CERN Co-Hosts the HEROES Workshop

Open Science Hardware (OScH), the open sharing of instrumentation, materials, and other physical tools that enable scientific research, is gaining traction across disciplines and institutions. In the last five years alone, more than 400 publications have featured OScH designs, and a growing body of meta-research is helping to shape the policies, practices, and funding strategies that support them. Open hardware is now appearing in high-level policy documents, including the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science, and is being highlighted in funding calls and academic conferences worldwide. Communities such as the Gathering for Open Science Hardware (GOSH) and organizations including the Open Science Hardware Foundation, the Open Source Hardware Association, and the Research Data Alliance have laid the foundation for these developments. Still, OScH remains far from mainstream within most scientific institutions. We now need a thriving open science hardware ecosystem to achieve a broader goal: global access to reliable scientific data. 

To address this gap and chart the next stage of growth, the Open Science Hardware Foundation, CERN, the SDG Solution Space at University of Geneva, and EU RIECS at UZH/ETH Zurich, and ITU, are convening a focused workshop at CERN, the University of Geneva’s SDG Solution Space and ITU. Over two and a half days, a group of 40-45 participants will come together to deepen shared understanding of the OScH ecosystem and explore opportunities to shape the future of science through open science hardware. Our aim is not only to exchange perspectives, but to surface new ideas, create alliances, and identify actions that can make OScH a critical component of open science infrastructure.