Open science hardware (OSH) is a term frequently used to refer to artifacts, but also to a practice, a discipline and a collective of people worldwide pushing for open access to the design of tools to produce scientific knowledge. The Global Open Science Hardware (GOSH) movement gathers actors from academia, education, the private sector and civil society advocating for OSH to be ubiquitous by 2025. This paper examines the GOSH movement’s emergence and main features through the lens of transitions theory and the grassroots innovation movements framework. GOSH is here described embedded in the context of the wider open hardware movement and analyzed in terms of framings that inform it, spaces opened up for action and strategies developed to open them. It is expected that this approach provides insights on niche development in the particular case of transitions towards more plural and democratic sociotechnical systems.
Changes in science funders’ mandates have resulted in advances in open access to data, software, and publications. Research capacity, however, is still unequally distributed worldwide, hindering the impact of these efforts. We argue that to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), open science policies must shift focus from products to processes and infrastructure, including access to open source scientific equipment. This article discusses how conventional, black box, proprietary approaches to science hardware reinforce inequalities in science and slow down innovation everywhere, while also representing a threat to research capacity strengthening efforts. We offer science funders three policy recommendations to promote open science hardware for research capacity strengthening: a) incorporating open hardware into existing open science mandates, b) incentivizing demand through technology transfer and procurement mechanisms, c) promoting the adoption of open hardware in national and regional service centers. We expect this agenda to foster capacity building towards enabling the more equitable and efficient science needed to achieve the SDGs.
Open science hardware (OSH) is a term frequently used to refer to artifacts, but also to a practice, a discipline and a collective of people worldwide pushing for open access to the design of tools to produce scientific knowledge. The Global Open Science Hardware (GOSH) movement gathers actors from academia, education, the private sector and civil society advocating for OSH to be ubiquitous by 2025. This paper examines the GOSH movement’s emergence and main features through the lens of transitions theory and the grassroots innovation movements framework. GOSH is here described embedded in the context of the wider open hardware movement and analyzed in terms of framings that inform it, spaces opened up for action and strategies developed to open them. It is expected that this approach provides insights on niche development in the particular case of transitions towards more plural and democratic sociotechnical systems.
Alex?Alex: I really like parrots. And there are so many different kinds of parrots. I like them because they're smart in a way, and also funny and small little tricksters.Jo: They can learn the human language. I find that fascinating. They can actually learn it. There was a Parrot like Gray. What is it called? Alex The Gray Parrot. Alex? Alex: I was named after him. Jo: He could actually build sentences and mean them. Crazy Andre? Andre: animals, octopus, Super smart. Jo: Yeah, of course. Andre: All of the mobile things and so on. Like, I'm gesturing, but people won't see this on the podcast. Alex: Exactly. That's what I wanted to say. Jo: Famous life and happy for being an aquarium. Okay. Thanks for sharing. That's a little bit of humanness before we enter the geekiness. Jo: Now what is open hardware for those of us who might not have a clue, thanks to many of you, I do now.Okay, obviously, hardware, when it comes to research context, that would be research equipment, would be anything that you have in the kitchen that's running on electricity, but maybe not necessarily as a non-electric stuff, anything like that. Andre: Yeah. I mean, like recipes, for example, a gel or whatever, like a special kind of gel could be also kind of a hardware, like tissue specific tissue and so on. I think what we wrote down as a definition is everything tangible, like physical objects.
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.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.