s:2197:"%T Finding appropriate definitions and measures of research quality for transdisciplinary and applied natural resource management research: a systematic review protocol 
%A Belcher, B. 
%A Rasmussen, K. 
%A Kemshaw, M. 
%A Zornes, D. 
%X Research increasingly seeks not only to generate knowledge, but also to have impact. In this context, traditional  academic definitions of research quality may be insufficient. This article presents a protocol for the systematic  review of new and emerging definitions, criteria and indicators of research quality in applied, inter- and  transdisciplinary contexts. It seeks to clarify arguments for or against expanding the definitions of research  quality and to identify appropriate definitions and measures, with an emphasis on natural resource management  research. The primary research question is: What are appropriate criteria and indicators for defining and measuring  the quality of transdisciplinary research in natural resource management research? The proposed review will  be based on literature sourced from a search of Scopus, Web of Knowledge and Google Scholar. The search  terms and strings to be used were developed and tested iteratively, based on a benchmark set of references and  incrementally refined searches designed to be comprehensive and to reduce irrelevant results. To select relevant  articles, two reviewers will independently perform three rounds of screening by scanning (1) titles, (2) abstracts  and (3) articles. The articles selected will then be reviewed for the following: arguments for or against expanding  definitions of research quality; purposes for research quality evaluation; proposed principles of research quality;  proposed criteria for research quality assessment; proposed indicators and measures of research quality; and  proposed processes for evaluating transdisciplinary research. The results will be synthesized to provide an  overview of the literature, to summarize the arguments and approaches for expanding definitions of research  quality, and to identify and discuss the main purposes, principles, indicators and measures of research quality in  transdisciplinary and applied contexts. 
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