The Manifesto describes the deep changes that have been affecting science and innovation for the last decades, with special reference to biosciences, characterised by increasing competition on a global scale and progressive diversification of the relations between science and society. These trends, while producing an acceleration of the research process and a speeder connection between research and innovation, are having also critical consequences on both the internal mechanisms of science (e.g., reduced replicability of research data, production of redundant papers, forms of exploitation of young researchers, distortions in research quality assessment) and the social perception of science (e.g., diminishing authority of researchers and research organisations, raise of anti-science orientations and attitudes, reducing trust in science).
To face these transformations, the Manifesto proposes the establishment of a new social contract on science which should be based on the adoption of an extended view of responsibility, no longer intended merely as an ethical component of the research process but, more broadly, as an overall organisational principle for science organisations and science systems to be combined with principles and practices inspired to global competition.