Responsibility as an Integral Component of Digital Research Practices in Bio-and Nanotechnology (ReDig)

In research policies, within Norway, Europe and the United States, responsibility is increasingly being requested as an integrated component of research and innovation activities. In the first instance, responsible research and innovation should social challenges and needs (von Schomberg, 2011, Owen et al. 2012).

This project will produce knowledge on how responsibility should be integrated within digital research practices. An increasing adoption of digital tools and infrastructures for research is occurring within a number of scientific fields. Combined with classic experimental methods, digital software is increasingly used to model and design scientific objects. Software and digital platforms are used for making and matching data as well as to store and share them.

What can roughly be characterized as a digitalization of research, is producing changes to the nature of scientific objects and research practices, it entails important ethical, legal and social aspects. For instance, issues related to the ownership, accountability and transparency of knowledge are being articulated through claims for open science. Although according to a broad view these developments are not specific to the fields of biotechnology and nanotechnology, a closer view into each of these fields brings about interesting specificities and overarching commonalities that this project aims at identifying and analyzing.

The project will focus on digital practices of design, modelling and data sharing as they are performed in specific projects in those research fields. After analyzing these practices, it will turn the focus to responsibility in digital research and innovation practices by focusing on three themes: a) Open science; b) Controllability; c) Public good.

For more informaiton, please visit the ReDig webpage.