Our colleague André Maia Chagas is inviting you to fill and share a little informal poll on Twitter about open source hardware documentation in academic papers:
Long version:
Journals that publish Open Source Hardware designs have different requirements for the documentation that goes together with the paper being published. This ends up leading to a lot of variability in the quality of the hardware description, making it harder/easier to reproduce and sometimes making something that is not properly open to get an “open source” tag.
However, the Open Source Hardware Association has spent a lot of time and effort creating a certification system that is easy to use and makes sure hardware designs conform with a very good definition of open, without putting too much burden on developers in terms of achieving this certification.
The poll is to see if people would find it useful/good idea for journals to require from authors submitting open hardware designs that they certify their hardware before submission. This would save a lot of review time, and make sure all published tools meet a minimum documentation standard.
Right now we have more than 110 respondents, but for this to be a good indication of what next steps we should take, this number would optimally be much higher! So please, if you can, take a moment to answer the poll, and another moment to share it with your networks!
Thanks and best regards,
Dr. André Maia Chagas
References
Chagas, A. M. (2018). Haves and have nots must find a better way: The case for open scientific hardware. PLOS Biology, 16(9), e3000014. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000014
Bonvoisin, J., Molloy, J., Haeuer, M., & Wenzel, T. (2020). Standardisation of practices in Open Source Hardware. Journal of Open Hardware, 4(1), 2. https://doi.org/10.5334/joh.22
Bonvoisin, J., & Mies, R. (2018). Measuring Openness in Open Source Hardware with the Open-o-Meter. In Simeone, A and Priarone, PC (Ed.), 6TH CIRP GLOBAL WEB CONFERENCE – ENVISAGING THE FUTURE MANUFACTURING, DESIGN, TECHNOLOGIES AND SYSTEMS IN INNOVATION ERA (CIRPE 2018) (Vol. 78, pp. 388–393). ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procir.2018.08.306