What does Responsible Research and Innovation mean?

 

MARINA project is entirely based on the Responsible Research and Innovation approach.

The European Commission believes that the actual societal challenges can be better faced only if all societal actors are fully engaged in the co-construction of innovative solutions, products and services.

 

Responsible Research and Innovation means that societal actors work together during the whole research and innovation preocess in order to better align both the process and its outcomes, with the values, needs and expectations of European society. RRI is an ambitious challenge for the creation of a research and innovation policy driven by the needs of society and engaging all societal actors via inclusive participatory approaches.

(“Responsible Research and Innovation – Europe’s ability to respond to societal challenges“, European Commission, 2014)

 

RRI is composed by six dimensions.

  1. Multi-actor and public engagement: Researchers and innovators, industry and SMEs, academia, policy-makers, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), civil society and citiziens interact among them in a two-way, iterative, inclusive and participatory process of exchanges and dialogues on science and technology issues. This process will plan an agenda aligned with societal needs and will produce more accetable outcomes.
  2. Gender equality: this engagement have to address the under-representation of women and gender issues must be integrated in research and innovation content.
  3. Science education: to allow the engagement and the dialogue, science language must be available and understandable to everyone; that means changes in the education systems in order to ease the process.
  4. Open Science: the European Commission, according to the 3Os policy (Open Innovation, Open Science, Opent to the World), requires the freely accessibility of scientific researches and data collected, in order to stimulate the research and innovation process.
  5. Ethics: research and innovation must respect fundamental rights and the highest ethical standards, in order to increase relevance and accetability of its outcomes.
  6. Harmonious Governance models: policy-makers have to anticipate societal expectations on research and innovation and develop new governance models including all previous dimensions.