Knowledge Translation: A Challenge in Research

Abstract

A comprehensive description of knowledge translation (KT) defining its meaning, mechanisms, methods and measures is much wanted in the field of research across disciplines. It is indispensable to collate ideas drawn out from the extant literature and formulate a standard definition useful for researchers in all domains of knowledge. In its simplest form, KT means putting knowledge to productive uses. Knowledge has always been in use for quality decision-making, but the kind of KT we mean in the present context is the institutionalized, professional and iterative form of knowledge ready for services, products and property. It involves a smooth but complicated relations of exchange of needs and ideas between the people (the consumers of knowledge) and the researcher (the producer of knowledge), facilitating translation of knowledge into uses of ethical justification. In short, KT signifies a judicious action to turn research outcomes into practice, a dynamic and iterative process of linking knowledge with its application, yielding products, services and intellectual property. What makes KT unprecedentedly enterprising today is the context of the Knowledge Economy (KE) that has embraced the world. It has made knowledge the basic economic resource and the acquisition of it the most important economic process.