The phrase "alignment efforts between" is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it when discussing collaborative initiatives or strategies involving two or more parties or entities.
Example: "The alignment efforts between the marketing and sales teams have significantly improved our overall performance."
Alternatives: "collaborative initiatives among" or "coordinated actions between".
In this research project, we identified six relevant categories of both horizontal alignment efforts (between investigators and key users) as well as vertical alignment efforts (within own organization) that influenced the contributions to the Inspectorate's work.
Early extensive alignment efforts between investigators and key users on the formulation of the research question using previous experience and researchers' knowledge, exploring the actual needs behind the question, and taking into account study limitations is important to manage the expectations on the contributions and achievable timelines at both sides.
These scores can then be used for the identification of patterns in the relation between alignment efforts and realized contributions.
To our knowledge, a method for assessing the relation between alignment efforts for new research projects and eventually realized contributions does not exist.
It may also be interesting to conduct multiple case studies and search for patterns in the relation between alignment efforts and contributions.
Some examples of such official alignment efforts are periodic meetings between managers of the RIVM and the commissioning organizations, training of project leaders where they learn to keep in touch with the commissioner's contact person, and guidelines for the periodic progress reports and final RIVM products.
In the literature, the importance of horizontal alignment between research and key users is exhaustively described; horizontal alignment efforts are considered the key for enhancing research contributions.
This caused some tension in the project between investigators and inspectors, which was eventually resolved by discussion (alignment efforts).
In the third stage, the alignment efforts are analyzed.
In Table 1 nine alignment efforts are described as examples.
Relevant alignment efforts influencing the contributions of the project became manifest at three levels: the first level directly relates to the project, the second to the organizational environment, and the third to the formal and historical relationship between the organizations.
