Researchers' perceptions of COVID-19 impact on Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI)-based practices and society's view of science in the first months of the pandemic

Over the last decade, national and international agencies have repeatedly called for research practices aligned with the Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI), with varied effects on different disciplines and countries. The COVID-19 pandemic made this need even more critical. This study aimed to explore whether and how, from researchers' point of view, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to changes in RRI-based research practices in the different disciplines and, more generally, society's perception of science. 1499 researchers in the three Catalan-speaking regions of Spain responded to an online questionnaire in the first months of the pandemic. Results showed that while only half perceived an impact on RRI-based practices, this proportion was higher for Health Sciences and Social Sciences researchers in all the dimensions. Most researchers perceived a positive impact on societal actors' views of science, although researchers in the Humanities were more sceptical than those in other disciplines. The analysis of open-ended questions revealed researchers from all disciplines were also concerned about fake news and claimed that researchers' working conditions and research funding across all disciplines needed to be improved for future research to be capable of coping with current and future challenges. © 2022 University of Deusto. All rights reserved.

Evaluating Research Partnerships through ISO 56003 Guidelines, RRI Concepts, and Ex Post Facto Cases

This article aims to evaluate improvements in opportunities for research partnerships focused on innovation, considering the ISO 56003 guidelines, Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) concepts, and the experiences of the authors of this article, who are researchers in various areas (ex post facto). The results presented arise from structured debates and discussions. As a result of the analysis and reflections carried out, some improvement opportunities in most of the partnerships established among research groups can be visualised. Partners in a research group often debate aspects related to technical knowledge associated with the research and contractual procedures in detail;however, they do not equally emphasise other important partnership management aspects, such as the analysis of the research impacts on all stakeholders, the definition and adoption of a governance policy to better conduct the interaction among members, and other actions that can enhance the partnerships. This article can be characterised as a synthesis of lessons learned, in addition to a presentation of guidelines mentioned in the literature. This knowledge can be useful to other researchers in planning new partnerships or evaluating existing ones. For deciding whether to enter into a partnership or withdraw from it, the information presented here is of great value.

Human computer interaction challenges in designing pandemic trace application for the effective knowledge transfer between science and society inside the quadruple helix collaboration

In the last decade, smartphone users grown from 2.8 billion worldwide in 2018 to 3.8 billion in 2021. This fact associates with greater ease of publishing and accessing fake news. This is a particularly concerning issue in a global crisis situation such as the COVID-19 pandemic. As stated by the WHO, this is a global health crisis and the spread of fake information could have a direct impact on people’s wellbeing. Due to this situation, all systems which compose the quadruple helix (i.e., science, economy, politics and media and culture-based public) are under great pressure. On the one hand, citizens demand fast and trusted information, and on the other hand, the scientific community is pushed to publish, resulting in scientific papers published very fast and, sometimes, without adequate peer review processes, as reflected by the unprecedented number of retreats. The PandeVITA ecosystem will contribute to offering a better understanding of how societal actors’ behave, understanding their reaction to and interaction with science and health developments in the context of pandemics, with the aim to encourage citizens to contribute to scientific research with different kinds of data. This paper describes a novel approach to citizen science interventions and user engagement based on motivational theory and behavioral science, aiming to provide a set of architectural components, technologies, tools and analytics to assess citizens’ activities, system performance and stakeholders-related key performance indicators (KPIs) in an observatory fashion, allowing to investigate the motivation of the target participants, user engagement and long-term retention. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021.

Predicted dominance of variant Delta of SARS-CoV-2 before Tokyo Olympic Games, Japan, July 2021.

Using numbers of SARS-CoV-2 variants detected in Japan as at 13 June 2021, relative instantaneous reproduction numbers (RRI) of the R.1, Alpha, and Delta variants with respect to other strains circulating in Japan were estimated at 1.25, 1.44, and 1.95. Depending on the assumed serial interval distributions, RRI varies from 1.20-1.32 for R.1, 1.34-1.58 for Alpha, and 1.70-2.30 for Delta. The frequency of Delta is expected to take over Alpha in Japan before 23 July 2021.