Evaluating researcher and stakeholder perspectives on socially responsible research and innovation policies and practices in marine and maritime research performing organisations

The European Commission-funded GRRIP (Grounding RRI Practices) project aims to embed sustainable Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) practices in five research performing organisations (RPOs), focusing on the marine and maritime sector. The project’s goal is to achieve institutional and cultural change through a cycle of evaluation, evidence-based interventions and further evaluation. For this purpose, a set of three surveys were designed and implemented in the first part of the project (2020) to establish a baseline measurement of RRI-related practices within the project partner institutions and their stakeholders. Each survey was specifically designed to target a relevant category of people for each of the five RPOs implementing RRI actions. These five institutions are research departments and centres linked to the marine and maritime sector in Ireland, Spain, Portugal, France and the UK. This paper presents the design of these survey-based evaluation instruments and the linked datasets generated by their implementation.


Amendments from Version 1
Here is a note summarising the issues raised and what has been done.The first reviewer noted issues as follows.( 1) Links need to be fixed.Confirmed this is corrected.( 2) "In the Materials and Methods section the subheadings should be refined/ corrected -the text under the subheading 'Research Instrument Design' refers to sampling of respondents and collection of the data, while info on the instrument design appears under the previous subheading.This could be fixed by removing the two level 1 subheadings and including a new subheading on 'Data Collection'."Done.(3) "The data Note could be improved by including information on inclusion/exclusion criteria for the sampling process."Done.( 4) "The note could also be improved by clarification of the reference to ' department or institution wide requests for information' (in the paragraph labelled 'Sampling')."Done.( 5) "The Plain Language Summary refers to 'a pilot effort to implement these surveys', but there is no reference to this being a pilot in other sections of the note.It should be made clear if this was or was not a pilot study, and if so what were the aims and objectives of the pilot study."Pilot deleted from this plain language summary.( 6) "It would be useful to include some commentary on lessons learned from this initial 'baseline' survey, what refinements have been or should be made to the survey methods and tools, and the extent to which the survey design and survey implementation are considered fit-for-purpose."Done.( 7) "I suggest the title of the Data Note should be refined to more closely reflect the aim/purpose of the Data Note."[also mentioned by 2 nd reviewer] Done.Reasons for selection of the RPOs for the study specified.Data presentation improved to make it more usable (2nd reviewer).

Introduction
The European Commission-funded GRRIP (Grounding RRI Practices) project aims to embed sustainable Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) practices in five research performing organisations (RPOs), focusing on the marine and maritime sector.The project's goal is to achieve institutional and cultural change through a cycle of evaluation, evidence-based interventions and further evaluation.For this purpose, a set of three surveys were designed and implemented in the first part of the project to evaluate current RRI practices within the project partner institutions and their stakeholders.Each survey was specifically designed to target a relevant category of people for each of the five RPOs implementing RRI actions.These five institutions are research departments and centres linked to the marine and maritime sector in Ireland, Spain, Portugal, France and the UK, each of which was a partner on the GRRIP project: • The Centre for Marine and Renewable Energy (MaREI), University College Cork, Ireland • Plataforma Oceánica de Canarias (Plocan), Gran Canaria • WavEC Offshore Renewables, Lisbon, Portugal • Institut Universitaire Mer Littoral U.Nantes (IUML), France • Swansea University, Wales

Materials and methods
Research instruments RPO survey.The RPO survey was designed to evaluate the presence and availability of RRI-related policy and guidance within each of the five marine and maritime research organisations.
Respondents were asked to indicate whether policy or guidance covering a specific RRI dimension was available within their institution and also provide the full documents or text passages of relevant policies accordingly.The RRI-related topics covered in this survey were: • Gender Equality • Open Access Publications • Public Engagement • Research Ethics and Integrity

