Involving society in science
The concepts of Open Science and Responsible Research and Innovation call for a more transparent and collaborative science, and more participation of citizens. The way to achieve this is through cooperation with different actors or "stakeholders": individuals or organizations who can contr...
| Autores: | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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| Tipo de recurso: | artículo |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2021 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona |
| Repositorio: | Dipòsit Digital de Documents de la UAB |
| Idioma: | inglés |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:ddd.uab.cat:319914 |
| Acceso en línea: | https://ddd.uab.cat/record/319914 https://dx.doi.org/urn:doi:10.15252/embr.202154000 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Economics, Law & Politics History & Philosophy of Science |
| Sumario: | The concepts of Open Science and Responsible Research and Innovation call for a more transparent and collaborative science, and more participation of citizens. The way to achieve this is through cooperation with different actors or "stakeholders": individuals or organizations who can contribute to, or benefit from research, regardless of whether they are researchers themselves or not. Examples include funding agencies, citizens associations, patients, and policy makers (https://aquas.gencat.cat/ web/.content/minisite/aquas/publicacions/ 2018/how_measure_engagement_research_ saris1_aquas2018.pdf). Such cooperation is even more relevant in the current, challenging times-even apart from a global pandemic- when pseudo-science, fake news, nihilist attitudes, and ideologies too often threaten social and technological progress enabled by science. Stakeholder engagement in research can inform and empower citizens, help render research more socially acceptable, and enable policies grounded on evidence-based knowledge. Beyond, stakeholder engagement is also beneficial to researchers and to research itself. In a recent survey, the majority of scientists reported benefits from public engagement (Burns et al, 2021). This can include increased mutual trust and mutual learning, improved social relevance of research, and improved adoption of results and knowledge (Cottrell et al, 2014). Finally, stakeholder engagement is often regarded as an important factor to sustain public investment in the life sciences (Burns et al, 2021).Here, we discuss different levels of stakeholder engagement by way of example, presenting various activities organized by European research institutions. Based on these experiences, we propose ten reflection points that we believe should be considered by the institutions, the scientists, and the funding agencies to achieve meaningful and impactful stakeholder engagement. |
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