Scope of the Open.Make project | SEPTEMBER 27, 2021

"...In this project, we intend to contribute to the establishment of an open and FAIR4 hardware strategy in academia, as well as to 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 open and FAIR principles4 can be applied to hardware. This will help us frame the technical and social requirements the hardware publication system should fulfill. The second phase will be utilized for 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 cases and disseminate our results. In parallel to defining a peer review process, we will produce guidance materials to ease the documentation of hardware and to help researchers creating FAIR documentation from the start of their project...."