This blog is part of a series on open hardware and key messages for public policy. Read the introduction and access other #OHpolicy blogs here.

By Shannon Dosemagen, Alexandra Novak, Jenny Molloy, Anne Bowser, Alison Parker

In the last months of the Trump Administration in the US, the authors hosted a workshop that led to a set of key messages for public policy audiences, a thirteen-part blog series on open hardware for science, and recommendations for how public policy can reflect its value. As of writing in January 2021, the new Administration has taken a strong perspective on the critical…

This blog is part of a series on open hardware and key messages for public policy. Read the introduction and access other #OHpolicy blogs here.

By Nadya Peek, Machine Agency, University of Washington

In Kurt Vonnegut’s satirical Hocus Pocus, a college professor fired for socialist views is making ends meet teaching at a local for-profit prison. Reflecting on a rapidly unraveling society, the character notes:

“Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.”

Hocus Pocus is dark, and full of dubious characters. We might hope that, outside of fiction, we…

This blog is part of a series on open hardware and key messages for public policy. Read the introduction and access other #OHpolicy blogs here.

By Angela Eaton, Director at Safecast, and Shannon Dosemagen, Shuttleworth Foundation Fellow at Open Environmental Data Project; co-founder, Public Lab.

We, the authors of this post, have been immersed in open communities — Safecast and Public Lab — that have each been pushing at the boundaries of community-centered environmental monitoring for over a decade. Safecast volunteers produced specs and assembly plans for the portable bGeigie monitor, a device that has allowed thousands to take radiation…

This blog is part of a series on open hardware and key messages for public policy. Read the introduction and access other #OHpolicy blogs here.

By Luis Felipe R. Murillo, Research Associate at the School of Data
Science, University of Virginia

It is a common held perception that Open Hardware is mostly a hobbyist technology: it is good for self-training and educational activities, but hardly suitable for scientific or industrial applications. This perception, however, could not be more misguided. Open Hardware is, in fact, operating in critical infrastructures as you read these lines.

By “infrastructure” I mean the social and…

This blog is part of a series on open hardware and key messages for public policy. Read the introduction and access other #OHpolicy blogs here.

By Alicia Gibb, Executive Director, Open Source Hardware Association

The US is primed and ready for open source hardware to accelerate scientific breakthroughs, but open source hardware needs a cemented place on the intellectual property landscape within the sciences enabling a faster, more efficient acceleration. If we can cement science using open source hardware, we’ve got a path to expanding American manufacturing. Many businesses profit from open source hardware, demonstrating that it is a lucrative…

This blog is part of a series on open hardware and key messages for public policy. Read the introduction and access other #OHpolicy blogs here.

By Julieta Arancio, CENIT-UNSAM and Fair Tech Collective, Drexel University

Open science hardware (OSH) is a term used to describe tools for science with a design that is openly licensed and available for anyone to study, modify, reproduce, distribute. It’s also a term used to name the practice of making those tools in a collaborative manner, an heterogeneous movement of people pushing for its adoption, and a young field of research. …

This blog is part of a series on open hardware and key messages for public policy. Read the introduction and access other #OHpolicy blogs here.

By Andrew Hill, co-founder Open Acoustic Devices and Alasdair Davies, Director Arribada Initiative C.I.C

Scientific instrumentation built on open source hardware (OSH) is a compelling infrastructure for science. It not only allows anyone to replicate or reuse hardware design files for free, but also establishes a community framework where physical equipment can be rapidly reproduced, refined and improved on.

Scientific reproducibility has multiple meanings across different disciplines. For example, it might mean that an experiment…

This blog is part of a series on open hardware and key messages for public policy. Read the introduction and access other #OHpolicy blogs here.

By Sabrina Merlo, Head of Local Response at Open Source Medical Supplies

In March 2020, Sam Haynor was laid off from his role as exhibit developer at a science museum in San Francisco that closed its doors due to COVID-19. Sam was only four days into his free time when one of his housemates — an emergency room physician — shared photos of what her colleagues were using for personal protective equipment (PPE). …