Following our call to join in the discussion over the suitability of implementing a reporting checklist for bio-nano papers, the community responds. Below we report short extracts highlighting the main messages of the correspondences we received. The interested readers can find the complete pieces in the accompanying Supplementary Information.
In the European Union the Annexes of its chemical legislation (REACH) were revised and now clarifies the technical data requirements for nanomaterials (NMs). These new provisions, effective from January 1,...
Stakeholder involvement is pivotal EU governance. In this paper, we complete a stakeholder analysis of the European Chemicals Agency's recent Annex XV restriction proposal process on intentionally added microplastics. The aim of this study is to map the interests, influence and importance of active stakeholders in order to understand the arguments being put forward by different stakeholders and provide recommendations to policy-makers on how to ensure a balanced consideration of all stakeholder perspectives. Stakeholders were identified through niche media analysis and by scrutinising comments from the public consultation on the restriction proposal. Their importance and influence were mapped using three approaches: "scale from low to high", "psychometric scale" and "qualitative ranking". We identified 205 different stakeholders out of which 77 were industry and trade associations, 25 were large companies and only four were small and medium-sized enterprises. National authorities and researchers did not comment on the restriction proposal, whilst large companies were very active providing comments. Industry trade associations and sports-related non-governmental organizations articulated anxiety about the costs associated with the implementation of the restriction proposal. Among environmental non-governmental organizations, there was consensus that plastics should be handled like other substances under EU's chemical regulation. Primary stakeholders identified exhibited high importance, but varying degrees of influence, while the opposite applied to the major European institutions. Based on our analysis, we recommend that: The European Chemicals Agency implement measures to include "silent" stakeholders and invite guest experts to participate in their committees on Risk Assessment and SocioEconomic Analysis; Researchers should be more active in the public consultation; and that special emphasis should be put on helping small and medium-sized enterprises. With regards to stakeholder consultation, we find that media analysis is a good supplement to stakeholder analysis and that a more objective top-down measure of stakeholder importance and influence is needed.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.