As 2025 draws to a close, we’d like to take a moment to pause and look back on the past year at R2A. Over the past twelve months, our community has shared ideas, challenged conventions, and remained firm in our commitment to understanding how evidence can best reach and help those wanting to make good decisions – for good outcomes.

In this ‘R2A 2025 Recap’, we bring together some of the moments, themes, and numbers that shaped the year: what you, our readers, read the most; where you joined us from; and the conversations that resonated across the research-to-action community. 

The R2A Community

This year, we welcomed more than 27K readers from an incredible 188 countries. Amongst the top 10 most represented countries, we were delighted to see audiences from India, the Philippines, China, South Africa and Kenya. Visitors conducted more than 1000 searches for topics as varied as ‘what is impact’ and ‘knowledge brokering’. Our most active user from Ghana racked up 104 interactions on the site (we think they were probably cramming for an exam, or an interview – and hope they were successful!) 

This last week – a fairly typical time with slightly less traffic in the run-up to the end-of-year holidays – we had the usual, wonderfully diverse range of users visiting the site. These include the University of Chicago’s library; a further education college in Sydney, Australia; a collaboration network based in Lucknow, India; multiple users from Thailand and practitioners from Qinnan, Shenzhen, Jinrongjie and Beijing in China. 

Your Favourite Blogs 

In the spirit of reflection and continual learning, let’s have a look at the top ten posts this year – in reverse order:

1. A guide to research evaluation frameworks by the RAND Corporation, which elaborates on key challenges and considerations
2.  Knowledge brokers: what are they and what do they do? They’re an integral part of the research and evidence ecosystem, but more on that here.
3. In this old but gold blog, Five Broad Stages of Research, Dennis Wesley breaks down the meticulous work that is research in an easy-to-understand way.
4. What exactly do we mean by ‘gap in the literature’? And how is it possible to see something that is missing?  Steve Wallis and Bernadette Wright break this down in Gap Analysis for Literature Reviews and Advancing Useful Knowledge.
5. Outcome Mapping: A Basic Introduction. This one does what it says on the tin – and throws in some additional key resources for your perusal.
6. How to develop input, activity, output, outcome and impact indicators, by Karolina Bohacova. We’re so glad to see one of our Impact Practitioner summaries on here! 
7. What do we mean by ‘impact’? Simon Hearn’s 2016 reflections on the nature of impact on international development remain as relevant as ever.
8. The policy brief is one of the ‘go-to’ tools for facilitating evidence-based policies. It is no surprise, then, that Nyasha Musandu’s How to Write Actionable Policy Recommendations has made it into the Top Three!
9. ‘Show me a 10ft paywall, I’ll show you a 12ft ladder.’ In 2022, Isobel Fisher brought our attention to a very useful tool for accessing articles without paying. Unfortunately, the webhost took down the 12ft.io site in July 2025 due to pressure from the News/Media Alliance.
10. In our most-read blog of the year, AI in Research: Its Uses and Limitations, Ines Aranguena muses on the opportunities and challenges AI may bring to the research field.

 

So what?

2025 has been an incredibly tough year for anyone working in, working on, or caring about international development. Institutions have been dismantled; important policies –  e.g. on climate change and tackling violence against women and girls – have been abandoned or diluted; funders have tightened their belts or been cowed into diverting funds into politically benign areas of work.  Scholars and practitioners dedicated to generating and using evidence as a ‘force for good’ might be forgiven for losing heart.

But you haven’t. 

Our review of the year tells us something simple but important. Across continents, countries, and institutions, our global community remains committed. Many of you are grappling with similar questions: how do we make sense of evidence? How do we use it responsibly? And how do we ensure that it contributes to making decisions that matter? 

The diversity of our readership reminds us why R2A exists in the first place: to create a space for reflection and learning, and to promote ways of knowing that are overshadowed by mainstream evidence systems. We carry these insights into the year ahead to continue supporting these conversations and remain ever committed to learning alongside our global R2A community.