Responsible Research and Innovation and Open Science are part of a broader context of changes affecting science and innovation. Forming an opinion about features, contents, and trajectories of these changes is extremely important to approach RRI and OS properly.

Different scholars have developed interpretive models on the deep and broad changes which were and still are occurring in science and innovation. Among these models, we can mention here the Mode 1/Mode 2 Model, the Post-academic science, the Triple or Quadruple Helix approach, the Post-normal science or the Innovation systems.

In general, although different from each other, these interpretive models agree that a paradigm shift is occurring in the way science is conceived and organised, contribute to innovation processes and interacts with the rest of society. Overall, because of this shift, the consolidated social model of science – often symbolically associated with the image of the “Ivory Tower” – is fading away and a new social model for science is emerging, although still unnamed.

The consolidated social model of science sees it as:

• Substantially autonomous from society
• Largely separated from the facts, worries and practicalities of society and, in general, of the real world
• Based on forms of self-direction (it mainly advances on the basis of scientists’ interests)
• Internally organised in well-defined disciplinary fields
• Not involved in the actual implications and use of its outputs (in terms of knowledge, discoveries, technologies, but also impacts and risks).

The emerging model thinks science as:

• Fully embedded in society and strongly connected with political, economic, and societal dynamics (de facto limiting its autonomy)
• Open to the external lay actors and sensitive towards expectations, needs, worries and problems of society
• Increasingly adopting multidisciplinary approaches
• Based on forms of co-direction and co-production with stakeholders and the public at large
• Directly concerned with the actual implications and use of its outputs.

These are two abstract models, none of which exists in the real world. Moreover, the situation largely varies according to national contexts, disciplinary areas and even research institutions. However, identifying this general tendency is a necessary step for starting up a reflection on the role and benefits of responsible and open science.

This shift  is to be understood as strongly linked to a broader move from modernity to the so-called post-modernity.

Modern society was characterised by strong social structures (social rules, social norms, behavioural patterns, social values, etc.) embodied by authoritative, powerful, hierarchically structured organisations (parties, state organisations, trade unions, etc.).

In the post-modern age – under the pressure of different factors like population growth, mass education, globalisation, pervasive diffusion of increasingly powerful technologies, and mass consumption – such structures and organisations started weakening, while the autonomy of individuals (e.g., to make their choices, to shape their own identity, to develop their worldview, etc.) and the groups they are part of is increasing.

The effect is that all the social institutions of modernity, including science, are asked to adapt to a horizontally structured and highly diversified society and to individuals much more inclined to distrust them, to challenge their authority, and to question their results and procedures, also asking for more transparency and accountability.

In this framework, the “Ivory Tower” model appears to be obsolete and highly dysfunctional, and the search started for more effective and adaptive models, like RRI and OS.

This transition of science towards a new model – which already started in the 1940s with the so-called “big science” – is now rapidly accelerating its pace. However, it is not occurring smoothly, because it is strongly influenced by many other change trends occurring in contemporary societies such as globalisation, increasing competition, social diversification and fragmentation, and increasing weight of economic and financial variables on the life of States, institutions, and individuals.

All of this is resulting in a wide range of critical transformations also affecting the most intimate mechanisms of scientific knowledge production.

The increasing competition among researchers and research organisations on a global scale is leading to an acceleration of the research processes, with impacts on the organisation of academic life, researchers’ living conditions, research quality, and research integrity. Peer-reviewing procedures and research evaluation are more and more questioned in terms of both methods and outputs. A crisis in the capacity of scientists to reproduce and reuse research data is also emerging. The organisation of science as a community of peers is weakening while an “industrial” organisational approach is emerging, producing effects like overtraining and overexploitation of young researchers, decrease in teaching quality, and increased attitude of self-promotion among scientists. Some of these issues are viewed by scientists and research leaders as highly problematic.

Thus, what is at stake is not only the relation of scientists and research institutions with society, but the very capacity of research actors and research systems to keep and develop those procedures, standards, and social processes which so far allowed them to produce the specific kind of knowledge we use to refer to as “scientific knowledge”. 

In the perspective of activating a process of institutional change towards RRI and OS, three key issues should be taken into consideration with reference to the changes affecting science.

How changes occurring in science are affecting one’s organisation

The first issue to deal with is how the changes are affecting one’s own research organisation and with what effects. Both positive and negative impacts should be observed. A list of changes usually affecting research organisation, with examples of risks and opportunities, is available here.

What is staff perception about change

The second issue to deal with is how change is perceived by the staff (researchers, managers, leaders, students, etc.) of the organisation. Generally, people tend to only perceive a fraction of the ongoing changes, especially those which more directly affect them. In many cases, changes are overlooked or even denied, or they are experienced only in negative terms (uncertainty, decline, etc). Often, changes are only perceived for the direct impact they have on one’s life: increase in administrative work, bureaucratisation of procedures, decrease in the time available for doing research, growing problems in retaining PhD students and post-docs because of the lack of resources, or the perception of increased competition in accessing funds or in publishing research works. Different generations of researchers or managers often see the transformations occurring in science in a different way.

