Development of the Repository

Exclusion criteria

Papers on consumer engagement in medical research were excluded. Papers that only informed or consulted people with lived experience were excluded.  At a later date, PhD theses were excluded as these were not considered to be sufficiently accessible.

Categorising papers and the development of a screening tool.

The team iteratively developed categories for the papers, initially grouping papers under: Ethics; Methods; Equity; Power and Decision-making. Other categories were quickly added, including Discipline (including sub-categories). Populations and Methods. Depending on where the research was conducted, the papers are tagged as being set in a high income country or low and middle income using the World Bank’s categorisation of countries.

The team expanded to include (Bachelor of Arts) intern Clarita Youkanna and Dr Panos Karanikolas, who joined the Melbourne Social Equity Institute as a Research Officer. Clarita was tasked with addressing a few disciplinary gaps (for example, a lack of papers from Criminology) and Panos developed the first iteration of the screening tool, which was further refined by Charlene and Karen, and continues to evolve with further use.

Screening Process:

A team of volunteer reviewers are screening papers against the following inclusion criteria, to ensure articles included in the repository are examples of dynamic coproductive research and reflexive practice. Papers must meet at least two of the following criteria:

• The paper contributes (or has contributed) to progressive social change or reform and attempts to communicate this impact.
• The paper stimulates generative discussion and debate over coproductive and community engaged research methods and practice.
• The paper demonstrates a high level of community involvement or partner decision making in the purpose, design, conduct and use of research;
• Those with lived experience have been engaged as partners and/or leaders in setting research agendas and in research design.
• The paper includes people with lived experience as co-authors and their involvement in the analysis is apparent.
• The paper adopts a reflexive approach and addresses research dynamics such as issues of hierarchy, power differentials, participation, mutuality, and tokenism.
• The research demonstrates that those engaged as peer researchers, as participants, as part of steering groups or advisory bodies have been ethically and appropriately remunerated for their time, expertise, and involvement.
• The research demonstrates that community researchers or peer researchers were adequately supported to participate in the research process (i.e. providing reasonable adjustments, research skills training, supervision, etc.).
• The paper is noteworthy for its approach to reciprocity – the research ‘gives back to’ community– i.e. by providing community ownership of knowledge or data, translation of knowledge, through a community report or event, etc.
• Those engaged are diverse and hold the specific expertise and experience relevant to the research.
• The research involved critical reflection on who needed to be involved, and the perspectives of the most impacted are contained within.

Technical Details

Zotero was selected for use as an open-source platform, and is used for the backend of the repository. The front end of the repository was developed by Elizabeth Rajasingham, Howard Ng, Yi Zong and Nguyen Pham from the Enterprise Applications team at the University of Melbourne.