Understanding memorandums of Understanding: lessons learned through the negotiation of contracts in research practice partnerships

ABSTRACT

Collaboration agreements are used in community-engaged scholarship (CES). However, an exploration of collaboration agreements, their components, and the tensions embedded in their usage is missing from the literature. In this paper, we explore Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) based on an integration of the literature and our collective experiences. We recognize that neither the creation process nor the parts of collaboration agreements are uniform, but we attempt to offer new community-engaged scholars an orientation to the complexities that they may want to consider while discovering a process for their purposes and contexts. We consider the variability of MOUs in regard to trust building and maintenance, the timing of their implementation, their levels of formality, and different institutional pathways for processing and administering them. We also discuss various elements that may be included in MOUs (e.g. recitals, scope of work, agreement term, fiscal terms, reporting, branding/use of name, confidentiality, ownership, liability, publishing), including potential challenges to consider for each element. Developing high quality MOUs can assist in the facilitation of CES by establishing clear expectations and roles for partners, balancing power and mitigating respective risks, and supporting the generation and use of research to improve social services and social conditions.

KEYWORDS:

• Memorandum of understanding
• research practice partnership
• collaboration agreement

Introduction

Both practitioners and researchers have unique expertise that can be leveraged to progress social change. When leveraged synergistically, the knowledge and lived experience of these different actors may spur effective and relevant solutions to social problems (Peterson & Morris, 2019). One way to align and organize the respective contributions of researchers and practitioners is through explicit partnerships between university and community actors (Chupp et al., 2021) who together can conduct community-engaged scholarship (CES). The purpose of CES is to “address problems of the larger community … [through a process where] faculty apply their expertise to real world problems and collaborate with peers in other sectors, who also bring their knowledge and wisdom to the table in order to generate, disseminate, and apply new knowledge” (Gelmon et al., 2013, p. 59).

Research Practice Partnerships (RPPs) are one structural mechanism for facilitating CES. RPPs are “long-term, mutualistic collaborations between practitioners and researchers that are intentionally organized to investigate problems of practice and solutions for improving outcomes” (Coburn et al., 2013, p. 2; He et al., 2020). RPPs are meant to “build two-way streets of engagement” (Tseng et al., 2017, p. ii) by bringing together researchers and practitioners to build solutions and enhance equity, elevate diverse expertise, and “employ strategies to shift power relations in research endeavors to ensure that all participants have a say” (Farrell et al., 2021, p. iv). RPPs have diverse functions, which can range from research alliances (i.e., research focused on practice-generated questions) to design partnerships (i.e., collaborative engagement to develop and study innovations in real world conditions), to networked improvement communities (continuous and collaborative generation and evaluation of practice improvements; Coburn et al., 2013). Though the purpose and functions of RPPs may vary, each relies upon implicit or explicit agreements on the structural arrangements for collaboration. In this paper, we draw on our experiences as scholars in youth serving and/or education sector RPPs to explore the nature and tensions embedded in collaboration agreements that can structure the work of community-engaged scholarship.

Collaboration agreements

Many scholars engaged in CES advocate for the explicit articulation and documentation of collaboration agreements (National Network of Education Research-Practice Partnerships, 2022; Norris et al., 2007; Ross et al., 2010; Ward et al., 2018). Collaboration agreements can outline the roles, responsibilities, and goals for what the RPP aims to accomplish (Lee et al., 2022; Mai et al., 2005). They can also clarify the needs of the project, dates and deadlines, team composition, expectations, and resolve potential operational issues to mutual satisfaction (Goldstein et al., 2019; Lutzker et al., 2001; Norris et al., 2007). As discussed in the literature, collaborations of this nature may require overcoming a unique set of challenges and circumstances (see the Journal of Community Practice themed issue edited by Ohmer et al., 2022). For example, university-community relationships can yield disproportionate benefits to the university, and community members can struggle with the “history of distrust” concretized by “resource rich, racially Whiter” academic institutions (Chupp et al., 2021, p. 4) attempting to control a community agenda (Bayne-Smith et al., 2008). Accordingly, collaboration agreements can make transparent, and work to adjust, any power imbalances between partners by setting forth agreements for how to navigate possible challenges (e.g., developing a stable focus for the work, balancing competing demands, managing collaboration, navigating unfamiliarity with new roles, creating processes for avoiding or overcoming confusion or conflict; Coburn et al., 2008; Norris et al., 2007; Penuel & Gallagher, 2017; Rosen, 2010).

