Global indicators framework for socially responsible research and innovation (RRI): Aligning standards to monitor public and researcher perspectives with the UNESCO Recommendation on Science and Scientific Researchers

As calls for more socially responsible research and innovation (RRI) policies and practices grow more insistent, the need for high-quality indicators that can be used to evaluate progress is becoming increasingly important. Given the global nature of science, such indicators need to be relevant to countries across all world regions. Moreover, the methodological quality of indicators is critical to provide a strong foundation for long-term comparative measurement of the impacts of different kinds of policy intervention. There is a practical challenge here, given the uneven mechanisms for data collection and analysis available in different countries. There is also a geopolitical challenge in gaining buy-in from countries with very different, and sometimes competing, agendas. Here, the 2017 UNESCO-led Recommendation on Science and Scientific Researchers is highlighted as an existing vehicle that can enable cooperation on globally comparative measurement of socially responsible research and innovation. In particular, the quadrennial monitoring of the implementation of this wide-ranging global policy instrument that has been ratified by 195 countries affords a unique opportunity to add value for these countries by linking RRI to the 2017 Recommendation while establishing benchmark indicators for RRI more generally. As a practical and methodological contribution to the global community of science and innovation policymakers, researchers and research and innovation stakeholders committed to socially responsible research, this report contains detailed survey questions and response options focusing on public opinion and individual researchers’ level of measurement. It provides details of sources of benchmark survey data that have readily available open data that can be used to benchmark the development of socially responsible research and innovation over time from the vantage points of the public and researchers around the world. The aim of this kind of science ecosystem-level indicators framework is to enable evidence-based practice in socially responsible research and innovation.