Objectives & Impact

PRO-Ethics’ overall objective was to create a comprehensive, co-developed, tested and widely consulted Ethics Framework and Guidelines that enables a more effective handling of the ethical dimensions of research and innovation, with a special focus on the engagement of citizens in participative innovation, to the benefit of more relevant, fair and effective innovation activities.

In order to reach this overall objective, PRO-Ethics sought to:

1. Gather and systematize needs, requirements and values of citizens (including the underlying ethical principles) within participatory processes to improve access and avoid a technological divide.


2. Create and promote fair and gender sensitive interaction modes taking into account legal frameworks, governance structures and regulations, codes of practice, and tools (including IT Tools).


3. Test, pilot and assess novel participation configurations in three fields of action of RFOs‘ activities: Participation in innovation projects, participation in strategy development and participation in evaluation processes.


4. Validate findings in interactive learning formats and in dialogue with stakeholders and ethic bodies.


5. Secure a widespread take-up of the developed framework across the European Union (and beyond) by consulting, sharing, and promoting standards, principles, and guidelines.

The ethics framework was co-designed and co-developed with various stakeholder groups in an iterative process throughout the project and operationalized into tools and guidelines for RFOs and their clients in Europe (and beyond) that are intending to actively involve non-traditional stakeholders in ethically sound ways into R&I processes.

Through its processes and products, the PRO-Ethics project aimed to create impact on research and innovation ethics. Specifically, PRO-Ethics developed, tested, and distributed the PRO-Ethics Framework and Guidelines to support research funding organizations and other R&I stakeholders when engaging non-traditional stakeholders in their activities to do so in an ethically sound manner.

The Ethics Framework and Guidelines were developed based on the insights of its main target group. The research funding organizations involved in the project implemented participatory pilots with a wide array of target groups, process goals, and recruitment and engagement formats, which themselves were aimed at producing institutional change and anchoring new interaction modes in their organisations while safeguarding ethical conduct. These included, among others:

• Trialing new ways of ethically involving citizens and affected populations in the development of the national R&D strategy, or the identification, prioritization, and development of call topics (Innoviris, FFG, UEFISCDI, RCN, LBG OIS Centre)


• Ethical involvement of citizens and affected populations in the evaluation of R&I proposals (Innoviris, VDI/VDE-IT).


• Broadening the scope of impact assessment by ethical involvement of broad stakeholder groups – including interest groups and program beneficiaries – in the development of new evaluation instruments (CDTI).


• Building new centers of expertise on ethical citizen engagement, involving stakeholders from policy to implementation (Innoviris, RCN).


• Funding projects that mandate ethical stakeholder participation (FFG, VDI/VDE-IT).

From these efforts, new engagement methodologies, funding instruments, evaluation instruments, networks and capacities were built within the various organizations involved in PRO-Ethics. These laid the groundwork to continue relevant activities in the future.

As such, impact was sought on multiple levels – regional, national, European, and to a degree also international. Through the intimate involvement of RFOs in the development of the Ethics Framework and Guidelines from the very beginning, its relevance and practical applicability across different national ecosystems, governance structures, and use cases was ascertained. Further potential stakeholders were actively and continuously engaged in stakeholder activities, including RFOs across and beyond Europe, project and policy officers, ethics experts, research integrity bodies, NGOs, organizations engaging in citizen science activities, and other relevant projects, mainly funded by H2020. Due to the structure of the work plan, potential target groups of our work were engaged in the development, validation and testing of the Ethics Framework and Guidelines, and received updates on project results throughout its runtime, making the final document more relevant to them.