Memoranda of understanding (MOUs)

A collaboration agreement becomes a contract when a promise becomes a duty; in other words, when the law provides a remedy if a promise is breached (Restatement Second of Contracts §§ 1-2, 178; Kennedy, 2023). State laws may impose additional requirements (e.g., may require signatures), in certain circumstances, for a collaboration agreement to become a contract. However, in the absence of such requirements, it is broadly understood that a promise becomes legally enforceable if there is a bargained-for exchange (“consideration”) between parties. In an organization like a university, only certain persons will be authorized to make such promises on behalf of the university. An agreement may be given different names (e.g., service agreement, license agreement), but the name at the top of the agreement does not necessarily govern how the agreement itself is interpreted or enforced; it typically only serves to set the tone or context for the reader. The same document title can be used for contracts and non-binding agreements (i.e., where promises are not enforceable). Despite the prevalence of calls for their use, this ambiguity typically applies to the term “memorandum of understanding.”

Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) are often referenced in the literature as guiding collaboration between partners within the RPP. An MOU is broadly recommended to allow for formal and practical engagement with collaborative research concerns (Elias et al., 2004; O’Neil et al., 2005). MOUs can render “partners” as “parties” to a contract. Although the extant literature has called for the creation of MOUs, very little has been provided in the way of guidance for how they should be created. Without guidance to help scholars understand what may be included in an MOU, each team is left to start their own time consuming and complex learning process (Alcock et al., 2017). Given this critical gap, in this paper we seek to illuminate the often unwritten norms, processes, and expectations of MOU creation that may help university-based scholars navigate their use. First, we discuss variance in the timing, formality, and processing of MOUs – and the ways this variance can reflect, build, and agitate trust in the partnership. We share multiple examples from our collective experience to demonstrate the complexities of various MOU components that raise tensions in collaboration for community-engaged scholarship. These examples draw from experiences with collaboration agreements from different universities (heterogeneous to research intensity) and with partners of various sizes (e.g., single school to multi-district). Nothing that we write is intended to be a universal truth or directly transportable across all CES contexts, but rather, to raise considerations that can then be situated within each CES context.

Variability in MOUs: trust, timing, formality, and processing

As we consider MOUs, we again note their broad variability. Some of the greatest sources of variance appear to come from the timing of their creation, the formality of the agreement, and the institutional actors who are responsible for their processing and administration. Each of these considerations is situated in the donnée that trust is key to partnerships for CES. A trusting partnership provides the confidence that all partners will work collaboratively to meet the needs of their community-engaged scholarship, follow through on their agreements, and work through challenges as they arise (Tseng et al., 2017). Trust can be established through regular check-ins among partners, who co-construct the “why” of the project, and acknowledge the strengths and lived experiences of everyone involved (Baumgartner & López Turley, 2022; Denner et al., 2019). Importantly, partners must bring patience, humility, and transparency to the ongoing trust-building process (Baumgartner & López Turley, 2022). Issues of trust intersect with the timing, formality, and processing of the MOU.

