Tobacco Tactics.org: a dynamic model of knowledge exchange to help academic research inform public health policy

This project aims to further develop an innovative on line resource, www.TobaccoTactics.org, as a novel form of knowledge exchange for research on the tobacco industry. TobaccoTactics was launched in June 2012 by the Tobacco Control Research Group (TCRG) at the University of Bath as a means of providing timely, public access to their findings, thus overcoming the problem that the policy process moves more quickly than the research/publication process. The enthusiastic reception for TobaccoTactics from diverse audiences - including NGOs the WHO and politicians - has encouraged the TCRG to develop it further. To become the go-to website for information on the tobacco industry, the project aims to: make preliminary research findings publicly available in a timely manner; enable the systematic storage and retrieval of preliminary research findings so they can be further analysed into traditional academic papers serve as a means of disseminating published research findings to a large audience compile research findings in a way that is useful to policy-makers and journalists. This will be achieved by working with stakeholders and knowledge exchange-experts to maximise the relevance of TobaccoTactics to key users and identify the most effective ways of driving users to the site.