RRI Tools

The ORION project will explore ways in which research and funding organizations in life sciences and biomedicine can open up the way they fund, organize and do research.

The project focuses on triggering evidence-based institutional, cultural and behavioural changes in Research Funding and Performing Organizations (RFPOs), targeting researchers, management staff and high-level leadership.

The aim of the project is to “embed” Open Science and Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) principles in RPFOs’ policies, practices and processes to organise and do research. Since science is about creativity and collaboration, the project extend further collaboration in research by engaging in co-creation experiments with multiple stakeholders.

The project will organize different “open-experiments” in three key challenge areas:

1. Opening up the research engine – making RFPOs more permeable to receiving input from numerous, distinct stakeholders
2. Identifying risks and opportunities presented by disruptive technologies;
3. Running multi-stakeholder projects based on citizen science. After an initial assessment and benchmarking exercise, we will use our three challenges as case studies to explore different co-creation methods with multiple stakeholders, and spark dialogue between unusual combinations of actors (e.g. funders and the public, or researchers, industry and the public).

The project will apply the RRI principles on the scientific process and governance, identify drivers and barriers, interests and values, and eventually produce “prototypes” for current and future societal challenges. Toward raising knowledge on RRI in practice and enriching the current training, we will generate innovative training programmes and modules based on the peer-to-peer learning approach, targeting young researchers and professionals at funding agencies.

The consortium, which involves RPFOs from different countries, representatives of RRI stakeholders and experts in social sciences, will move forward to achieve and embed Open Science.