Epistemic Justice Indicator: An Annotated Prototype [Version 1.0 – 2024.05.10]
Creators: name: Bobadilla, Hernán
name: Giuseppe, Di Capua
name: Peppoloni, Silvia
name: Lampis, Federico
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2024
Subjects: Epistemic Justice
Local Knowledge
Process Indicator

description: SSH CENTRE (Social Sciences and Humanities for Climate, Energy aNd Transport Research Excellence) is a Horizon Europe project, engaging directly with stakeholders across research, policy, and business (including citizens) to strengthen social innovation, SSH-STEM collaboration, transdisciplinary policy advice, inclusive engagement, and SSH communities across Europe, accelerating the EU’s transition to carbon neutrality. SSH CENTRE is based in a range of activities related to Open Science, inclusivity and diversity – especially with regards Southern and Eastern Europe and different career stages –  including: development of novel SSH-STEM collaborations to facilitate the delivery of the EU Green Deal; SSH knowledge brokerage to support regions in transition; and the effective design of strategies for citizen engagement in EU R&I activities. Outputs include action-led agendas and building stakeholder synergies through regular Policy Insight events.This is captured in a high-profile virtual SSH CENTRE generating and sharing best practice for SSH policy advice, overcoming fragmentation to accelerate the EU’s journey to a sustainable future.The documents uploaded here are part of WP2 whereby novel, interdisciplinary teams were provided funding to undertake activities to develop a policy recommendation related to EU Green Deal policy. Each of these policy recommendations, and the activities that inform them, will be written-up as a chapter in an edited book collection. Three books will make up this edited collection - one on climate, one on energy and one on mobility. 

In this file, we introduce a prototype of an indicator for epistemic justice. The indicator is designed as a process indicator, i.e., it evaluates justice in policymaking processes (mechanisms and overall efforts) rather than their outcomes. It is structured as a checklist with two main categories: i) relative to the legislative phase of policymaking, and ii) relative to the dimension of epistemic justice. We distinguish between two legislative phases of policymaking, namely ex-ante (i.e., problem framing) and ex-post (i.e., appraisal of the policy’s initial design). We also distinguish three dimensions of epistemic justice, namely recognitional, participatory, and distributive. As a result of combining these categories, the indicator has six distinct sections. In each section, relevant questions are asked for assessment and scoring, which were developed based on our combined field experiences and literature reviews. The indicator has a total of 23 questions. Each question calls for a quantitative evaluation, using a scoring system on a scale from 1 to 10. The sum of points across questions in a specific section results in a section score. The global score is the sum of points across all sections. Depending on their specific aims, policymakers may prefer to aggregate the scores of specific sections (e.g., ex-ante sections). We assume that local knowledge is a key component in advancing more effective and just policymaking, especially in the field of climate adaptation (for more details, see our chapter in the SSH Climate book). Hence, our scoring system is designed to give more prominence to local stakeholders in the policymaking process. The standardised scoring system enables tractability and accountability.