Towards national policy for open source hardware research: The case of Finland

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Citation: I.T.S. Heikkinena, H. Savina, J. Partanenb, J. Seppäläc, J.M. Pearce Towards national policy for open source hardware research: The case of Finland.
DOI (original publisher): 10.1016/j.techfore.2020.119986
Semantic Scholar (metadata): 10.1016/j.techfore.2020.119986
Sci-Hub (fulltext): 10.1016/j.techfore.2020.119986
Internet Archive Scholar (search for fulltext): Towards national policy for open source hardware research: The case of Finland
Wikidata (metadata): Q109577442
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Summary

Approach of Impacts of Open Source Hardware in Science and Engineering (US) is expanded and applied to Finland.

Steps of method:

  1. the most-representative university in the country is selected for a detailed analysis of research equipment purchases greater than 10,000€over the past 20 years;
  2. the equipment is classified into four categories ((1) characterization, (2) electronics, (3) processing and (4) space improvements) and then refined to sets of instruments;
  3. these are compared to available FOSH;
  4. evaluated for future FOSH development; and
  5. the origin of the equipment classes are determined to investigate balance of trade impacts.

Aalto was selected as the representative university, in part due to access to procurement data: in last 20 years 49.146m€ in purchases of 625 individual items of scientific equipment costing more than 10,000€ per item, dominated (46%) by characterization (eg microscopy) equipment. The average expenditure for the last ten years was 4.3m€/year. Estimates FOSH typically costs 1-10% of proprietary tools. If all major research infrastructure in Finland were converted to FOSH, Aalto University would save between 0.43m€and 4.2m€ annually on research equipment expenditures, and Finnish science funders could save between 2.84m€and 27.7m €annually. Impacts on accelerated innovation would likely dwarf those impacts. Additionally only 34% of purchases are from Finnish companies (an overestimate due to outside sourcing/ownership), much of which could be onshored with FOSH.

Theoretical and Practical Relevance

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