• Science Education and Outreach
In addition to the documentation of reported RRI-related policies and guidance, the survey also asked whether the respondent's organisation had any dedicated staff, meetings, training or other organisational structures in place to monitor and enable RRI practices.
Researcher and stakeholder surveys.Both designed to deliver RRI indicators (Jensen & Lister, 2015) for impact evaluation purposes (e.g., Jensen, 2015;Jensen, 2020), the researcher and stakeholder surveys (described below) were aligned to work in tandem and are therefore similar in several ways.However, the researcher survey was targeted towards people who work in research performing organisations in the marine and maritime sector, while the stakeholder survey was aimed at those who have links or collaborations with the five RPOs in the project to find out whether RRI was being implemented in a way that was recognised by stakeholders.
The content of the two surveys focused on the policies and practices employed by each of the five marine and maritime organisations involved in the project.It was informed by recent research and conceptualization of responsible research.
Respondents were first asked to provide some personal information about themselves and their career, such as employment status, experience, and scientific field of work.Furthermore, they were asked about how they incorporate RRI practices in their own work and how much time they dedicate to engage in both research and research-related work (e.g., communication, management or administration).The survey then proceeded to gather information about respondents' views on the RPOs' implementation of a range of different RRI dimensions, such as workforce diversity, gender equality, inclusion of ethnic minorities, alignment with societal needs and ethics.

Data collection
Respondents were recruited differently for each survey.The RPO survey was completed by designated representatives of the five marine and maritime RPOs in the project implementing RRI actions.The researcher survey was completed by people who worked at these same RPOs, while the stakeholder survey was sent to people linked to the RPOs but working in a range of sectors.A description of the project and the reasons for participation were included to enable respondents to self-assess their relevance to the survey request and decide whether to complete the survey.These participants were recruited by the project representatives at each of these sites through department or institution wide requests for participation.These requests were distributed by those involved in the project (which focuses on institution and department level policies and practices for socially responsible research in the marine and maritime context).No inclusion/exclusion criteria for the sample were applied beyond this.Specific information about the type of researchers or stakeholders responding were captured within the survey to be considered in the analysis.Survey data were collected March -June 2020.
The dataset collected using the instruments described above was cleansed according to established social research good practice (e.g., Jensen & Laurie, 2016;Smith & Jensen, 2016).As a first step, all data was completely anonymised where personally identifiable information was provided by respondents.Further, all insufficiently completed responses were removed, such as respondents who discontinued the survey after a few questions.It is available in both SPSS and CSV formats to maximise compatibility across different devices and research tools (Lorenz & Jensen, 2021a;Lorenz & Jensen, 2021b;Lorenz & Jensen, 2021c).The survey data collection operated with a focus on evaluation.Therefore, the goal was to gain a broad base of participation, as much as was feasible during the available timeframe.There were challenges in gathering the external stakeholder sample, with relatively low participation rates.This suggests that efforts to gain participation in situations where stakeholders are not already heavily engaged by research organisations require greater investment in participant compensation and an associated recruitment campaign (in this case, no incentives were offered.
Due to the sampling approach, the datasets themselves cannot be taken as fully representative samples of their institutions, and certainly not of European research institutions more generally.Rather, these data offer an initial exploration of the status of these particular institutions on a number of different metrics at the outset of a culture change process aimed at bolstering the level of breadth of socially responsible research and innovation policies and practices at these locations.These data were used as an 'audit' tool to establish where there were gaps needing improvement in the five research performing organisations.In addition, the surveys provided baseline data that allowed for impact evaluation of the 4-year project's efforts to improve policies and practices.
This project contains the following underlying data: -GRRIP_researcher_survey_data_CSV.Below, I offer several constructive comments that I hope will help enhance the clarity and presentation of your work: There appears to be a discrepancy between the central focus of the Data Note as stated in the "Plain Language Summary" and the focus presented in the rest of the article.While the summary suggests that the surveys aim to measure progress toward RRI practices, the work instead provides an instrument designed to assess the current state of RRI implementation ○ within RPOs at a specific point in time (i.e., a one-time 'audit tool').I recommend revising the "Plain Language Summary" to more accurately reflect the scope of the Data Note.While the survey instrument could potentially be used at different time points (i.e., through longitudinal surveys), enabling comparative analysis to assess progress in RRI implementation, this does not seem to be the primary focus as currently presented.If the authors plan to extend the evaluation to multiple time points and perform comparative analyses to track RRI implementation progress, it may be useful to include a brief note at the end of the article outlining these future possibilities and/or intentions (e.g., prior to the 'Ethics Policies and Consent' section).
The introduction could benefit from a brief clarification of how "Responsible Research and Innovation" was understood during the development of the surveys.Over the past decade, the literature and debate on RRI have been extensive, with varying interpretations and approaches to its operationalization.The question of how RRI should be defined and understood remains open.Offering a foundational explanation of how RRI was conceptualized in the context of these surveys (e.g., based on the Horizon 2020 framework, including the "six pillars") would help readers understand why themes such as "Gender Equality," "Open Access Publications," "Public Engagement," "Research Ethics and Integrity," and "Science Education and Outreach" were chosen as key focus areas in the surveys.

