Co-Production of Knowledge: What It Means and How to Do It Well

Co-production & impact · By the Common Inquiry editorial team · Published 2026-10-26

Close-up of a whiteboard on an easel covered with yellow sticky notes in a meeting room — Co-production often starts with a blank wall and a stack of sticky notes. Photo: rawpixel, CC0.

"Co-production" has become one of the most used words in research funding and public services. It promises research done with the people who will use or be affected by it, from the first question to the final report. The word carries several distinct histories, and projects that use it range from genuine power-sharing to rebranded consultation. This article untangles the meanings and sets out what good practice looks like.

Three histories of a word

Ostrom and public services

The political economist Elinor Ostrom, who received the Nobel memorial prize in economic sciences in 2009, and her colleagues at the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University used "coproduction" in the 1970s while studying urban policing in the United States. They observed that public services such as safety depend on the contributions of citizens as well as officials. In a 1996 article in World Development, "Crossing the great divide: coproduction, synergy, and development", Ostrom defined coproduction as the process through which inputs used to produce a good or service are contributed by individuals who are not "in" the same organisation.

Science studies

In science and technology studies, Sheila Jasanoff's edited volume States of Knowledge: The Co-production of Science and Social Order (2004) used the term for the way scientific knowledge and social arrangements develop together. This meaning is descriptive: it explains how knowledge is made, rather than prescribing a research method.

Co-produced research

The meaning most common in funding calls today is practical: research in which academics, practitioners, service users and communities work together as partners. It overlaps with public involvement in health research, with participatory action research and with "transdisciplinary" research in sustainability science.

Principles for co-producing research

In 2018, INVOLVE, then the national advisory body for public involvement in the UK's National Institute for Health Research (now the National Institute for Health and Care Research, NIHR), published Guidance on co-producing a research project. It sets out key principles:

Sharing of power: the research is jointly owned, and people work together to achieve a joint understanding.
Including all perspectives and skills: the research team includes everyone who can make a contribution.
Respecting and valuing the knowledge of all: everyone is of equal importance.
Reciprocity: everybody benefits from working together.
Building and maintaining relationships: an emphasis on relationships is key to sharing power.

In sustainability science, an international group led by Albert Norström published "Principles for knowledge co-production in sustainability research" in Nature Sustainability in 2020. It proposes that co-production should be context-based, pluralistic (recognising multiple ways of knowing), goal-oriented and interactive. The two sets of principles come from different fields but converge on similar commitments.

Co-production versus consultation

A simple test is to ask when, and about what, people outside the research team have influence. In consultation, researchers decide the question and design, then ask for views on specific points. In co-production, the question itself is shaped jointly, and partners share decisions about methods, analysis, outputs and action. Many projects sit somewhere between; the participation typologies discussed in our methods section can help teams describe where they stand without overstating it.

How to co-produce a project: practical steps

Involve partners before the funding application. If the question and budget are fixed before partners join, co-production is already limited. Some funders offer small development grants for this stage.
Agree ways of working. Decide together how meetings run, how decisions are made, how people are paid and how disagreements are handled.
Make meetings accessible. Choose times and places that suit community partners, avoid jargon, provide materials in advance, and cover travel and caring costs.
Use methods that let everyone contribute. Visual and creative methods, small-group work and shared analysis sessions help people with different backgrounds take part on equal terms.
Share the writing. Co-write outputs, including versions for non-academic audiences, and agree authorship rules early.
Reflect and evaluate. Review regularly how power is actually shared, and record what changes as a result. Our article on evaluating participatory research suggests approaches.

Challenges

Institutional time scales. Funding cycles and academic incentives reward speed and single-author outputs; co-production is slow and collective.
Unequal resources. Researchers are paid to attend meetings; community partners often are not.
Tokenism. The label is sometimes applied to projects with minimal involvement, which damages trust.
Conflict. Different partners may want different things from the evidence. Co-production does not remove disagreement; it requires ways to handle it.
The "dark side": some researchers have warned that co-production can be costly for those involved, blur accountability, or be used to legitimise decisions already taken.

Co-production in practice

Co-produced research takes many forms: service users and clinicians designing a mental health study together, farmers and agronomists testing crop varieties, or residents and planners studying their neighbourhood. Housing is a field where residents' knowledge is particularly rich; our step-by-step guide shows how tenants and residents can lead a study of their own neighbourhood, with or without academic support.

Sources

Elinor Ostrom, "Crossing the great divide: coproduction, synergy, and development", World Development, vol. 24, no. 6, 1996, pp. 1073-1087.
Sheila Jasanoff (ed.), States of Knowledge: The Co-production of Science and Social Order, Routledge, 2004.
INVOLVE, Guidance on co-producing a research project, National Institute for Health Research, 2018.
Albert V. Norström et al., "Principles for knowledge co-production in sustainability research", Nature Sustainability, vol. 3, 2020, pp. 182-190.
Kathryn Oliver, Anita Kothari and Nicholas Mays, "The dark side of coproduction: do the costs outweigh the benefits for health research?", Health Research Policy and Systems, vol. 17, 2019, art. 33.