Ethics in RRI relates to:
- Ethical research conducting and applying fundamental ethical principles and relevant national, EU and international legislation to scientific research. This includes privacy and data protection issues and taking special consideration of children, patients and other vulnerable people with regards to informed consent and protection from harm.
- Research integrity to ensure the reliability and independence of the research and preventing misconduct or negligence calling research results into question.
- Societal acceptability: Research should respond to actual societal needs and reflect the basic values of society, as expressed, for example, in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and the European Convention on Human Rights. In addition to ensuring increased societal relevance, it also relates to the ethical acceptability of scientific developments. By addressing diversity and inclusion requirements, ‘silent voices’, i.e. stakeholder groups that are often overlooked, can also be taken into consideration.
Good ethical practice is a way of ensuring high quality results and ethics is given the highest priority in EU-funded research. Ethics is an important consideration for science shops and some science shops have specific ethical frameworks and review processes for their community research projects.
RRI TOOLS
… to promote research integrity |
| The RRI Tools project guide on how to promote research integrity contains links to further information and best practice examples. |
| The European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity is a Europe-wide code of conduct to guide researchers in their work as well as in their engagement with the practical, ethical and intellectual challenges inherent in research.
The code complements existing codes of ethics and complies with national and European legislative frameworks. It is not intended to replace existing national or academic guidelines, but represents agreement across 30 countries on a set of principles and priorities for self-regulation of the research community. An updated 2017 version takes into account of developments in Open Science, including the growing importance of data quality and management. |
… to learn about ethical issues in community-based research |
| Community-based participatory research – A guide to ethical principles and practice is produced by the Centre for Social Justice and Community Action at Durham University (2012) and the UK National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement. |
| The European textbook on ethics in research (2010) is designed for use in the training of science students, researchers and research ethics committee members throughout Europe and beyond. |