TechEthos will reinforce the pivotal role of the European Union as an ethics trailblazer in new and emerging technologies. Such technologies bring with them new ethical challenges and societal consequences that need to be addressed. The project will develop guidance for the development and deployment of these technologies to ensure the highest ethical standards at the EU and international levels. It will carry out a horizon scan to identify three or four new technologies with high socio-economic impact. It will then identify and analyse the ethical issues raised by the selected technologies and explore the views and attitudes of expert and lay stakeholders towards them and their ethical implications using scenarios and media analysis. Public involvement is key in this project: science museums and centers involved in our work will ensure appropriTechEthos will address the growing ethical challenges and expectations vis-à-vis new technologies to ensure the highest ethical standards at the EU and international levels. It will conduct a horizon scan of emerging technologies with high socio-economic impacts to identify 3-4 that may raise particularly challenging ethical issues; these will be further analysed and engaged with in the project (via ethical and legal analysis and stakeholder engagement activities). The project will develop/refine/extend (as desirable and applicable to the selected technologies) existing/proposed ethics frameworks, operational guidelines or Codes (e.g., developed in SIENNA, SHERPA, PANELFIT, SATORI and other projects) to enable the effective ethics governance of the technologies. It will reconcile the needs of research and innovation and the legitimate concerns of the society while stimulating innovation and reducing socio-economic inequalities. To do so, it will especially engage with researchers and innovators, research ethics committees (RECs), research integrity (RI) bodies, civil society organisations (CSOs), policy-makers and the public.

Our aim is to create a platform that makes the normative framework governing Research Ethics and Research Integrity (RE+RI) easily accessible, supports application in research and evaluation, and involves all stakeholders in a participatory way, thus achieving sustainability. The platform will foster uptake of ethical standards and responsible conduct of research, and ultimately support research excellence and strengthen society’s confidence in research and its findings. This project has three unique features: 1. Stakeholder participation and community engagement The first unique feature is the iterative, ‘bottom up’ approach, making explicit normative experiences of local stakeholders and principles embedded in local standards, rules and practices, and enabling a structuring of data that fits research and evaluation practice, providing useful, accessible information for local users. 2. Focus on (diversity of) RE+RI practices The second unique feature is acknowledging the diversity of practices within and between countries and disciplines. Through normative analysis, differences wil be made explicit and open for comparison and deliberation. By using various methods of case analysis, prominent RE+RI cases from practice will be made accessible and scenarios will be developed. This will result in a structuring of data, based on their relevance for actual use by researchers. 3. Interactive self-sustainable Wiki-platform The third unique feature is the development of an online platform that is dynamic, customer-tailored, up-to-date and self-sustainable. Based upon the MediaWiki approach, committed to open source and open data, the platform steers a user through its content based on what he seeks and what he needs to know. The platform will be adapted and further developed using the latest novelties in knowledge engineering (data mining). It will be owned by the RE+RI community, which will ensure that it is up-to-date and sustainable.

Different "machines of trust" in science have been identified in the literature: research ethics, research integrity, science communication, benefit sharing and technology assessment. Previous EU funded projects have focused on particular actors of the trust in science ecosystem (e.g. scientists, research funding organisations, research ethics committees) to explore the impact of particular "machines" (e.g. science communication, research ethics). VERITAS goes beyond the state of the art by conceptualising "stewards of trust" as the actors of the ecosystem that are responsible for upholding societal trust in science and facilitating science-society co-creation, either this refers to formally responsible organisations like research funding organisations and higher education institutions, or it refers to de facto responsible organisations like social media companies and video streaming platforms which influence societal perceptions of science and innovation. VERITAS combines multidisciplinary expertise, both from the social sciences and engineering, to synthesise existing knowledge to evaluate tools and methods for enhancing trust in science through original research and small-scale participatory activities, before producing the VERITAS Protocol of Recommendations for "stewards of trust". VERITAS brings forward interdisciplinary expertise to perform network analysis and execute interventions on social media, to validate the VERITAS Protocol and alleviate practical barriers for its uptake in practice by different stakeholders. VERITAS findings will be widely disseminated to different "stewards of trust", such as policymakers, research funding and performing organisations, higher education institutions and other research and innovation actors, to enhance societal trust in science and facilitate science-society co-creation.

The research ethics process is facing increasing challenges at a global level: new and emerging technologies present challenges to ethics reviewers who may be unskilled in the relevant fields; increased internationalisation of research has led to fears of ethics dumping; and there is a lack of standardisation across Europe and the world. A key objective of national and EU research policy is to ensure compliance with the highest standards of research ethics. Given the impact of research on society, in terms of potential to generate innovative solutions to problems, and yet with the associated risk of harm, rigorous ethical research conduct is essential to ensure public trust in the scientific endeavour. iRECS will address these problems in four ways. First, it will scan and map existing needs raised by new and emerging technologies in European and global research ethics communities. Second, it will produce and implement training materials for European and global audiences in research ethics communities. Third, it will conduct and permanently establish training programmes. Fourth, it will propose adaptations to the research ethics process in Europe. Through a unique blend of expertise, global partners and the involvement of European research ethics networks as partners or members of the Stakeholder Advisory Board, iRECS will develop a fresh awareness of research ethics and sustainable, multi-purpose, multi-language interactive training programmes for different users. The project thus extends ENERI and the Embassy of Good Science into a horizontal community of research ethics practitioners, policy makers and other key stakeholders.

The overall goal of the PREPARED project is to develop an operational ethics and integrity framework, which safeguards key ethical values, supports a rapid and effective research response to crises and improves overall pandemic preparedness. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen outlined plans to cope with "an era of pandemics" by developing "Europe-wide fast-reaction system designed to respond more quickly to emerging medical threats". Fast reaction systems, including accelerated research, are likely to face significant ethics and integrity challenges. The PREPARED project will create an international network of research funders (private and public), researchers, policy makers, publishers and citizens (a) to identify, analyse and validate the emergent research ethics and integrity challenges in the context of sudden, unexpected and global crisis, (b) to facilitate bottom-up, solution-focused, participatory dialogue, (c) to develop a values-based framework for research ethics and integrity in a global crisis which supports rapid and effective decision-making whilst maintaining scientific reliability and avoiding short-cuts in the protection of research participants, (d) to propose policy options at the EU level and tailored support for relevant stakeholders in the form of operational guidelines and short complements to existing codes and (e) to achieve influential strategic engagement through high-level synergy building and the provision of engaging training material to ensure uptake of the project's outputs so as to improve overall preparedness for global crises. Given that this is a Coordination and Support Action, the high-level consortium consists to 47% of research institutions (given that this is a CSA) and to 53% of organisations which can significantly contribute to and then leverage results (e.g. UNESCO, EDCTP, RIS).