Programme / Thematic Sessions II. b. Responsible Research and Innovation and Research Integrity: Across the Globe and Across Society

Responsible Research and Innovation and Research Integrity: Across the Globe and Across Society

The thematic session focussed on the responsibility, ethics and integrity of research from different viewpoints, through the eyes of researchers, policy makers and funding agencies. In the first part, six invited speakers shared their thoughts on the topic. They shared their views and experiences about the emerging issues in scientific ethics and also presented global and regional initiatives and best practices for ensuring responsible and ethical research. Simge Davulcu Menget introduced the Responsible Research and Innovation Networking Globally (RRING) project, which aims at spreading the best practices of responsible research and innovation globally using a bottom-up approach and acknowledging that the implementation of RRI needs different approaches regionally according to the particular social, cultural and political environments. Rocky Skeef showed how the research funding system in South Africa ensures the compliance of both institutions and researchers with scientific ethics. He also mentioned the negative effects of predatory journals and presented a statement on ethical research and scholarly publishing practices. Steffen Fritz shared his thoughts about the importance of public engagement in science and mentioned several good examples where citizen science can provide an invaluable addition to universal knowledge. He called attention to the fact that there is a need for harmonising GDPR with citizen science, as in some cases the regulations can make it impossible to collect data with an exact spatial location. April Tash shared her ideas about how we can measure academic freedom and how we can distinguish between the legal and ethical aspects related to scientific ethics. Faten Attig-Bahar introduced the YESS community (Young Earth System Scientists) and their vision to make science open-access in order to involve multiple sectors and stakeholders in the process of science and innovation. Finally, Maral Dadvar shared Global Young Academy’s mission of selecting its members by acknowledging diversity, being inclusive and recognising the excellence of researchers relative to their opportunities. The presentations were followed by a thought-provoking roundtable discussion on the six key topics of the thematic session.

Rapporteur: Orsolya Valkó, MTA-DE Lendület Seed Ecology Research Group, Research Group Leader