Timing

There is some dispute in the literature about when to create an MOU, vis-a-vis trust. Some say MOUs are best conceived early to promote transparency and avoid misunderstandings (see Berglund & Butler, 2021 for a discussion of how time factors into the MOU process). Yet, building trust requires significant time and effort upfront (López Turley & Stevens, 2015). Trust between partners may begin developing before an inter-institutional partnership is formalized, and, inversely, MOUs may further build the trust needed to enable effective partnerships. In the absence of trust, there may be reasons to have an MOU in place before collaboration begins. Alternatively, an MOU created well into a collaborative process may reflect an improved understanding of the project and the partners, which may lead to the inclusion of more relevant terms for collaboration and the maintenance of trust. Further, early and late is not binary; many MOUs iterate on drafts for considerable periods and/or revise agreements over time.

Formality

It is important to consider the ways MOU formality can help or hinder the interpersonal dynamics of RPPs. The type of promises made, and the parties’ mutual understandings of enforceability and recourse, can render the agreement more or less about specific people and their relationships. Further, the agreement may be crafted by people who have been more or less engaged in the trust building process. Formality is often driven by the nature of the consideration, with the formality, for better or worse, often corresponding with the scope of fiscal or material exchange between partners, which can drive the perception and/or reality of risk the institutional actors perceive.

There are times when the formality of a contract becomes a hindrance to the work of a partnership. In one example, our team changed the name of our collaboration agreement from “MOU” to “Agreements and Expectations” in order to signal a lesser sense of duty, and avoid institutional processes that a more formal tone would have instigated. In this case, it was deemed sufficient to collectively articulate the envisioned roles and tasks of the youth and adult community members, research team, and county representatives without entering into a contract. Further on the spectrum, mid-range agreements can have collaboration terms embedded in an application by a researcher to conduct research at a service agency. For example, a template may be provided by a school district, and prompt researchers to specify the desired roles, time commitments, and tasks of each party, in exchange for access and/or data. In highly formal arrangements, contracts are drafted and/or reviewed by lawyers on the research-side and practice-side, and exclusively executed between authorized institutional signatories. These agreements often add further protections of institutional interests like intellectual property and brand protection. The side that has more capacity for legal engagement may have their interests better represented.

Processing

Trust on behalf of the institution (i.e., the university) is often not predicated on any specific individuals or the interpersonal dynamics within the RPP, but rather the familiarity of the routines to the respective institutions. At research-intensive universities, deep, sustained, and evolving community partnerships are less familiar than short-term contracts with clear deliverables. The work of an RPP, therefore, faces pressure to conform to fit into existing institutional routines for processing. In our experience, there are at least two distinct pathways through which CES collaboration agreements are processed. On one hand, researchers may make a science-driven proposal to a sponsor (i.e., funder) for a systematic investigation to create generalizable knowledge, and if awarded the grant, may then subcontract with practice partners in order to conduct their research. At a university, associated research agreements are typically handled by a Sponsored Projects Office, particularly if university personnel will author papers that emerge from the research, or the work may result in intellectual property (i.e., an original creative work to which one has rights and for which one can apply for a patent, copyright, or trademark). In such cases, our practice-side collaborators are channeled through routines that are optimized for major research grants from federal institutes (e.g., National Institutes of Health) and large foundations (e.g., National Science Foundation), and also for generating subawards to other universities, such that university agents may expect a business office on the other side that is quite familiar with university routines and timelines. In our experience, individual investigators may not even see the full terms of agreement between the sponsor and the university, or between the principal investigator and any external co-investigators. Without intentional effort, these routines have the potential to rupture trust with practice partners who are unfamiliar with the routines, that were not conceived with them in mind, and may not appear flexible or amenable to their needs.

