RFI Reporting

Developing International Standards for Research Partnerships

If you are engaged in any field of collaborative research and innovation, if you are committed to fairness and transparency, to international development and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, to increasing efficiency and effectiveness of your own research and innovation partnerships, then the Research Fairness Initiative is for you.

The Research Fairness Initiative is a tool to high quality institutional reporting on measures and conditions that promotes fair research partnerships. It encourages all stakeholders in research and innovation to describe what is done within their organisation to promote fair partnerships and how they can imp.

Through our extensive global consultative process, we have identified 15 key areas of relevance to effective and lasting partnerships. The RFI acknowledges that successful partnerships often start at personal level but are then continued at institutional or national levels. While mutual admiration, respect and friendship are essential to create the foundation of effective partnerships – it is the institutional and national dimensions of research collaboration that define how, ultimately, benefits are shared.

For example, although two highly successful collaborating researchers may wish to equally share Intellectual Property Rights or Overhead Costs or even the position of Project Director – it is their home institutions, their funders or shareholders that create the conditions for collaboration.  These may help or hinder collaboration. But it is here where the RFI aims to create transparency, learning and benchmarking.

We further detail the 15 areas for reporting in our documents available here. These areas are grouped in three categories: measures and conditions that promote fairness:

• BEFORE Research happens – ‘Fairness of Opportunity’
• DURING Research – ‘Fair Process’
• AFTER Research – ‘Fair Benefit Sharing’