Training courses and materials for a research ethics and integrity informed green transition in Europe: a scoping review and gap analysis
Creators: name: Hastings, Rosie
name: Evans, Natalie
name: van den Hoven, Mariëtte
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2024
Subjects: research integrity
research ethics
environmental ethics
climate ethics
research and innovation

description: The European Green Deal (EGD) is a policy initiative and strategy for achieving a just and inclusive green transition within Europe. It is the political basis of the European Climate Law, which makes specific targets, such as continental climate neutrality by 2050, legally binding. Achieving the EGD’s environmental goals requires substantial investment in, and development of, the Research and Innovation (R&I) sector. Ensuring research processes and outputs satisfy the criteria of a just and inclusive transition requires engagement with Research Ethics and Research Integrity (RE&RI) principles, such as responsibility, fairness and equity, and provides the impetus to expand current RE&RI frameworks to explicitly address key concerns within environmental and climate ethics and encourage the responsible conduct of R&I, such as by minimizing research waste.   




The EGD calls for R&I (including innovations for climate mitigation, adaptation and resilience) to be undertaken with due care for their potentially negative environmental, climate, economic and societal repercussions. Creating this impact requires significant awareness raising and training across the R&I sector. There is, however, no overview of how these issues are currently addressed in academic and research training programmes, or what materials are available for educators. Relevant training initiatives include both academic courses in European universities, standalone courses, workshops and training programmes provided outside of European universities, and online materials available for self-directed study. A number of RE&RI education reviews have been conducted and databases of training materials created. These initiatives have captured some materials related to environmental and climate concerns, however these materials have not been systematically identified or assessed. An overview of the current state of education in this area within Europe would allow us to evaluate the adequacy of current courses and materials and identify gaps in their coverage.  




Developing an overview, however, is complicated by the diversity of courses and training materials which may contain some relevant content. For example, within university courses, environmental and climate philosophy courses will likely cover some core issues, whilst professional skills and optional courses on societal impact for researchers from a broad range of disciplines might have a different focus and cover other relevant issues. To facilitate a gap analysis, an overview would therefore include content related to key concerns in climate and environmental ethics as they relate to R&I, as well as content which additionally also addresses RE&RI. 




Having an understanding of this landscape is particularly important for the RE4GREEN project, a European Commission funded initiative to integrate the fields of environmental and climate ethics with RE&RI, because the project aims to develop training for the R&I sector to support the green transition.