Tools for Implementation Science Research and Evaluation

Throughout the course of an implementation trial or evaluation, implementation science researchers and evaluators often develop tools to support the ongoing administration of a trial, pragmatic data collection, or a secondary analysis. These tools support robust and innovative scholarship and may be used for tracking administration, data collection, analysis, and/or dissemination. The tools synthesize implementation experience and knowledge to support and sustain inquiries across study staff, trainees, and investigators. These resources and operational tools are often shared within mentoring or institutional networks and replicated across studies.

Often the innovations, contributions, and lessons learned from these tools are not available across the field of implementation science. This may be due to insular networks of scholars or more likely a lack of adequate dissemination channels. Whatever the reason, the knowledge, innovations, and lessons learned that keep implementation science trials running is not shared widely. This failure to learn from the broader community is an implementation failure in and of itself.

Given existing academic incentives for peer reviewed publications and the paucity of opportunities to publish these contributions, this Research Topic seeks to provide a unique opportunity to share operational innovations and learnings for the field of implementation science. This goal of this special issue is to provide an opportunity to disseminate the development, testing, and use cases for study tools developed in the field of implementation science.

This Research Topic invites submissions that report the development, testing, and/or replication of tools developed through the course of an implementation science trial or quality improvement evaluation across health topics and settings. Submissions should include templated versions of the tool(s).

We specifically encourage the reporting of pragmatic and/or low-tech approaches that can be applied across high- and low-resource settings. We encourage diverse manuscript types and will give special consideration for tools that have been applied across multiple settings and/or studies.

Specific themes of interest include and are not limited to:
- The development and testing of retrospective measurement
- Pragmatic and/or low-tech ways to collect implementation data
- Tools for ongoing community engagement
- Low-burden approaches to synthesizing key constituent perspectives

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:
• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Classification
• Clinical Trial
• Community Case Study
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• FAIR² DATA Direct Submission
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Policy Brief
• Review
• Study Protocol
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Classification
• Clinical Trial
• Community Case Study
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• FAIR² DATA Direct Submission
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Classification
• Clinical Trial
• Community Case Study
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• FAIR² DATA Direct Submission
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Policy Brief
• Review
• Study Protocol
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: Implementation science, Methodological innovations, Improvement science, Quality improvement, Implementation, Knowledge mobilisation, Knowledge translation, Pragmatic, Tools, Operations, Metascience, Innovation

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.