Rriipples: An Ontology of Higher-Order Impacts of Training in Responsible Research and Innovation and Interdisciplinarity on Scientific Practice

We examine the cascading effects of integrating Responsible Research and Innovation and interdisciplinarity (RRII) into tertiary scientific education, with a focus on specific examples of doctoral training in the physical sciences and undergraduate interdisciplinary programmes at a UK university. These educational interventions are part of broader reform movements aimed at reshaping scientific practice to address societal challenges, promote openness, and foster responsible innovation. We will provide a theoretical justification for their grouping under one acronym.

Drawing on survey, interview and autoethnographic data we have collected, we will present an ontology of impacts across time- and length-scales of integrating RRII training into such programmes in the context of a research-intensive, civically engaged university in the Global North. First-order impacts involve immediate or near-immediate changes in a students’ scientific practice, such as instigating new interdisciplinary research collaborations. Second-order impacts include student initiatives that sit beyond the realm of their traditionally defined research practice, and also extend to colleagues, supervisors and collaborators influenced by such initiatives, such as lab-wide adoption of an open access policy. Third-order impacts see institutional responses and external stakeholder shifts in response to the first- and second-order impacts; these impacts can then feedback to impact on the individual scientist and their career trajectory, in both positive and negative ways. The generally observed discrepancy between at best, slow, at worst, negative responses of academic institutions and positive and faster-moving external stakeholder responses is perhaps to be expected. We will, however, make the case that wider scientific cultural shifts—particularly precipitated by the advent of powerful artificial intelligence (see, for example, 2024’s Nobel Prizes in Chemistry and Physics)—situate RRII as key enablers of just, sustainable and positive long-term transformations to the scientific enterprise.