Responsible Research and Innovation in citizen science: what changes does it make?
- Autor(en)
- Loreta Tauginienė, Barbara Heinisch, Eglė Butkevičienė
- Abstrakt
Citizen science and Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) are inextricably linked. We therefore discuss impediments and motives of practising principles of RRI in citizen science. Using constructivist grounded theory, we analysed semi-structured interviews conducted with 20 citizen science projects. Our findings show that there are a few impediments that restrict the interviewees from embedding RRI in citizen science projects. First, there are concerns related to public engagement, e.g. understanding of public engagement as the concept, consideration of the societal needs in general, building and maintaining relationships, particularly communication throughout the entire project, slowed down research process and increased paperwork. Sometimes both citizens and governments have unrealistic expectations towards science to provide solutions to all problems and, when these expectations are not met, this diminishes trust in science and in impact of science. In terms of gender equality, inequities, e.g. regarding gender, background or religion, were traced in citizen science projects. Scientists usually have no customised science education training, specifically how to apply RRI (not only in citizen science). In terms of ethics, research ethics procedures do not take account of the needs of citizen science projects and are not adapted to citizens as active participants (and not only as research participants). Ultimately, open access can be an obstacle if personal or sensitive information needs to be collected in citizen science projects. Due to all these obstacles the interviewed citizen science projects feel that they are acting in the grey zones of the permissible. Despite that, the interviewed citizen science projects shared a few motives that encouraged them to practise RRI in citizen science, e.g. the interest to follow an approach of good science (good research practice), to evidence data reuse by other stakeholders or in other formats and learning experiences. Given the previously mentioned, changes should be implemented to acknowledge the value of RRI in citizen science and to provide citizen science-relevant resources to scientists.
- Organisation(en)
- Kommunikation, Institut für Translationswissenschaft
- Publikationsdatum
- 2024
- Peer-reviewed
- Ja
- ÖFOS 2012
- 509017 Wissenschaftsforschung
- Sustainable Development Goals
- SDG 5 – Geschlechtergleichheit
- Link zum Portal
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/fdf34f73-b12d-4f11-97dc-7c10d84948e1