A service contract, on the other hand, is driven by a request from the community to draw on the expertise of faculty and/or staff at the university for resource production, training or technical assistance, or localized evaluation services in accordance to terms set by practice-side institutions. The inverse power structure may occur with service contracts, where funds may more often originate in the public sector, and policy-makers and practice leaders dictate the ways in which the work is conducted, which is done for the benefit of the sponsor. At a university, service contracts are often handled by a business services office, where processes such as vendoring and procurement can play a significant role. In this case, our collaborators can be channeled through the same routines that are used for people who sell hotdogs on campus, design software for commercial use, and purchase bed frames for 30,000 undergraduates, with broad and reasonable concerns about liability, intellectual property, and fair competition/pricing. Depending on the nature of the contract, researchers may be called into this process to guide the university in deciding which preexisting templates should be applied to a specific project, and if the researcher does not pay attention to the “fine print,” terms may get embedded in the agreement that cause confusion, provide inadequate protections, or constrain the project’s potential. Furthermore, these business processes were not set up with scholarship in mind, and therefore researcher engagement in the drafting may be necessary in order to make sure that data collected primarily for technical assistance purposes can be appropriately stored, used, and shared for the secondary purpose of creating generalizable knowledge, if that is desired by research and practice partners. Further, researchers may need to build a justification for inviting individual research-side colleagues into the work, as their subcontracts may be subjected to rules for fair competition. Further, research collaborators may be treated as a work-for-hire, implying that they may, knowingly or unknowingly, turn over their intellectual property rights in these contracting routines. In truly hybrid models, where the project is driven by service objectives, but may result in intellectual property, peer-review publications, or training opportunities for university students, it may be very unclear what administrative processes or terms will apply to the agreement.

Regardless of how the agreement is processed, these formal contracts come with a range of different issues that are important for researcher partners to understand, yet guidance on the components of a formal MOU is lacking in the literature. Therefore, in the remainder of this paper, we describe different elements typically included in a formal MOU,¹ and report on what we have learned about the respective interests, responsibilities, and norms of institutional actors. Given that a major purpose of MOUs from an institutional perspective is risk management, we name tensions inherent in each element to consider the ways in which research, practice, and institutional interests can facilitate and impede the research, practice, and the collaborative processes we desire at their intersections. This includes challenges associated with various degrees of institutional engagement and non-engagement.

Elements of the MOU

The building blocks of an MOU come from legal traditions for how to coordinate effort, manage expectations, and avoid/mitigate disputes between parties. We review some common elements (e.g., recitals, scope of work, agreement term, fiscal terms, reporting, branding/use of name, confidentiality, ownership, liability, publishing) in order to help researchers become more attuned to the importance of each element of a contract as related to facilitating or hindering community-engaged scholarship.

Recitals

Recitals often sit at the beginning of an MOU to provide background information and contextualize the project and partnership, including relevant histories, project specific acronyms, and expertise each party brings (Chalkidis et al., 2017). This section allows each party to introduce themselves as they would like to be seen and understood. Recitals often include detailed information about the high-level goals of the associated work or project, including reference to any prior agreements between parties or “upstream” contracts that structure the current effort. This can be important for understanding what legal terms may be implicated in the rest of the document, based on the nature of the funding source (federal, state, foundation, etc.).

Scope of work

The Scope of Work (SOW), provides a more detailed description of the work to be performed by each of the parties. The SOW includes detailed information about the roles and responsibilities of the parties, the deliverables, and timelines for completion of work (Alam et al., 2022). Although an MOU can clarify the roles and responsibilities of each party in a way that fosters alignment, the document parses out the two parties into distinct entities, which lends itself more to mutual action than collaboration. Partners may be pushed by institutional actors to be concrete and leave little ambiguity as to whether a role has been fulfilled, an activity performed, or a product delivered in order to optimize clarity (or defensibility) – which may have the unintended consequence of constraining the potential to reimagine ways of meeting existing needs or limiting flexibility to meet emergent ones. For example, if the role of the university is to “assess the impact of services for continuous improvement purposes” – and the precise form of this activity is unspecified – it leaves room for the partnership to strategize and evolve together.

Agreement term

The agreement term notes the length of time for the agreement, which includes specific start and end dates for the work. Any effort expended prior to the start date is outside the scope of the agreement. Partners should be mindful that, unless explicitly negotiated, work to set-up the agreement, or while waiting for the processing of the agreement (which, in our experience, can take up to a year), may not be “billable” to the project, and may impede purchasing, hiring, or subcontracting from starting, and/or the negotiated terms from applying until the agreement is executed (i.e., signed by both parties). This also means that predictable or unpredictable processing delays may compress timelines for the work and threaten the capacity for parties to successfully perform their duties.