Which measures have been taken so far for managing the changes

Another issue to be deepened is obviously how the organisational leadership or individual staff members react and attempt to manage the changes affecting the organisation. It is to consider that, in many cases, responses are provided at a very informal and personal level (changing personal time organisation, modifying personal career strategies, reducing one’s career expectations, etc.). Moreover, formal measures are often taken by the organisation with low awareness levels about what is at stake with these change trends.

With respect to the changes involving science, three main recommendations can be identified

Responsible Research and Innovation and Open Science can be generally understood as specific policy frameworks aimed at managing the deep transformations affecting science and science-society relations. Rather than being univocal and well-defined approaches, they are “umbrella concepts” which include and try to coordinate different sets of practices, measures, and tools, more specialised in nature, through defining some general ordering principles.

RRI and OS have a different origin, but their trajectories are now increasingly converging and overlapping.

The concept of Responsible Research and Innovation is quite large in scope and relatively undefined in its boundaries. At its core, there is the idea that science actors should be responsible, in close interaction with other societal actors, of the (ethical) acceptability, sustainability and societal desirability of the scientific knowledge they produce, as well as of the innovation process and marketable products that such scientific knowledge makes it possible to develop. In the view of the European Commission, the notion of responsible research pragmatically includes five keys or pillars, each with its history and autonomous conceptualisation (i.e., gender equality, public engagement, research ethics and integrity, science education, and open access), and four dimensions (i.e., anticipation, reflexivity, inclusion, responsiveness).

The concept of Open Science emerges as a progressive enlargement of the principles of open access, i.e., making sure that publicly funded research outputs are accessible to all. Starting from the 1980s and 1990s, the idea of “openness”, initially limited to publications, was applied to encompass many other products (data, software, peer-review) up to define highly-collaborative practices for doing science and for developing science policies. The concept of open science is more known than that of responsible research and innovation and it is probably more easily understood.

Both concepts are intellectually rooted in the “new model” of science we discussed in Chapter One, variably referred to as “Mode2 of scientific knowledge production”, “Post-academic science” or “Quadruple helix approach” to science and innovation. In this sense, they are both engaged in helping science to implement and speed up the paradigm shift necessary to go beyond the “Ivory Tower”.

Although experiences and practices inspired by RRI and OS are multiplying, many barriers and resistances to RRI and Open Science are still there.

Most of them are related to the objective complexity of strongly modifying consolidated structures, practices, culture and procedures. Hence the importance to focus the attention on how to activate, implement and drive the process of institutional change within research organisations (see Part One, Chapter One).

However, these problems also arise because of the ways in which the shift toward a responsible and open science is practically experienced. Since they are both umbrella concepts, they are interpreted in different ways and, although they are both attractive and mobilising, it is often difficult to apply them.

Another big question is the relation of RRI and OS with the transformations affecting science. In the majority of cases, those who promote or study RRI and OS seem to overlook or even ignore many of the critical trends affecting science.

The risk is that researchers and research managers feel RRI and OS as something producing other time-consuming obligations and tasks which add up to their ordinary (already highly absorbing) activities. The challenge is, therefore, that of making RRI and OS something supporting researchers and research managers to solve their  problems and save their time.

What is at stake, therefore, is understanding, not if RRI and OS are right or not, but how and under which conditions they can be fruitfully used to drive, accelerate and make more effective the shift towards a different and more socially adaptive model of science.

In the perspective of activating a process of institutional change towards RRI and OS in a given organisation, a set of key issues should be considered.

Which are the actions and strategies already in place or planned
to promote RRI and OS and how they work

Many research organisations have been developing practices and measures related to RRI and OS for some years now. In the majority of cases, these are not recognised as part of a unique policy framework (for example, they can be managed by different units of the organisation, they may not be labelled as related to RRI or OS, etc.). Policy areas such as public engagement, gender equality or research ethics have their story and communities of practices which are not connected with each other. A first key issue to consider is, therefore, reconstructing a unitary and consistent image of what the organisation is doing for implementing RRI and OS. Viewing and assessing them as a component of a common plan (even when they are not) can be extremely useful for capturing how and to what extent the research organisation is moving out of the traditional models of conceiving, producing, and managing scientific knowledge.

To what extent staff and leaders express a consent towards RRI and OS

Changes cannot take place without someone proposing them and a group of people sustaining them over time. Especially in a post-modern context like the one we are living in, purely top-down change simply does not work any longer. Hence the importance of this second issue, i.e., the need to understand who are the actors, stakeholders, groups, or individual researchers, leaders, officers or managers who are bringing forward or supporting RRI and OS-related initiatives. More in general, it is important to understand how potentially large is the area of people supportive of RRI and OS policies and how large, on the contrary, is that of people who are not involved with, not interested in or even against RRI and OS.

Which are the external actors and stakeholders
the organisation is already working with to carry out RRI and OS

RRI and OS are part of cultural and policy trends which pass across organisations, governments and research systems. Whatever the terms and the concepts used, the tendency to move towards a more responsible and open science also manifests itself through networks, associations, common projects and cooperation relationships, as well as through conferences, meetings, and any other initiative connecting people and organisations. A third issue to consider is, therefore, understanding how far your research organisation is embedded in these networks and how the latter is effective and useful to help the organisation to enhance its action for implementing RRI and OS.

With respect to changes involving science, three main recommendations can be identified