Policy Briefs

This policy brief discusses implications and suggests to policy-makers how to improve the design of deployment policies and navigates businesses in policy-induced markets, and provides tools to help policy-makers and industry to foster ethical, responsible and sustainable R&I in industry, namely ethics assessment (EA) and ethical impact assessment (EIA) of R&I.

Who is it for: Policy-makers, research organisations, policy advisors, government research and innovation (R&I) departments interested in ethical impacts of research and innovation, private companies, R&I departments, national ethics committees,
research ethics committees, researchers.

Ensuring that R&I follows high ethical standards by reliable and efficient assessment procedures requires well-functioning national systems of ethics assessment based on internationally harmonised principles, which also facilitate international research collaboration.

This policy brief focuses on Research Funding Organisations (RFOs). RFOs, especially the European Commission, through their various funding programmes have a major leverage effect on how ethics is addressed in research and innovation. Ethics assessment at the European Union and Member States level has existed for decades in the field of clinical trials on drugs and medical devices. However, this has not been the case in other fields of research and innovation (R&I).

The SATORI project aims at supporting mutual learning in ethics assessment and guidance across stakeholders, and harmonising ethics assessment in Europe and beyond. Research ethics committees (RECs) form a crucial part of any framework for ethics assessment. Therefore, the SATORI project studied good practices in RECs aims, organisation and procedures across different institutions and jurisdictions. The present Policy Brief outlines our findings.

Responsible and Ethical Governance of Research and Innovation in the Context of Globalization In June 2015, consortium partners, leading authorities and experts met at a conference at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris to deliberate on the project’s findings so far and…