The end date is also important because, at the end of the project term, no terms of the agreement “survive” (i.e., are enforceable after the contract ends) unless explicitly stated. This could be disruptive on both sides of the partnership. After the end date, researchers may not be able to store, analyze, or report on data collected during the agreement term. Practitioners may no longer have license to any intellectual property of the university, which in some agreements, includes reports created in service of the collaboration. This may stop the research process, dissemination, and change efforts in their tracks. It may be helpful to plan in advance for what should “survive” the agreement term, and under what conditions a “no-cost extension” (NCE; an extension of time to work on the project, under the original scope and terms, without any additional funding) may be authorized, and by whom. Further, agreements typically specify the conditions for premature “termination” of the agreement or the process for sunsetting any aspects of the work no longer desirable or achievable. End dates may also signal an opportunity for revision and/or renewal of an agreement meant to be long-lasting. Renewals may only be possible, however, if agreements are modified/extended before their end date; after which, an attempt to renew an agreement (a process with less administrative burden) may be treated as a request to generate a new agreement (with greater administrative burden).

Fiscal terms

Most MOUs describe how any funding will be used and managed. There is inherent power in who controls the budget, making it crucial that these terms are explicit. Researchers are often in control of the project budget, as it is often tied to our role in obtaining research grants, but the inverse is often true in a service contract. A charge for indirect cost (i.e., a percentage of funds paid to contribute to the costs of facilities and administration processes) can be assessed on both research and practice sides; but policies governing IDC typically allow for larger assessments on the university side (e.g., 60% at UC Berkeley for research agreements; 35% at UC Berkeley for state-sponsored services; approximately 10% for other service contracts) than the practice side (e.g., 6% in AY 2022 in the Berkeley Unified School District). This can be an obvious source of tension, as these costs can be vital to an organization’s operations, and can enable and/or incentivize the partnered work. Invoicing for direct project costs (e.g., personnel effort, supplies, travel) and indirect costs may be constrained within an MOU, as some of these costs may be prohibited or capped. An MOU may allow for parties to adjust discrete budget categories within their overall share of the budget, or not – which can lead to shortages or waste (e.g., labor grows more expensive; training slots are under-subscribed) as the project progresses. When working with youth co-researchers, it is important to consider adultism in paying them for their labor, while also considering laws around child labor and any applicable ethics around consent and coercion.

Reporting

MOUs may communicate requirements to report on progress, especially in multi-year projects. These reports may include expenditure, activity, and outcome reporting. Guidance on how often (e.g., quarterly, annually) and what to include in the reports (e.g., budget, invoices, data analysis) should also be included in an MOU. Some of this may be predicated on whether billing occurs as a reimbursement for actual expenses or in a fixed pricing model (i.e., a predetermined remuneration for a deliverable). This section may help mitigate or rectify differences in accounting practices and fiscal cycles, as well as illuminate important moments for each partner to be able to share project updates (e.g., a promotion case, a board meeting), and provide information for project management and improvement cycles (e.g., interrogate and mitigate disparate “reach” of the project to intended beneficiaries and the achievement of project goals).

