Table 8.

Initial guidance for the use of our findings by research partnerships

Summarising steps of research partnership processes		Additional information
Step 1	Build and maintain relationships between academic researchers and stakeholders; the relationship may be built upon values important for all partnership members such as trust, respect, transparency, credibility	Table 7 provides strategies related to building and maintaining relationships; OSF-Table IV provides a list of identified principles and values
Step 2	Determine the level of stakeholder engagement (e.g. inform, consult, involve, collaborate, empower) for each phase in the research process (planning phase, conducting phase, disseminating phase)	Table 7 provides strategies for different phases in the research process and OSF-Table IV provides a list of related principles; two reviews [25, 76] included other examples of detailed frameworks of the use of collaborative research activities in different phases of the research process
Step 3	Contextualisation: Select and/or adapt principles and strategies relevant for your research partnership in your research area; principles and strategies need to align with the desirable level of stakeholder engagement and need to align with the needs and preferences of all members of the partnership; principles and strategies may differ between different phases of the research process	Table 2 provides an overview of the research areas and population of the included reviews; in addition to the related reviews, we recommend exploring individual studies that used or evaluated research partnership approaches specifically related to your research area and/or population; an example of the contextualisation for spinal cord injury research partnerships is described elsewhere [OSF]
Step 4	Communicate, monitor, and report the principles, strategies, outcomes and impacts of the research partnership; this information will provide the opportunities to learn from your own as well as from others successes and challenges related to collaborative research activities, and may contribute to advancing the science of research partnerships	To support consistent reporting, Additional file 1: Appendix 1 provides our consensus-based guiding framework including definitions of the key domains of research partnerships

Notes: We identified these four steps based on our own experiences from reviewing the research partnership literature as well as our own experiences with conducting and disseminating research in partnerships; these steps may help readers to tailor our overarching findings of research partnerships processes to their local context. Our next umbrella review will include more specific recommendations