Scope of the Open.Make project.

The problem(s)

Have you ever tried to follow instructions on how to assemble something and get stuck, either due to a lack of clarity or missing information? This can be annoying enough when you are trying to setup a new piece of furniture, but when your goal is to replicate someone’s research¹, these annoyance create additional burden. In the worst case, the research cannot be replicated and the research process is significantlyslowed down. Accordingly, there is also a growing school of thought aiming to establish and open hardware (OH) strategy for academia. Indeed, open hardware (together with open access publishing, open data, and free/libre open source software) is becoming important pillars of responsible research and innovation ².

On the other hand, from the perspective of the researchers designing the (hardware) components for an experiment, the situation is less than ideal. They are under strong time constraints, their hardware are constantly modified in reaction to unexpected outcomes that are inherent to the research process. In addition, they cannot expect much recognition for the documentation they would produce, and even researchers having the will and time to document their hardware may abandon, once they realise they do not know how to produce useful documentation.

Solutions

In this project, we intend to contribute to the establishment of an open and FAIR³ hardware strategy in academia, as well as improve the quality or hardware documentation. While this goal is shared with other projects and communities, we will particularly focus on the prototyping of an hardware publication (eco-)system.

In a first phase, we will investigate the current practices concerning hardware documentation and its (exisiting and potential) importance for researchers and engineers career. On the other hand, we will consult with different communities, in order to define how the openand FAIR principles³ can be applied to hardware. This will help us frame the technical and social requirements a hardware publication system should fulfill.

The second phase will be the creation or the adaptation of tools allowing to prototype a hardware peer review, certification and publication system. In a third phase, we will use the prototype to publish hardware use case and disseminate our results. In parallel to defining a peer review process, we will produce guidance material to ease the documentation of hardware, in order to help researchers creating FAIR documentation from the start of their project.