6: Techno-societal Challenges and Actions for Academic Researchers

This chapter is the third of our three audience-specific chapters, and it is focused on academic researchers. In this chapter, we move from our discussion and consideration of small to medium enterprises (SMEs) and practitioner challenges to digital equity and accessibility, to consider these challenges from an academic researcher perspective. To contextualise this discussion, this chapter is underpinned by the UK Research Integrity Office definition of ‘academic researchers’ as ‘any person who conducts or supports research in any discipline’ (UKRIO, 2023).

This chapter moves the discourse from Chapter 2 forward to situate the challenges that academic researchers face in a techno-society. At the end of the chapter, we will suggest some actions for the consideration of academic researchers. University staff and academic researchers need to be aware of the techno-societal challenges affecting their staff and students/workers so that they can make relevant decisions for risk mitigation and increase confidence in technology-related decision-making across university functions and academic research projects.