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Practices of Responsible Research and Innovation: A Review

Science and Engineering Ethics volume 26, pages 533–574 (2020)Cite this article

Abstract

This paper presents results of a systematic literature review of RRI practices which aimed to gather insights to further both the theoretical and practical development of RRI. Analysing practices of RRI and mapping out main approaches as well as the values, dimensions or characteristics pursued with those practices, can add to understanding of the more conceptual discussions of RRI and enhance the academic debate. The results, based on a corpus of 52 articles, show that practices already reflect the rich variety of values, dimensions and characteristics provided in the main definitions in use, although not all are addressed yet. In fact, articles dealing with uptake of RRI practices may be improved by including more methodological information. RRI practices may further the conceptual debate by including more reflection, and these may foster mutual responsiveness between theory and practice by early anticipating impacts.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are thankful for the help of Drs. Peter Noort from the University Library of the University of Twente, for the support of Prof. Dr. Menno de Jong of the University of Twente when preparing and conducting the review study, and for the helpful comments made by the reviewers on earlier versions of this manuscript.

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    Mirjam Schuijff & Anne M. Dijkstra

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  1. Mirjam Schuijff
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Correspondence to Anne M. Dijkstra.

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Conflict of interest

This study was funded by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme as part of the NUCLEUS project (Grant Number 664932). NUCLEUS is a 4-year project, running from 2015 to 2019, bringing RRI in practice in universities and research institutes.

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Schuijff, M., Dijkstra, A.M. Practices of Responsible Research and Innovation: A Review. Sci Eng Ethics 26, 533–574 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-019-00167-3

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Keywords

  • Responsible research and innovation (RRI)
  • Academic debate versus practices
  • Systematic literature review
  • Implementing RRI