Stakeholder involvement and public participation in science in general, and in research agenda-setting in particular, have become overlapping interests of researchers in science policy, health research, public engagement, and the political sociology of science. Co-production and sharing power with citizens in the research process in novel forms resonate with diverse traditions and trends in science. In particular, action research (e.g. [6, 10]), the right to research [3], citizen science [28], and responsible research and innovation (RRI) [20] are becoming the most advanced fields where co-production and the radical democratisation of the research process are most often practised. A range of future-oriented methodologies, tools, and approaches are deployed in this problem space: foresight, backcasting, scenario development, Delphi, trend impact, and horizon scanning (e.g. [18, 21]). Stakeholders in many phases of the processes—from agenda-setting, through research design, to evaluation, and dissemination—can enter, create legitimate roles, and provide meaningful knowledge for research content and focus. Rosa et al. [25] investigate large-scale EU-wide participatory agenda-setting processes (such as CIMULACT H2020—http://www.cimulact.eu/), as compared to expert-based foresight studies. Clearly, citizen-based, multi-actor co-created policy advice differs qualitatively from expert-based reports, in terms of the direction and focus of the proposed R&I agenda.
Participatory research agenda-setting, as a form of co-production, is a well-established field in applied healthcare and medical studies, and various such settings, where researchers and patients collaborate have been analysed in detail. Often intermediary organisations bring together patients and researchers to shape a shared problem space for future investigations. Abma and Broerse [2] extract a model (or template approach) for such research agenda-setting exercises, based on seven case studies in the medical sciences. Their Dialogue Model provides a flexible and interactive approach that extends to six research phases: exploration; consultation; prioritisation; integration; programming; and implementation. The dialogue model is defined as ‘an interactive, multistakeholder and multiphased process for the co-production of a shared research agenda. It entails six phases, including the consultation of patients and researchers and the integration of their agendas’ (p 2 [1].). By offering a mutually supportive process, it evolves into a ‘free, protective and communicative space of mutual encouragement to develop power from within and to articulate’ multiple voices, which leads to ‘meaningful deliberations’ with professionals, researchers and funding agencies ([1], p. 1). The primary motivation is to create a relevant and useful research agenda that better enables healthcare services to meet the needs and expectations of patients. As a primary goal, the dialogue model aims explicitly for patients to reflexively highlight their agenda, by offering an empowering process that also incorporates a broader collaboration with policy-makers, treatment or service providers, citizens, medical doctors and civic groups. It employs several techniques to enable diverse forms of expression: anecdotes, storytelling with others, diaries, photographs, movies and theatre. The main challenge of the model is to trigger permanent changes in research and institutional transformation based, on the one hand, on the enacted participatory processes and, on the other, on the resulting prioritised list of substantive research topics.
Such participatory research agenda-setting exercises can also help to point out ‘undone science’ [13], defined as ‘areas of research that are left unfunded, incomplete or generally ignored, but that social movement or civil society organisations often identify as worthy of more research’ (p. 1). The prioritisation phase of these exercises is regarded as the active social construction of knowledge and, therefore, such knowledge co-production also implies a pre-existing inequality, ignorance or systematic non-production of knowledge.
Based on a qualitative assessment of nine multi-stakeholder agenda-setting projects in the Netherlands, Pittens [23] contends that while patients are increasingly involved in health research agenda-setting, their topics and concerns are not automatically translated into a funding programme or taken up by researchers. As a general trend, public participation and beneficiaries’ involvement usually stops before research projects are programmed and implemented.
The EU H2020-funded InSPIRES consortium (http://inspiresproject.com/) aims to narrow the gap between society and science by co-creating and implementing innovative science shop models that are inclusive, context-relevant, culturally adapted and more accurate and responsive to civil society concerns. Within the framework of these new models, InSPIRES partners facilitate collaborative research projects aligned with the principles of RRI, Open Science (OS) and Impact Evaluation. There is a particular focus on health and environmental issues, which are underexplored in the current science shop research agenda, yet can be adequately addressed by strengthening community voices and developing the conditions for a participatory dialogue and knowledge sharing. We now turn to the Science Café as a participatory method of public engagement with science and science engagement with the public.
Science Cafés can have multiple purposes and can be applied in different contexts (e.g. [4]). The first series of Science Café events through which our team gained experience was organised between 2004 and 2010 (‘Sustainable Hungary Science Café’), aimed at the popularisation of a sustainability science agenda. In this role, it proved to be a useful tool to engage various publics around urgent and vexing sustainability problems in agriculture, forestry, policy, environment, mobility, energy, gender and politics. Subsequently, two EU FP7 projects (SciCafé and SciCafé2.0) assisted us in understanding the evolution of the Science Café movement and how a previously grassroots movement became a public engagement buzzword (for detail, see [4]). The pervasiveness of participatory engagement in research agendas (multi-actor approach, RRI, Citizen Science) led to a situation where such science-society interactions came to be regarded as almost a necessary step in the promotional cycle of scientific production.
The evolution of the Science Café movement has been embedded into the broader context of changing science culture and the emerging practices of science democratisation. Citizenship as a notion in democratic societies contains the engagement of publics in science as well, a prerequisite to controlling our own destiny. Several converging mechanisms of science-society-policy interactions, transdisciplinary and public engagement activities (e.g. action research, participatory research, science café, science shop, citizen science, OS, RRI, social innovation) run parallel in today’s science environment. This warrants the need to revisit opportunities for the renewal that Science Cafés can offer in the changing landscapes of scientific culture. Below we present how we applied Science Café in participatory agenda-setting for green care.