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

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.