The EPSRC AREA framework highlights four key activities involved in “doing” RRI:
There are LOTS of different tools and resources available to help with RRI (see below). Sometimes the biggest problem is deciding where to start. The RRI Prompts and Practice cards provide a simple starting point if you want to start thinking about what RRI could mean for your research.
But fundamentally, RRI is an ongoing process in which you ask yourself (and your colleagues):
What are we going to do now to make our research ‘more responsible’?
Here are some more specific questions to consider in relation to RRI:
Here are some links to useful tools and resources to help with RRI:
As a researcher, you can do a lot to make your research responsible, but there are some things that you can’t do as a lone researcher. RRI will be most effective if:
So you may need to ask other people for support, and perhaps you could act as a local “champion” for RRI.
Marina Jirotka, Barbara Grimpe, Bernd Stahl, Grace Eden, and Mark Hartswood. 2017. Responsible research and innovation in the digital age. Commun. ACM 60, 5 (May 2017), 62–68. https://doi.org/10.1145/3064940
Virginia Portillo, Peter Craigon, Liz Dowthwaite, Chris Greenhalgh, Elvira Pérez-Vallejos (2022). Supporting responsible research and innovation within a university-based digital research programme: Reflections from the “hoRRIzon” project. Journal of Responsible Technology, Volume 12, 100045, ISSN 2666-6596. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrt.2022.100045