Background: Policy and practice decisions may be made on the basis of many different factors including politics, contexts and resources, yet there is an increasing expectation that research evidence should be used as one source of information in the decision-making process. Formal research methods are used to undertake and synthesise research yet many of our approaches to enable the use of research evidence are themselves not evidence based. The aim of this project is the development and evaluation of evidence informed toolkits to enable research use. The project builds on the Wellcome Trust funded Science of Using Science project (SoUS) (Langer et al. 2016) which created a conceptual framework for understanding 'research to use' processes and reviewed the evidence of the effectiveness of different strategies to increase research use.

Objectives: To develop evidence-based toolkits to suport both researchers and users of research in: (i) enabling the use of research in decision making; and, (ii) to monitor and assess the extent of such research uptake strategies, activities and outcomes. The aim to enhance the capacity among creators and users of research and their organisations to identify, plan, track, and articulate the actual and potential uptake of research.

Methods: A systematic review of research on effective strategies to increase research use plus a conceptual analsyis of the evidence use process was used to develop two evidence-based toolkits; one aimed predominantly at researchers and one aimed predominantly at policy makers.

Results: The draft toolkits and pilot evaluation of their use will be presented

Conclusions: In progress at the time of abstract submission.