Tracing the historical emergence of academic/policy discourses shines a light on processes of early institutionalisation, informs narratives of contemporary self-identity and provides a resource from which to imagine alternative futures. Contributing to this ambition our paper uses scientometric methods to undertake two socio-semantic analyses. First, we identify the de-facto origins and contemporary clustering of scientists’ discursive spaces of ‘responsibility’. This ‘rri corpus’ reveals seven distinct clusters – or discourse coalitions of responsibility – but shows limited cross-fertilisation between the clusters. Second we trace the emergence of European policy on ‘Responsible Research and Innovation’ (RRI). The ‘RRI corpus’ shows policy to have been dominated by a small number of actors. Some cross-over between rri and RRI provides evidence of discourse coalition building, but only a small group of actors occupy these strategic bridges. The paper offers a contribution to wider debates and strategic reflections on the past, present and futures of responsible innovation.