Responsible Research and Innovation (‘RRI’) is a cross-cutting priority for scientific research in the European Union and beyond. This paper considers whether the way such research is organised and delivered lends itself to the aims of RRI. We focus particularly on international consortia, which have emerged as a common model to organise large-scale, multi-disciplinary research in contemporary biomedical science. Typically, these consortia operate through fixed-term contracts, and employ governance frameworks consisting of reasonably standard, modular components such as management committees, advisory boards, and data access committees, to co-ordinate the activities of partner institutions and align them with funding agency priorities. These have advantages for organisation and management of the research, but can actively inhibit researchers seeking to implement RRI activities. Conventional consortia governance structures pose specific problems for meaningful public and participant involvement, data sharing, transparency, and ‘legacy’ planning to deal with societal commitments that persist beyond the duration of the original project. In particular, the ‘upstream’ negotiation of contractual terms between funders and the institutions employing researchers can undermine the ability for those researchers to subsequently make decisions about data, or participant remuneration, or indeed what happens to consortia outputs after the project is finished, and can inhibit attempts to make project activities and goals responsive to input from ongoing dialogue with various stakeholders. Having explored these challenges, we make some recommendations for alternative consortia governance structures to better support RRI in future.

负责任的研究与创新 ('RRI') 是欧盟及其他地区科学研究的跨领域优先事项。本文考虑了此类研究的组织和交付方式是否适合 RRI 的目标。我们特别关注国际联盟，它们已成为组织当代生物医学科学的大规模、多学科研究的常见模式。通常，这些财团通过固定期限合同运作，并采用由管理委员会、咨询委员会和数据访问委员会等合理标准的模块化组件组成的治理框架，以协调合作机构的活动并使它们与资助机构保持一致。优先事项。这些对于研究的组织和管理具有优势，但可以积极抑制寻求实施 RRI 活动的研究人员。传统的财团治理结构在有意义的公众和参与者参与、数据共享、透明度和“遗留”计划方面存在特定问题，以处理超出原始项目持续时间的社会承诺。特别是，资助者和聘用研究人员的机构之间合同条款的“上游”谈判可能会削弱这些研究人员随后就数据、参与者报酬或项目完成后财团产出发生的情况做出决定的能力，以及可能会抑制使项目活动和目标对来自与各利益相关者正在进行的对话的输入做出响应的尝试。在探索了这些挑战之后，