Governance of research consortia: challenges of implementing Responsible Research and Innovation within Europe
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(2020) 16:13
RESEARCH
Open Access
Governance of research consortia: challenges of implementing Responsible Research and Innovation within Europe Michael Morrison1*† , Miranda Mourby1†, Heather Gowans1, Sarah Coy1 and Jane Kaye1,2 * Correspondence: michael. [email protected] Michael Morrison and Miranda Mourby should be considered joint lead authors on this paper. 1 Centre for Health, Law, and Emerging Technologies (HeLEX), Faculty of Law, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
Abstract Responsible Research and Innovation (‘RRI’) is a cross-cutting priority for scientific research in the European Union and beyond. This paper considers whether the way such research is organised and delivered lends itself to the aims of RRI. We focus particularly on international consortia, which have emerged as a common model to organise large-scale, multi-disciplinary research in contemporary biomedical science. Typically, these consortia operate through fixed-term contracts, and employ governance frameworks consisting of reasonably standard, modular components such as management committees, advisory boards, and data access committees, to co-ordinate the activities of partner institutions and align them with funding agency priorities. These have advantages for organisation and management of the research, but can actively inhibit researchers seeking to implement RRI activities. Conventional consortia governance structures pose specific problems for meaningful public and participant involvement, data sharing, transparency, and ‘legacy’ planning to deal with societal commitments that persist beyond the duration of the original project. In particular, the ‘upstream’ negotiation of contractual terms between funders and the institutions employing researchers can undermine the ability for those researchers to subsequently make decisions about data, or participant remuneration, or indeed what happens to consortia outputs after the project is finished, and can inhibit attempts to make project activities and goals responsive to input from ongoing dialogue with various stakeholders. Having explored these challenges, we make some recommendations for alternative consortia governance structures to better support RRI in future. Keywords: Governance, Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI), Stakeholders, Data sharing, Public engagement, Consortia, Transparency
© The Author(s). 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence
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