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Building on the previous point, if the authors have based their work on the six-pillar RRI framework, it would be helpful to clarify where the pillar of "Governance" fits within the survey.Was it incorporated into one of the five dimensions addressed, or was it intentionally excluded?If excluded, it would be valuable to provide the rationale for this decision.

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In the "Research and Instruments" section, the description of the interviews could be enriched with additional methodological detail.I recommend the authors elaborate briefly on the nature of the interviews conducted.For instance, it would be useful to clarify whether the surveys targeting RPOs, researchers, and stakeholders were: This data note introduces a survey of five 'research performing organisations' that are involved in a project to embed sustainable responsible research and innovation practices.The paper is generally well-written.There are few points that should be addressed before the data note can be approved: The links to the Researcher Survey and the Stakeholder Survey data show documents that appear to be identical with both being labelled 'Researcher Survey'.This needs to be corrected. 1.
In the Materials and Methods section the subheadings should be refined/corrected -the text under the subheading 'Research Instrument Design' refers to sampling of respondents and collection of the data, while info on the instrument design appears under the previous subheading.This could be fixed by removing the two level 1 subheadings and including a new subheading on 'Data Collection'.

2.
The data Note could be improved by including information on inclusion/exclusion criteria for the sampling process.

3.
The note could also be improved by clarification of the reference to 'department or institution wide requests for information' (in the paragraph labelled 'Sampling').

4.
The Plain Language Summary refers to 'a pilot effort to implement these surveys', but there is no reference to this being a pilot in other sections of the note.It should be made clear if this was or was not a pilot study, and if so what were the aims and objectives of the pilot study.

5.
It would be useful to include some commentary on lessons learned from this initial 'baseline' survey, what refinements have been or should be made to the survey methods and tools, and the extent to which the survey design and survey implementation are considered fit-for-purpose. 6.
I suggest the title of the Data Note should be refined to more closely reflect the aim/purpose of the Data Note.

7.
Is the rationale for creating the dataset(s) clearly described?Yes Reviewer Expertise: Health services and systems research I confirm that I have read this submission and believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard, however I have significant reservations, as outlined above.

Reviewer Report 25
September 2024 https://doi.org/10.21956/openreseurope.17318.r44302© 2024 Urueña Lopez S. This is an open access peer review report distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Sergio Urueña Lopez 1 Section of Philosophy, University of Twente, Enschede, Overijssel, The Netherlands 2 Department of Philosophy, University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, Donostia-San Sebastian, Spain The Data Note outlines the work conducted through interviews aimed at establishing a baseline measurement of the implementation of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) practices and measures within five research-performing organizations (RPOs).The Data Note is well written and could be of great interest to various actors actively engaged with RRI or aiming to engage with it in the future.
(a) cross-sectional or longitudinal (regarding the timing of data collection); (b) structured, semi-structured, or unstructured (regarding the organization of the questions); (c) administered online, by telephone, in person, or by post (regarding the mode of administration); and (d) selfadministered or interviewer-administered.This additional detail would provide readers with a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the methodology used.○ I look forward to seeing the final version and hope that my comments contribute positively to the refinement of this interesting work.Is the rationale for creating the dataset(s) clearly described?Partly Are the protocols appropriate and is the work technically sound?Partly Are sufficient details of methods and materials provided to allow replication by others?Yes Are the datasets clearly presented in a useable and accessible format?Partly Ross S. Bailie University Centre for Rural Health, University of Sydney, Lismore, NSW, Australia Are the protocols appropriate and is the work technically sound?YesAre sufficient details of methods and materials provided to allow replication by others?PartlyAre the datasets clearly presented in a useable and accessible format?NoCompeting Interests: No competing interests were disclosed.

Is the rationale for creating the dataset(s) clearly described? Yes Are the protocols appropriate and is the work technically sound? Partly Are sufficient details of methods and materials provided to allow replication by others? Yes Are the datasets clearly presented in a useable and accessible format? Yes
GRRIP WP5 -RPO Survey full datasets have not been made publicly available because the project deemed the datasets generated from this survey to be confidential.Competing Interests:No competing interests were disclosed.Reviewer Expertise: Responsible Innovation, Innovation Stigma, Pharmaceutical Regulatory Affairs I confirm that I