New Community Draft
RRING Community
We are a welcoming community that stands for mutual learning and collaboration to promote and mobilize for responsibility and freedom in research and innovation
in line with the Recommendation on Science and Scientific Researchers (2017).
A true community of practice to learn, share and apply
RRING goals are to establish and cultivate country by country, a true community of practice to learn, share and apply our influence to achieve ever more responsibility and freedom in research and innovation
An ‘observatory’ on responsibility
The RRING community will function as an ‘observatory’ on responsibility in research and innovation. Its global headquarters will assist each chapter to harness and amplify what all other chapters collectively are doing, i.e. help chapters support chapters.
In this relation:
- Each chapter will contribute to and advocate for the accuracy and completion of four-yearly national assessments of compliance to standards of the Recommendation on Science and Scientific Researchers (2017).
- After the national assessment reports are submitted, each chapter will also make its own review of the 4-yearly national reports on implementation, and may consider making recommendations for actions.
- Each chapter may, therefore, to the extent it so wishes, contribute its findings, methods, and observations based on their experiences to the community pool of knowledge so as to help all learn, share and apply our influence.
Seven Key Guiding Principles for 6 years
- RRING will be guided with reference to a global set of norms and standards agreed by 195 governments at UN level in order to capture a common ‘language’ for what has previously been referred to as RRI, and RRING will thus promote this common and global normative content across a variety of applications.
- RRING will evolve and grow toward becoming a recognizable global networking community made up of local (or national) chapters, each of which will adopt and must adhere to the mission statement and goals of RRING.
- RRING will ever maintain an ambitious social mobilization and behavioural change agenda for embedding certain norms of research (responsibility and others found in the RSSR) in practices everywhere, which may include working with public authorities at any level (local, national, regional or international) and also stands for high-quality research in line with RRING’s vision. Communicating is the action at the heart of actions to mobilize and promote and will be guided by the RRING Communications Strategy.
- Community and learning actions will be the initial focus, until the chapter will define and agree by vote of more than 2/3 of its members to its first activities plan. Each chapter will be routinely and regularly invited to contribute its advice and views, either as a chapter or by individual members, to assessments of norms and standards of the RSSR.
- Aside from their input to the assessments, RRING collaboration and advocacy actions will consist exclusively of clearly defined activities, voted on, and appearing in a chapter’s agreed activities plan, because they should be vetted among all members of a chapter so as to be context-sensitive (the RRING Communications Strategy and its advice is also useful here). They must fall within the social mobilization and behavioural change agenda, yet may be selectively focused on any of the topical areas of responsibility found in the RSSR.
- Activities may involve and/or address any or all of the institutions of a research and innovation ecosystem (many of which are identified in the RSSR) including the general public, youth, students, the media, industry, or the public authorities that make and apply public policies, and may selectively address influencers that can be recruited as champions of the agenda. Each chapter will be responsible for its own growth, recruiting, and financial sustainability, and administration. A short chapter report to RRING as a whole will allow each chapter to communicate across all of RRING its completed activities and actions, and its activities plan or other important updates and news.
- RRING as a whole, even as it grows to be a network of chapters, will require adherence to the recommendations of one overall RRING Communications Strategy, which is integrally included in the present strategy by this reference
Principles for mobilizing all stakeholders
Mobilizing stakeholders
All stakeholders of the STI system will be welcome in RRING as members. Mobilizing stakeholders will be via events and campaigns and will be in-country more often than at the international level. Communications can be in a variety of ways, some of which can be tailored, but no stakeholder group should appear to be favoured over another.
Recruiting new members
Each chapter has a permanent commitment to ensure it recruits new members. Specifically, a plan for addressing specific stakeholder groups shall be conceived and maintained at chapter level, and each distinct stakeholder groups should be targeted at least one time per year. Targeting could be by either an event or activity or by a specific sort of communications, or by other means.
Public authorities, policy makers and decision-makers
In general, this is a stakeholder category needing special treatment. Because RRING is in part an agent that advocacy directed toward influencing public policy and decision-making by policymakers, many persons in this category may not wish to join as members without strong reassurances. Nevertheless, public authorities, policymakers and decision-makers nevertheless are always welcome whether they join or not—they should be invited to come to events to ensure a growth of dialogue that is the basis of advocacy. RRING will gain if they have exposure to the community’s ideas and views.
Certain appointed policymakers are responsible for governmental measures to implement the RSSR. RRING condones this and should seek opportunities for collaborating based on mutual interest.
Two phases of implementation
June 2020-May 2023 - Initiation
The new community will subject itself to a continuous self-evaluation, led at chapter level. A RRING Steering Committee will be established. Each RRING chapter will have opportunities to enter in a first national level assessments of how well its country applies the Recommendation on Science and Scientific Researchers (2017). HQ will finalize a guidance manual for chapters
June 2023-May 2026 - Consolidation
Each chapter will be encouraged to devise its plan of activities and run its operations autonomously within the limits of the guidance devised in the first phase. And, each chapter will be encouraged to share its activities plan and conclusions of its self-evaluations, as well as any other news, within the community.
Milestones of the Community
Milestone (M)
First 2 chapters begin a process to become established and begin their publicity under the name and logo and guidance of RRING, in two countries
Timing (T)
reached at the latest by April 2021.
Substitution of financing sources at a level sufficient to sustain two global headquarters staff of training and competence to manage the growing community
reached at the latest by July 2021
Substitution of financing sources at a level sufficient to house and sustain the RRING global platform at a level adequate to make it an attractive resource that helps recruit members to RRING
reached at the latest by April 2022
New strategy text should be adopted by consensus in a democratic process
Start the process for its revision no later than 1 year before end of Strategy
Conclusion
In sum, a community is developing, fulfilling the expectations of a pre-existing RRING project. The community’s activities – of all sorts — should be guided by the present Strategy. The strategy will also guide collaboration to bring support to all parts of the new community, so as to create opportunities for its resources and its influence to grow and galvanize local participation and support, as it becomes a recognized observatory on responsibility in research and innovation.
