Responsible Science Pilot Projects

The following first few examples of research projects were selected from the Sparkling Science research funding programme because they meet the goals of Responsible Science in many respects. The program was initiated by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research in which school students actively took over small parts of research projects from 2007 to 2019 and worked on them independently. Even though in these projects not all key dimensions of the RRI concept of the European Commission were provided for, they can be used as examples for how we can successfully put programmatic goals – in this case an improvement of the interface schools/science – into practice while maintaining scientific quality standards. In Sparkling Science this was achieved by means of systematic incentives in the calls for applications.

In the successor program "Sparkling Science 2.0" launched in 2021, cooperation between science and schools will again be of great importance. In addition to science education, projects should integrate open science aspects as far as possible and make the research process and results publicly accessible. To further strengthen public engagement, the program promotes the involvement of broad civil society. This means that in addition to pupils, other population groups can also participate.