Branding/Use of name

Each organization may have requirements with respect to the use of their names. Stipulations may be put in place to allow or prevent the use of trademarks, logos, and other branding. Branding may also be important for the individual researcher and/or practitioner in the RPP. For example, the researcher may want to limit use of their name for promotion of commercial products, or in certain types of advocacy (as may be prohibited by the university). A school district may elect to keep its name off of publications to protect privacy or avoid reputational risk. Alternatively, either party may want to require attribution of their respective contributions in any public use of the works. This portion of the MOU allows for each party to state their requirements and stipulations for institutional branding and the use of their names in ways that they think will best promote and/or protect their individual reputations and organizational interests. Tensions may arise, however, when getting business office approval for a specific use of brand delays the work, or when the norms for attribution in academic settings (a full reference) may not be aligned with the norms of attribution of copyright (that little symbol of ownership, ©), or the norms of attribution for practice tools (where brevity is the driver and attribution may not be practical). In one example, our practice partners were very interested in coauthoring papers with us, but the MOU required that the school district remain anonymous, making co-authorship impossible. In another project, we established the partnership as an entity, used the partnership name in fields meant for an individual’s name, and built a case to journal editors for why attributing authorship to a coalition can be an important part of CES.

Confidentiality

Projects with youth and other protected populations have very specific confidentiality requirements to comply with federal and local laws, as well as research ethics. Sometimes practice partners cannot share information with researchers about the individuals they are serving; other times researchers are prohibited from sharing information they have collected from research participants back with practitioners who are not on their IRB protocol. Maintaining confidentiality of youth co-researchers needs to be considered separately from privacy of youth research participants. In one example, youth co-researchers and the organizations they were connected with were always given the option of being identified as members of the committee, or not, before putting out research findings in the public domain.

When it comes to data, agreements need to specify the processes for collecting, transferring, storing, and using data. We have a collection of experiences designing strategies for structuring the data that provides the research team with ways to answer different research questions without compromising confidentiality. In one example, working with a large number of schools, we segmented the data into two un-linkable transmissions: (1) coded school names that included all relevant student demographic variables, and (2) actual school names and community-level covariates with limited student demographic data. In another example, working with two schools, the data was delivered to the research team with one demographic variable per dataset. Agreements about who will suppress unique cases such that a smart and persistent person could not link or otherwise identify the data should be discussed. Agreements about how parents will be notified that student data may be transmitted to a third party, or used for research purposes, must be clear. Clear strategies can ensure data privacy and compliance with applicable laws.

Confidentiality also matters for organizations. For example, one party may learn about a sensitive issue, or the “trade secrets” of another party, that should not be shared. The MOU may specify how to mark communications as confidential, what to assume is confidential, and how to handle confidential information. Non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) can be used to help ensure that certain information will remain confidential. An NDA can help prevent organizational harm and ensure confidentiality by providing guidance on how information is handled.

Ownership

Ownership in an MOU often refers to rights to data and other intellectual property which may have been created prior to the MOU, or in the performance of the MOU. Intellectual property may include research instruments, curriculum, training materials, presentations, and reports, among many other things. In an MOU, parties may assert what property rights they have or maintain. Parties can also ask for assurances that property used in service of an MOU does not infringe on the rights of any third party (i.e., any entity that is not a direct party of the agreement). Parties can also restrict and/or license certain rights to use their property. Licenses vary in their permitted field of use (i.e., where it can be used – such as within a single school district, or for what purposes it can be used – such as only for projects under the supervision of a specific project director) and also the permitted uses. Permitted uses can include the right to reproduce, distribute, display publicly, and prepare derivative works. In our experience, derivative works is an example of a usage that can be tricky, and needs to be thoughtfully considered with specific use scenarios in mind. A derivative work can include, for example, a translation. If one party owns the original property, and another party does the translation, who owns the translated work, and what rights does each party have to use it?

There may also be specific conditions of use (e.g., it can only be used with attribution) or costs for use (i.e., license fees). Prohibitions on uses can include restrictions of any of the previously noted uses, sub-licensing, transferring or assigning the license, or any use that generates royalties or revenues (i.e., commercial). Researchers should therefore consider, for example, if their license to data needs to permit sharing data with research-side collaborators outside of the primary university, or accounts for the potential of researcher mobility. Practitioners should consider if their license to a written report allows for their creation of derivative works, such that information can be placed on a slide deck for a community meeting. If the institution is highly engaged in drafting the agreement, the license can be carefully constructed. Unfortunately, many RPPs need to rely on institutional templates and then advocate for nuanced adaptations to their institution’s licensing provisions. This requires knowing what to ask for!

