Responsibility Statement on research project outputs- to who and what for?

In this paper we propose the idea of responsibility statements for research and innovation activities of various kinds. The idea arose from our own Responsible Innovation (RI) practice. We have identified a fruitful way for researchers/innovators to document their commitments in a format that can be genuinely meaningful and useful both internally and when shared with stakeholders or the wider public. This work elaborates on the scope, possible venues and formats of responsibility statements. We present four illustrative examples: two targeted to an academic audience and two to general audiences. These statements demonstrate our approach to responsibility within research through various lenses: safety, safeguarding, privacy, impact, and the AREA 4Ps (purpose, people, process and product). We intend this work to be the beginning of a broad community discussion on responsibility statements as part of research and innovation. We hope to prompt consideration of how they may be used and developed, and how they may contribute to influence RI practice, so that outcomes are more ethical, socially desirable and sustainable, in both the academic and industrial sectors.