Open Sourced Science

Collaboration is fundamental to research and innovation. Collaboration is also a defining trait of low-cost and open source approaches to scientific hardware — the physical tools used to gather data and make new discoveries. Open source hardware fosters collaboration by making designs “publicly available so that anyone can study, modify, distribute, make, and sell the design.”

Open science encompasses communities, or groups, networks, and organizations with shared values or goals, a sense of belonging, and shared places (physical, virtual, and hybrid) for gathering. Low-cost and open source hardware exist within and alongside other paradigms, or the assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that shape a particular view of reality. Low-cost and open source hardware communities benefit from paradigms like open source software (OSS) or citizen science, and contribute to these paradigms in turn.

This interactive offers a window into the expanding possibilities of low-cost and open source hardware, and the broader open science ecosystem. Framed as more than a movement, it’s an emergent network that is situated within a range of paradigms, and driving innovation to increase the impact of science.