Emerging patterns in the academic literature on responsible research and innovation

Abstract

Recently, the term “Responsible Research and Innovation” (RRI) was introduced in the European Union policy discourse for science and technology, aiming to align research and innovation to the values, needs and expectations of society. At the same time the concept of RRI was debated by academics across fields of knowledge. The goal of this study is to uncover discursive properties in the academic literature about RRI and to frame it in a disciplinary context. We summarize how RRI emerged in the academic literature, showing evidence of conflicting definitions and interpretations. Using computational tools and methodologies of network and text analysis, the discursive content of a large set of peer-reviewed articles was analysed. Results show that RRI is gradually becoming more multidisciplinary, and also that the academic discourse is increasingly more focused on public engagement and ethics, leaving aside other dimensions of RRI proposed by the official European policy discourse. We conducted directed content analysis with the purpose of deepening and discussing the findings, and conclude that the increasing multidisciplinarity of RRI and the ideological potential that emerges from the relation between the dimensions of ethics and engagement are the factors that most contribute to the lack of consensus in the definition of RRI.