Special Issue Editors: Professor Annette Boaz and Professor Ann-Marie Towers

Abstract Submission Deadline: Monday 3 November 2025

Background to the Special Issue

Research practice partnerships (RPPs) offer transformative potential by embedding rigorous evidence into decision making and practice, yet there is limited synthesis of how such collaborations function and their influence on policy and practice.  Research practice partnerships have featured in previous editions of Evidence & Policy (for example, Hoekstra et al 2021; Gray et al 2024) and the importance of collaborative working and relationships is a core theme in journal submissions, including in a key paper by Best and Holmes (2010).

This Evidence & Policy special issue builds on empirical and conceptual learning from six RPPs in England funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research.  It will also feature contributions from a wider group of partnerships emerging from the social care/ human services sectors internationally—to generate comparative insights on structures, mechanisms for co production, knowledge mobilisation strategies, and policy impact. 

Aims of the special issue:

1. Evaluate the impact of RPP typologies in social care/ human services.
2. Examine co-production and governance models that facilitate practitioner and public engagement.
3. Evaluate how generated evidence contributes to organisational policy decisions and builds research capacity
4. Identify transferable lessons for establishing and sustaining collaborative RPPs.

Invitation to Submit Proposals

Interested authors should send a 300-word abstract to Special Issue Editors Professor Annette Boaz (Annette.boaz@kcl.ac.uk) and Professor Ann-Marie Towers (ann-marie.towers@kcl.ac.uk) by Monday 3 November 2025.

Invitations for full paper submissions will be sent in mid-November, and full papers will be due by end of March 2026.

We welcome submissions on:

• Research Articles employing mixed methods evaluations of RPP outcomes.
• Perspectives discussing methodological and ethical challenges in partnership design.
• Theory & Methods papers on frameworks for assessing embedded evidence impact.

Special Issue Editors: Mariah Kornbluh and Jennifer Renick

“It is a fundamental right of youth and young adults to participate in designing the programs and policies aiming to serve them.” (United Nations, 1989).

In recent years, there have been growing calls for the ‘democratization’ of research evidence, which argues for broadening the kinds of evidence that is considered legitimate in informing practice and policy (Doucet, 2019; Kirkland, 2019; Wegemer & Renick, 2021). Within youth-led participatory action research (YPAR), youth conduct systematic research and generate evidence to draw on to advocate for policy and/or programmatic changes (Kornbluh, 2023; Ozer et al., 2020). Such an approach aligns with the push for the democratization of evidence in broadening who are considered legitimate producers of knowledge (Fine & Torre, 2021; Ozer et al., 2020).

This special issue will explore the intersections between the use of research evidence to inform policy and YPAR, with the broad goals of studying and strengthening models for impact. In this special issue, we seek scholarship in theoretical frameworks, methodologies, presentations, and case studies that embrace YPAR as a vehicle for youth-led policy change. 

Submission for this issue might address the following topics:

• Descriptive case studies of YPAR informing (or attempting to push for) policy change 
• Theoretical models and approaches to YPAR-initiated policy change
• An examination of the role of power and politics in relation to youth-led policy change
• Examples of strategizing for scaling-up action from YPAR projects into policy change
• Practices or procedures for addressing adultism and/or preparing adults to accept and implement youth-led policy change
• Empirical explorations of the impact of YPAR-initiated policy change 

We imagine this special issue to function as a way to explore the research to practice gap within policy change, and whose perspectives are missing. Furthermore, we hope this issue will highlight ways in which policy makers can more critically accept or invite the voices of young people. 

Deadline: Interested authors should send a 300-word abstract to Special Issue Editors Dr Mariah Kornbluh at the University of Oregon (mkornbl2@uoregon.edu) and Dr Jennifer Renick at the University of Memphis (jrenick@memphis.edu) by 30 November 2024. Invitations for full paper submissions will be sent in mid-January, and full papers will be due by end of May 2025.

Special Issue Editors: Joel Malin and Chris Lubienski

Mis- and dis-information are growing problems world-wide, corrupting trust and engagement in consumer markets, media, politics, and other institutions. This issue is particularly concerning for research-driven areas that involve public policy. Education is a prime area. Not only do education policymakers seek ‘research-based’ policy, but schools themselves, while subjected to false information campaigns, are also uniquely suited as institutions that have the capacity to counter misinformation by providing fact-based learning and critical thinking skills.

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Special Issue Editors: Katherine Smith, Valerie Pattyn and Niklas Andersen

Evidence & Policy is pleased to invite abstracts for papers that explicitly employ comparative analysis and/or that develop insights about evidence use in policy through comparison. Authors of selected abstracts will be invited to submit a full paper for consideration for inclusion in a special issue that is aiming to demonstrate the conceptual and empirical contribution that comparative research can offer scholarship on evidence and policy.

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Rationale and scope:

While the evidence base on successful practices in knowledge exchange is rapidly growing, much less attention has been given in the academic literature to documenting and reflecting on failures in trying to exchange different types of evidence between academics, practice partners and policy makers. However, learning from failures is just as important, if not more crucial, than celebrating successes.

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This special issue uses the lens of Creativity and Co-production to explore the meaning of ‘evidence’ and whose meaning counts. It considers what the terms ‘creating’, ‘making’ and ‘production’ mean with regards knowledge creation, sharing and putting into action. It examines the potential role that created artefacts play. For example, what are the values embodied and represented in ‘knowledge artefacts’ and what affordance and agency might they give to human actors?

Areas for discussion include:

• What evidence is valid, who produces it, and how was it produced?
• What is the process by which ‘evidence’ can be interrogated by others, made sense of, and acted upon?
• Not acting on evidence is commonly described as the ‘evidence gap’. Could this be broken down into a series of ‘micro’ gaps between Evidence and Knowledge, Knowledge and Knowing, Knowing and Action?
• What role do creative practices, tangible objects, and visual language play in bridging each of these micro gaps?

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