Tensions arise when the researchers and practitioners are employees of institutions that are typically governed by employment contracts, or legal defaults stating that property created during employment is owned by the employing institution. Therefore, researchers and practitioners may not have the authority to share property as they would like, or in ways that might best serve the project. When property is shared through an MOU, tensions can also arise when use cases are not considered prior to signing (e.g., vendors or subcontractors may need to use licensed material), which can create operational burden, delays, and unanticipated costs to one or both parties. Negotiating ownership rights, on behalf of institutions, can be a particularly trying process when the RPP is seeking to create a public good by generating open-source materials and gets caught in a process of negotiating or adhering to rights and restrictions.

Liability

An MOU typically describes the ways in which the parties agree to handle liability, or the assumption of loss or damage. For example, if services are provided in an institutionally owned space, there is potential liability for injuries that happen on location. Yet, there are also liabilities that come from intellectual work, like infringement on a copyright or the misuse of a professional license. Some MOUs require that parties make warranties to avoid liabilities, or carry insurance to cover liabilities, while others may explicitly state that no warranties are made or implied. In community-engaged scholarship, the RPP may want to consider what are the most likely harms, and how those are to be mitigated. This can include failing to take action in response to a young person’s disclosure, or misusing data to justify an action that adversely impacts a young person. Researchers and practitioners can work together to avoid the misuse of data by creating accessible guidelines for the appropriate use of data and a plan to communicate those uses broadly. An agreement may clarify which party is responsible for the production of the guidelines for responsible use, and which party is responsible for the distribution of guidelines for responsible use.

Publishing

As part of an RPP, researchers and practitioners work together on community-engaged scholarship. This scholarship often generates publishable work. Thus, an MOU within an RPP will often outline the guidelines and considerations for public reporting of findings, which can range from community meetings to peer-reviewed publications (Alam et al., 2022). There are several considerations that can be addressed in the MOU, including: target audience, engagement in production, and review and revision rights.

In our experience, it helps when deliverables are balanced across intended audiences, such that they produce information that is expressed in lay terms and is accessible to community members, and also contributes to building generalizable knowledge. Peer reviewed publications may garner attention to particular problems of practice, lift up innovative work for broader impact, or lend credibility to practice claims. In some MOUs, we have made commitments to open-access publishing, or the deposition of peer-reviewed articles into public access repositories. On the other hand, the time delays in producing and publishing a research-caliber paper can be misaligned with the quicker pace of practice, and the assumption that the paper should be produced first, and then transitioned into a brief for practitioners, may need disruption (and advocacy). Partners should discuss not only what is produced, but the order in which products are produced (e.g., a rapid analysis may proceed a more systematic and robust analysis), and the purpose and limitations of different reporting formats for different purposes.

Having practice-side partners engaged in the production of products across the spectrum of intended audiences may be a way to help make all products more practice relevant. In our experience, community members were likely to meaningfully engage in the research production process when researchers make explicit efforts for co-interpretation of the data. But asking practitioners to do the work of researchers while also doing the work of a practitioner can be unrealistic, at best, and exploitative, if unchecked. Partners should decide how both parties are expected to contribute, perhaps with researchers taking the responsibility to scaffold realistic and meaningful contributions. Social welfare and education scholars, who have spent time performing practice roles, may be well positioned to broker these tensions.

MOUs may articulate terms for who gets to review public releases. In some of our experiences, community member recommendations were built directly into all reports, and all community-member co-researchers were given the power to veto any portion of the interpretation or final report. In another example, a formal research review committee was formed. The MOU outlined who would be involved from which entity (university, outside researcher, technical assistance providers, practitioners). Timelines for when drafts are due to the committee were specified in advance, as a common tension within RPPs is the different timelines experienced by research and practice partners (Phelps, 2019). For example, we had an agreement that required the initial circulation of any public release 60 days prior to submission, to enable time for review and subsequent revision. The Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR) Annual Conference call for papers is typically circulated 45 days prior to the deadline. Therefore, one of our MOUs implicitly prohibited our participation on such a short cycle.

