Consultation paper and plan to engage the public and expert stakeholders 

Authors

Elīza Lasmane, Signe Mežinska, Ilze Mileiko 

Introduction

Violations of research integrity, such as research misconduct (also known as fabrication, falsification and plagiarism (FFP)), and other unacceptable practices, are harmful to the process of generating scientific knowledge. Research misconduct misleads the scientific community and society and can lead to serious negative consequences, such as development of unsafe technologies, e.g., ineffective medicines or biased artificial intelligence tools. Breaches of research ethics and research integrity (RE/RI) in the form of research misconduct also negatively impact public trust in science. Despite the obvious consequences for the public, research misconduct issues are mostly addressed within the scientific community and scientific organisations, and this process is raising questions about transparency. At the same time, the 2021 Eurobarometer on European citizens' knowledge and attitudes towards science and technology shows that 32% of citizens believe that “the public should be consulted, and public opinion should be seriously considered” when making decisions about science and technology. The public has been acknowledged as a crucial stakeholder in the context of RE/RI also by the European Commission: “The public is an important stakeholder in RI as it works together with other societal actors to align the research process and outcome with the values, needs and expectations of the society.”

To promote dialog between the scientific community and the public, and to emphasize the importance of public and stakeholder engagement, BEYOND plans to organize bottom-up and solution-oriented public consultation on RE/RI needs and public and stakeholder perspectives on efficacy of RE/RI interventions in addressing research misconduct. OECD defines public consultation as a tool to improve the quality of decisions, identify better solutions in an open and transparent fashion, increase the amount of information available in the decision-making process and include stakeholders’ expertise, perspectives, and ideas in the discussion. Public consultation allows for identifying different directions of action, helps to balance opposing interests and solve practical problems.

This report is aimed at detailing BEYOND strategy for stakeholder and public engagement and at planning the BEYOND public consultation. The report outlines the specific goals of the stakeholder and public engagement, describes the planned engagement activities that will be conducted during the project, identifies key stakeholders, and explains the involvement of each stakeholder group. The report also outlines the design of public consultation, based on bottom-up contributions from citizens and stakeholders, the aim and objectives of the consultation, questions for discussion, the online respondents’ form including questions to collect quantitative and qualitative data, and questions for direct stakeholder interviews.