivery across the sector. We have prepared case studies to highlight our impacts, understand their causes and identify lessons for the future.
Each theme has a set of principles that we adhere to, allowing us to approach new opportunities and challenges effectively. Each also has a set of actions, or priorities for implementation
The themes, principles and actions are in line with established standards and guidance for knowledge exchange and research impact, including the Knowledge Exchange Concordat used by many UK universities, and the Science and Innovation Strategy (SIS) for Forestry in GB which guides our core-funded research programmes Core research programmes 2021-26 – Forest Research. Our own expertise in this field has also shaped them.
We aim to further improve our user experience through these actions. Our ambition is to strengthen and maintain Forest Research’s position at the heart of the forestry and environmental sectors – informing, advising, training, facilitating and collaborating with partners to address the climate and biodiversity crises and other challenges we face together.
For previous research that informed our Knowledge Exchange and Impact Strategy see: Integrating research for policy and practice.
For further information, contact Dr David Edwards
