Insights for effective applied research: Four case studies with advice for young researchers

The selected case studies illustrate a series of key factors that make a publication impactful in the sense of providing deep insight or durable utility. Some of these factors include: establishing key information to help clients perform better, enabling multiple ways to fact-check forecasts, providing good documentation that is easy to understand, ensuring all stakeholders are involved, focusing on potential solutions rather than the apparent problem, being open to alternative interpretations and prepared to change research direction as needed, finding practical analogues when the ideal task is too challenging, ensuring redundancy in case something goes wrong, and carefully reviewing all aspects of one’s work to find possible improvements.