On 11 April 2022, GFAR together with KFPE (Swiss Commission for Research Partnerships with Developing Countries)  facilitated an online discussion among key players of the global research and innovation systems focusing on how to measure and evaluate the quality of partnerships to enhance research and innovation processes inclusively and fairly. 

The workshop brought together a selected number of institutions and organizations concerned by the need to evaluate the quality of research partnerships, as a key factor affecting the success of collaborative research endeavours.

The workshop acknowledged that there is a lack of systematized and formalized procedures to carry out the assessment of partnerships, and that this constituted an urgent challenge to the effectiveness of the multistakeholder-based projects and programmes. The participants reviewed the main factors that challenge the development of criteria and measures to appreciate the partnership dynamics and identified a set of key criteria that need to be considered to put in place qualitative measurement systems. Among these, prominence was given to balancing the power of actors involved in the research, to fairness and transparency issues.

GFAR and KFPE will further develop and refine these criteria, drawing also on previous work carried out and other pioneer experiences in this domain, towards generating a collectively agreed upon quality standard that could be used as an international reference to assess partnership quality.   

Watch the full recording of the workshop