IrsiCaixa trains more than 3,200 social actors on Responsible Research and Innovation through the RRI Tools project
The IrsiCaixa Living Lab for Health has trained more than 3,200 social actors on Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) throughout the three-year European RRI Tools project. IrsiCaixa, who led the Spanish Hub in collaboration with the Research and Knowledge Area of “la Caixa” Foundation, has organized 22 workshops on RRI, has collaborated with various masters and university degrees and has participated in some twenty international events and congresses. At European level, the project has developed a training program to promote RRI among the research community, industry, politicians, civil society entities and the educational community.
The RRI Tools courses have allowed social actors to debate about the opportunities and obstacles of Responsible Research and Innovation, to identify useful tools and methodologies to apply it in their projects and to establish new synergies between them. They have also gone in-depth on the RRI's political agendas -open access, gender equality, ethics, citizen participation, science education and governance-. The Agency for Management of University and Research Grants (AGAUR), the Catalan Association of Public Universities (ACUP), the Catalan Association of Scientific Communication (ACCC,) the Agencia Andaluza del Conocimiento, the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM), Innobasque, the Confederación de Sociedades Científicas de España (COSCE) and the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT), among others, collaborated to organize the courses.
Online Resources
All these activities have also served to develop the RRI Tools Toolkit, with almost 500 resources to implement RRI and a virtual community of more than 1,000 users that enriches it day by day. IrsiCaixa has collaborated especially in the development of political agendas of STEAM Education and Public Engagement. RRI Tools has also developed this document to explain how an educational project -Xplore Health- evolves to incorporate RRI criteria.
The RRI Tools website will remain active in 18 languages. Users can find manuals to implement RRI, guides, tutorials, inspiring practices, projects, scientific literature and other publications. The online platform is participatory, as visitors can create an account to join the RRI community, upload their own resources and participate in forum discussions.
About RRI
RRI is an iterative and transparent process to open research and innovation that seeks to improve the relationship between science and society. It proposes to invite the different social actors to collaborate in the different stages of the process. The aim is moving towards a more participatory R&D &I governance, in order to better align it with the interests and expectations of society and to find sustainable solutions to the social challenges of the 21st century.
European Commission drives RRI as a cross-cutting issue in Horizon 2020, the EU Programme for Research and Innovation 2014-2020. Every day more funding agencies, government agencies, research centers and universities from different continents begin to incorporate RRI.