GOSH Roadmap: launching a revolution in access to scientific tools
Over 100 researchers, engineers, educators, entrepreneurs and community organizers from 30 countries have published a report describing the steps for providing global access to scientific hardware by 2025 through open source designs, collaborative research and new manufacturing techniques, including 3D-printing.
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The authors of the ‘Global Open Science Hardware Roadmap’ lay out the steps they think are needed to help their community move forward, including greater institutional support from universities, funders and governments who often prefer inventors to patent their hardware.
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Global Open Science Hardware Roadmap
Executive Summary
The ability to use, study, replicate, and improve scientific instrumentation is a central part of experimental science, and plays a crucial role in public life, research, and action. However, these activities are currently restricted by proprietary instrumentation, which is difficult and expensive to obtain and maintain, since they cannot be fully inspected, evaluated, or customized. This situation is fundamentally detrimental to the production of knowledge and its potential for creating equitable and sustainable solutions. The Open Science Hardware (OScH) community therefore seeks to bring together developers and users of scientific tools and research infrastructures to support the pursuit and growth of knowledge through global access to hardware for science.
This document describes what is required for Open Science Hardware to become ubiquitous by 2025, laying out challenges and opportunities and recommending concrete actions. These actions include: 1) creating institutional and funding support structures; 2) preparing guidelines for hardware designers, funders, users and newcomers on key aspects of OScH development, such as quality control and standards compliance, licensing, documentation standards, and social and ethical aspects of scientific work; 3) involving the members of the OScH community in the task of elaborating an assessment framework for OScH projects; 4) using the results of collaborative research to build a common pool of open educational resources; and 5) creating mentorship programs and support networks to increase diversity in the OScH community.
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