Improving the i2Insights blog: Your ideas are welcome!

By Gabriele Bammer and Peter Deane

As a reader, are there aspects of this i2Insights blog that you would like to see changed? Do you have specific suggestions for improvements? Are there things that work well and that you would like to see continue?

We are currently reviewing how to improve the blog and how easily the resources it provides can be found. Your input will help us think about changes to incorporate and how to use our time in producing the blog to maximum effect. We briefly set the context for the blog and then pose a series of questions that outline the changes we are considering. All input is welcome. You can address one or more of the questions below or raise other issues. You can post in the comments section or contact us privately via: https://i2insights.org/contact/.

What the blog aims to achieve

The primary aim of the blog is to connect disparate groups of people for the purpose of sharing concepts, methods, theory and processes – referred to collectively as tools – for research on complex societal and environmental problems. The tools cover research integration and implementation, broadly defined.

The rationale is that there are many networks and teams who have no central point of connection, which results in:

• no mechanism for passing on useful tools
• no easy way to learn from each other
• much reinventing of the wheel
• reduced chances that existing tools will be improved
• reduced chances that adaptations of tools to particular circumstances will be documented.

The blog also provides a venue to share lessons from case studies, as well as to share ideas about educating the next generation to tackle complex problems. Finally, there are occasional blog posts on how to get research on integration and implementation accepted into the academic mainstream, referred to as ‘institutionalisation’.

The i2Insights blog is one project under the Integration and Implementation Sciences (i2S) umbrella and we are currently reviewing how to better integrate the blog with a resources repository on the i2S website. That repository not only provides tools and case studies, but also showcases relevant journals, professional associations and networks, as well as conferences, all of which provide ways of linking with others interested in researching and addressing complex real-world problems.
[Author update December 2022: Many tools, cases and approaches are in the process of being updated and relocated to i2Insights blog and repository or the i2S-Talks YouTube channel, while others are being archived. The journals, professional associations and networks, and conferences have been relocated to the ITD-Alliance website: https://itd-alliance.org/resources/]

Our current review of the i2Insights blog

Now that we are in our fourth year of operation, we are reviewing the following aspects of the blog:

• the ability of readers to connect with like-minded researchers and practitioners
• the ability of readers to find useful tools, both on the blog and on the i2S resources repository
• our blog ‘house style’
• blog content.

A. Connecting with like-minded researchers and practitioners – would you like:

1. a more detailed bibliography provided by the blog authors, eg., referring to their education and/or citations of key work?
2. anything else (please specify)?

B. Finding useful tools – would you like:

3. more specific links to related blog posts?
4. changes to the tags we provide (please specify; note that tags are the words listed under a blog post title)?
5. an improved search capacity?
6. links to related tools on the i2S website? [see Author update December 2022 above]
7. anything else (please specify)

C. House style – would you like to see changes in:

8. the length of blog posts (currently limited to 500-1000 words)?
9. the policy of minimal references (only those directly cited)?
10. the policy of opening and closing with questions? Do you find the questions engaging?
11. anything else (please specify)?

D. Blog content:

12. are there topics that you would like to see covered or to see more coverage of? (If yes, please specify)
13. are there topics that you would like to see less coverage of? (If yes, please specify)
14. anything else (please specify)?

Final questions

What are the key things you get from reading the blog? Would you like to be involved in producing the blog or in disseminating blog posts?

We will report on how we have incorporated your suggestions for changing the blog in a future blog post.

Biography: Gabriele Bammer PhD is a professor at The Australian National University in the Research School of Population Health’s National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health. She is developing the new discipline of Integration and Implementation Sciences (i2S) to improve research strengths for tackling complex real-world problems through synthesis of disciplinary and stakeholder knowledge, understanding and managing diverse unknowns, and providing integrated research support for policy and practice change. 

Biography: Peter Deane is a Research Officer on the Integration and Implementation Sciences (i2S) team at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health in the Research School of Population Health at The Australian National University.