Research Partnerships: Forms and Types of Partnerships

November, 2025
By Urs Wiesmann (CDE, University of Bern)

The six principles of this Guide basically apply to all Global Research Partnerships. The challenges and complexity of their application strongly depend on the concrete partnership at hand. It is therefore advisable to explicitly consider the type and form of a partnership at an early stage of a research endeavour. This will enable to concretize the general six principles into tailored measures and action.

The following seven dimensions may be useful in characterizing your research partnership and will help in concretizing and weighing the principles in view of an effective, equitable, and impactful collaboration.

1. Expected added value of a research partnership

Global research partnerships are meaningful when the involved partners can expect significant added value from their collaboration. The added value may thereby refer to (1) findings, results, and changed perspectives, (2) technologies and methodologies, (3) capacities and career opportunities, (4) exposure e.g. to broader research communities, or (5) contextual and institutional access.

• Explicitly addressing the expected added values among the partners and acknowledging respective differences will significantly contribute to the adaptation and concretization of the six principles, in particular principles 1 (Set the agenda together) and 3 (Specify roles and responsibilities).

2. Complexity of the disciplinary composition

Research partnerships can vary in relation to their disciplinary composition, ranging from disciplinary to transdisciplinary. Although all principles basically apply to all compositions the challenges of their application vary and increase with disciplinary complexity.

• In disciplinary or multidisciplinary endeavours research partnerships are mainly based on complementarities in competences or in access to means and transfer channels. Special attention has therefore to be drawn on principles 1 (Set the agenda together) and 3 (Specify roles and responsibilities).
• Additionally, complementarities in modes of knowledge production and the bridging of basic paradigms play a role in interdisciplinary efforts. In these cases, special attention has additionally to be put on principle 4 (Promote mutual learning) and 6 (Build long-term and trust-based partnerships).
• Transdisciplinary approaches become necessary when issues or problems are addressed that include conflicting societal stakes and are highly value loaded. In these cases, principles 5 (Share and apply results) and 2 (Manage power dynamics) additionally become very important and pose complex challenges which deserve being continuously addressed throughout the research endeavour.

3. Intensity of science-society links

The intensity of science-society links in a research partnership endeavour can range from purely communicating research results (e.g. in specialized basic research) to complex and recursive interactions with multiple levels of societies and stakeholders (e.g. in transdisciplinary research for sustainable development).

• A higher intensity of the science society links increases the complexity and challenges of applying the six principles of global research partnerships. This is especially true for principle 1 (Set the agenda together) where stakeholders must be involved from the onset of the research, and for principle 5 (Share and apply results) where continuous communication and feedback must be built into the research endeavour.
• But also, principles 2 (Manage power dynamics) and 4 (Promote mutual learning) pose specific challenges due to the competing reference systems of the research community and the concerned stakeholders to which partners are exposed.

4. Conflicting basic goals

Research partnerships usually strive for the basic goals of performing innovative research, of contributing to capacity development, and of generating societal relevance and impact. Thereby the implicit assumption is that high-quality research leads to high relevance and is accompanied by significant capacity development. This assumption does not hold as the three basic goals are conflicting:

Whereas high quality research has to deal with the ‘unknown’ at the forefront of knowledge and aims at findings that can be generalised, capacity development requires concentration on consolidated knowledge and methodologies, and societal relevance and impact demand concretely contextualised knowledge and innovations. In addition, research and capacity development tend to focus on understanding processes and dynamics in the sense of systems knowledge, whereas society expects answers on what can be done and therefore demands increased target and especially transformation knowledge.

• Explicitly negotiating the importance and weight of these basic goals of a research endeavour is essential for the concretization and application of principles 1 (Set the agenda together), 4 (Promote mutual learning) and 5 (Share and apply results).
• The conflicts and trade-offs between the basic goals can also be addressed within principle 3 (Specify roles and responsibilities) or they can lead to a strong emphasis on principle 6 (Build long-term partnerships ) by e.g. combining single partnership projects that are limited in scope, time and means into a programmatic sequence that addresses all basic gaols. This can be an important step in research partnerships that reduce the influence of the single funders because the partners jointly take more responsibility for a long-term programmatic engagement.

5. Weight of institutional stakes

The home institutions of the research partners may have a broad range of specific stakes and interests in the partnership-based research endeavour, e.g. in terms of capacity development, infrastructure development, financial contributions, quantity of scientific output, scientific supervision, timing of research, publicity etc. In addition, funding institutions and non-academic partner institutions also may have similar stakes. All these stakes are not directly related to the core agenda of the research endeavour, but they set frames of conditions for the work in the research partnership. The weight of these stakes and conditions may vary significantly from just setting general rules to imposing strongly action-guiding or even restricting conditions.

• It is very useful to explicitly address and mutually share the institutional stakes that the research partners are exposed to and to establish what weight they will have in the research partnership. These clarifications will help to concretize the application of all six principles and are especially important for principles 2 (Manage power dynamics) and 3 (Specify roles and responsibilities).
• The institutional stakes that refer to research content or methodologies deserve special attention as they may conflict with thrusts and goals of the research endeavour. Typical examples are specific content expectations by (private) funders or scientific stakes and orders by supervisors who are not directly part of the research team. These aspects must be considered when applying principle 1 (Set the agenda together) and 4 (Promote mutual learning).

6. Degree of power asymmetry

The ideal case of equally empowered partners joining forces in a research endeavour is seldomly the case. Instead, research partnerships are normally faced by multiple asymmetries of powers, e.g. related to means and human resources, infrastructure, scientific competence and methodologies, contextual competences and access, scientific and social networks, externally assigned formal responsibilities, or to being initiator of the research endeavour.

• When applying principle 2 (Manage power dynamics) it is very helpful to explicitly name and discuss the multiple dimensions and degrees of power asymmetries at an early stage of the endeavour. This will enable to develop practices and operational rules that counterbalance purely power-driven practice, that are carried by mutual trust and respect, and that enable harnessing the full innovative potential of the research partnership.
• Especially critical are cases where one partner is assigned the formal responsibility for the content and finances of an endeavour, e.g. by the funding agency. Without countermeasures and a good level of (self-)reflectivity this may lead to attitudes such as ‘I have the formal responsibility, so I have the final say’. The danger of this largely destructive power-driven attitude must be addressed in the operational rules developed in principle 3 (Specify roles and responsibilities) and must be counterbalanced when concretizing and applying principle 1 (Set the agenda together) and 4 (Promote mutual learning).

7. Perspective of gradual development

Research partnerships usually start in relation to a single research project with clear objectives and a limited time span. If the collaboration is successful, they may develop into more long-term networks for exchange and collaboration, or into larger research programmes. Thereby, research partnerships can evolve into long-term alliances in which research agendas are jointly and pro-actively promoted, and successive initiatives can be launched based on shared goals and commitment and thus increase the relevance and impact of joint research efforts.

• It is meaningful to discuss and evaluate at an early stage if the research partnership at hand is primarily limited to the current project or if it is committed to principle 6 (Build long-term partnerships). In case of such a commitment, measures enabling long-term perspectives should be built into the application of all the other five principles. Especially important and challenging are thereby principle 1 (Set the agenda together) and 4 (Promote mutual learning).