Another tension inherent when publishing with practice partners is writing about findings that are unflattering, with particular vulnerabilities to resource/program developers and practice partners. Yet, there would be (and perhaps, there already is) a tremendous publication bias if the research literature only presented flattering results, devoid of sensitive issues or challenges. We once had the experience of the university prohibiting a collaboration agreement with a health-sector partner that would not forgo an expressed right to review and approve all research papers. The university argued that scientific integrity had to be maintained in the face of a potential conflict of interest (and note, this research was looking at a service model, not a pharmaceutical). The university was especially adamant because the data was intended for use in a doctoral dissertation, whereas the lead author could be particularly vulnerable in this review process, which could interfere with their progression to degree and personal finances. As such, it was important to negotiate in an MOU that researcher members of the RPP are required to seek practice partner feedback, and consider in good faith, but not contractually required to accept all revisions, or await an uncapped amount of time for practice-side approval for publication. If the potential for unflattering results are more likely on the research-side (e.g., the test of a university-developed curriculum), it may make sense to invert these terms to mitigate any conflicts of interests of the researcher.

From projects to partnerships

We would be remiss if we did not acknowledge that MOUs are most often tied to projects rather than partnerships, which is somewhat antithetical to the work of RPPs and CES. This may be an artifact of what is typically considered a “bargained-for exchange” – driven by a transactional, rather than a relational – understanding of collaboration. On the other hand, we have experienced the process of renewing, amending, and having successive MOUs with consistent partners, whereas each opportunity to update the terms of our MOU leads to greater ease and mutual understanding, even as the scope of work and funding source shifts. We have also experienced many districts/boards that prefer to review and renew contracts on an annual basis, and understand that university audit requirements can also lead to a preference for contracts with shorter terms. That being said, collaboration terms that emerge from one project can readily be refined, standardized, and applied to successive projects in ways that reduce administrative burden on the research and practice sides, and ultimately transcend the specific project and successfully guide collaboration within a broader partnership.

Conclusion

MOUs are a crucial tool for community-engaged scholars involved in research-practice partnerships. There is an art to formulating the right type of MOU, with an appropriate level of formality, that is appropriate to the scope of work, and mitigates risk inherent in inter-institutional partnerships. In this paper, we discussed several relevant elements of an MOU that we needed to learn about and negotiate in our RPP experiences. In this discussion, we name tensions and considerations for researchers who are considering the use of an MOU to engage in community-engaged scholarship. Our description is in no way exhaustive, but our hope is that this information will assist in developing a deeper understanding of how to build strong MOUs that best consider the interests of researchers and practitioners, while recognizing the interests of the institutions in which each is situated. Thoughtfully constructed MOUs may serve to develop stronger relationships and balance power between community and research partners, support researchers and practitioners in engaging in research-practice partnerships from within their respective institutional contexts, and ultimately improve the quality and relevance of the research produced to improve our social services and social conditions.

Disclosure statement

All authors certify that they have no affiliations with or involvement in any organization or entity with any financial interest or non-financial interest in the subject matter or materials discussed in this manuscript. Further, the authors, advise that we are not lawyers and this manuscript does not contain legal advice. Our intent is to provide an orientation to ideas we have encountered to help scholars work with legal teams and contract officers within research and practice organizations.

Additional information

Funding

Funding for this work was provided by The William T. Grant Foundation Scholars Program (Award #190407)

Notes

1. In this paper, we have made the intentional decision not to share actual examples (i.e., copies of MOUs) to maintain our commitments of trust with our partners. We instead point to the example MOUs provided by National Network of Education Research-Practice Partnerships (https://nnerpp.rice.edu).