SciShops

Responsible research and innovation (RRI) refers to the involvement of key stakeholders throughout the research process in order to take societal needs and challenges into account. By their participatory nature and the potential to bridge the gap between science and society, science shops embody many aspects of RRI. They are following a collaborative, demand-driven, bottom-up approach to research that is undertaken in response to an identified societal issue or problem on behalf of and together with the community.

However, there are also more collaborative, bottom-up driven opportunities for science shops offered by adopting a more conscious approach to RRI.  Based on this idea, the SciShops project has collated a set of RRI tools and methodologies of relevance to science shops to help them make their community-based participatory research even more engaging and responsible.

The tools are categorised according to the key dimensions of RRI (such as ethics, gender equality, open access etc.) as well as the various activities undertaken by science shops as part of community-based participatory research, including project definition, implementation, evaluation and dissemination.

A core source of tools has been the RRI Toolkit, developed as part of the EU RRI Tools FP7-project. Wherever possible, cross references have been provided to entries in the RRI Toolkit, which contain direct links to the relevant resources. The RRI tools set in SciShops is by no means exhaustive and further resources will be added as they become available and identified.

It should be stressed that there is not a rigid set of guidelines for implementing RRI. Rather, RRI is a holistic approach that requires active reflection to identify ways in which RRI can help to improve relevant aspects of your own research practices. Nevertheless, the provided tools can be used as inspiration and facilitate the exchange of best practices and approaches.

Sections in the RRI Tools set

• Introduction to RRI and related tools

• RRI Tools for conducting Community-Based Participatory Research

• RRI Tools for science shops linked to Higher Education Institutions

• RRI Tools relating to Ethics

• RRI Tools relating to Gender Equality 

• RRI Tools relation to Open Access

• RRI Tools for Monitoring and Evaluation

• RRI Tools for Communication of Results

Links

Project SciShops https://project.scishops.eu/

SciShops Platform https://www.scishops.eu/

Keywords

Science Shops, Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI), Citizen Science