Support Free and Open-source Scientific Hardware to Drive Canadian Innovation

There is an opportunity to radically reduce costs of experimental research while improving it by supporting the development of free and open-source hardware (FOSH) for science. By harnessing a scalable open-source methodology, federal funding is spent only once for development of scientific equipment and then a return on the investment is realized by digital replication of the devices for the costs of materials. This latterly scaled replication provides savings between 90-99% of the traditional costs,1 making scientific equipment much more accessible for both research and STEM education. Thus innovation cycles in all of technology can be accelerated. 2

The Problem: High Cost Proprietary Scientific Equipment

Scientists have limited access to the best scientific tools largely due to the inflated prices of proprietary experimental scientific equipment.3 This slows the rate of scientific development in every field. Even Canadian scientists, who are relatively wealthy and have some of the most well-equipped research labs in the world, rarely have access to a complete collection of the best tools to do their work. In addition, the high costs of scientific instruments limits access to engaging labs in both K-12 and university education. This weakens recruitment into Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) fields and has led to a shortage of STEM talent in Canada.4 Historically, the scientific community had to choose one of two sub-optimal paths to participate in state-of-the-art experimental research: 1) purchase high-cost proprietary tools or 2) develop equipment largely from scratch in their own labs, which has a time investment penalty resulting in high personnel costs.

The high cost of modern scientific tools and added HST on scientific equipment slows the progress in all laboratories in government, academia and industry – this slows technological development and economic productivity improvements.

The Solution: Free and Open-source Hardware for Science

Now a new option is emerging where low-cost,5 but often highly sophisticated and customized scientific equipment is being developed as free and open-source hardware (FOSH) similar to free and open source software (FOSS). 6

FOSS is computer software that is available in source code (open source) form and that can be used, studied, copied, modified, and redistributed without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients have the same rights under which it was obtained (free or libre). Open source development has already been shown to be technically superior. FOSS dominates software development7 and is running on 100% of supercomputers,8 90% of cloud servers (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, YouTube and Amazon),9 over 85% of tall smartphones10 and more than 80% of the internet of things (IoT) devices.11 It dominates because it is better and less expensive.

Under analogous rights, FOSH provides the “code” for hardware including the bill of materials, schematics, instructions, CAD designs, and other information needed to recreate a physical artifact.12 Similar to what is seen in FOSS development, FOSH leads to improved product innovation in a wide range of fields.13 The use of this open-source paradigm, which now largely drives the Internet and is now enabling the creation of FOSH by combining 3D printing with open-source micro controllers running on FOSS. Hundreds of scientific tools have already been developed to allow free access to plans and this trend is assisting scientific development in every field that it touches.14 Scientists design, share and build on one another’s work to develop scientific tools. Then they digitally manufacture what they need from free plans using advanced manufacturing tools like CNC mills, laser cutters or 3D printers.

This FOSH method not only offers the potential to radically reduce the cost of doing science, but also training future scientists.15 An entire university classroom of physics optics setups can be printed in house for $500 using a selection of pre-designed components from the open-source optics library 16 on an open-source 3D printer replacing $15,000 of commercial equipment.17 This would save millions if scaled only to the basic physics labs alone throughout Canada. There are hundreds of such opportunities. Thus it is clear there is an enormous return on investment (ROI) possible for those that fund both scientific research, but also STEM education by investing in the development of FOSH for all of the sciences and applied sciences.18

This ability to scale in FOSH is not only possible in STEM education, but is an even more ripe opportunity in our country’s research labs. This scaled replication provides savings between 90-99% of the traditional costs of experimental hardware (e.g. for less than HST on the same equipment). This horizontal scaling will be accomplished by federal funding being spent only once for development of scientific equipment and then an immediate ROI is realized by the digital replication of the devices throughout the country for the costs of materials. In this way research-grade scientific instruments will be much more accessible at every level of the educational system and a greater percentage of Canada’s scientists will be able to participate in experimental science. The ROI thus goes beyond simply funding laboratories themselves. As is well established, improvements in science lead to improvements in technology, which will enhance every aspect of the Canadian economy.

Federal Policies and Action Items:

Four policies to support FOSH development in Canada to accomplish this include:

1. Form a task force within the Canadian Academy of Engineering to identify the top 100 opportunities to realize strategic national goals and a high return on investment for the creation of open-source scientific hardware. The country’s largest current expenditures on equipment should be determined along with the most likely future expenditures following analysis like that done in Finland. 19

2. Federal funding (such as through NSERC) for the development of open-source scientific hardware identified in 1). This can be accomplished with a combination of traditional CFPs for academic grants and programs. In addition, Canada can run national contests like the Xprize or “first to make” specific technical goal “bounties”. All current funding for scientific hardware should be directed to FOSH projects and because of the high ROI of such projects further funding should be considered.

3. Create a national free on-line catalog of tested, vetted and validated free and open-source scientific hardware, which would house the bill of materials, digital designs, instructions for assembly and operation and the source code for all software and firmware. Just as proprietary tools are, all FOSH scientific designs should be vetted, tested and validated as part of database inclusion. This will largely eliminate the technical risks for labs to adopt the use of the hardware, while at the same time ensuring that scientific equipment no longer becomes obsolete as proprietary systems can when a company loses key personnel, discontinues a product line or goes out of business.

4. To provide incentives for Canada’s entrepreneurs to scale production of the “vitamins” necessary to make this equipment (e.g. microcontrollers, sensors, actuators, etc. ) all levels of government can enact purchasing policy preferences for FOSH. Preferential purchasing guidelines should be created for FOSH equipment particularly for validated tool sets (from 3) for all government labs and all government funded projects. This will also support “Made in the Canada” related employment as labs trade funding to purchase international equipment in exchange for Canadian labor to fabricate the tools in the country.

References

1. Pearce, J.M., (2020). Economic savings for scientific free and open source technology: A review. HardwareX, 8, p.e00139. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ohx.2020.e00139

2. Woelfle, M., Olliaro, P., & Todd, M. H., 2011. Open science is a research accelerator. Nature Chemistry, 3(10), 745-748.

3. Maia Chagas, A., 2018. Haves and have nots must find a better way: The case for open scientific hardware. PLoS Biology, 16(9), p.e3000014.

4. Mahboubi, Parisa. The knowledge gap: Canada faces a shortage in digital and STEM skills. CD Howe Institute, 2022. https://www.cdhowe.org/sites/default/files/2022-08/Commentary_626_0.pdf

5. Fisher, D. and Gould, P. 2012. Open-Source Hardware Is a Low-Cost Alternative for Scientific Instrumentation and Research, Modern Instrumentation, 1(2), 8-20.

6. Pearce, J.M., 2012. Building Research Equipment with Free, Open-Source Hardware. Science 337(6100), 1303–1304.

7. https://opensource.com/business/16/5/2016-future-open-source-survey

8. https://www.zdnet.com/article/supercomputers-all-linux-all-the-time/

9. https://medium.com/@Chinacolt/linux-in-the-cloud-powering-modern-infrastructure-8cab137ceb14

10. https://linuxblog.io/85-of-all-smartphones-are-powered-by-linux/

11. https://iot.eclipse.org/community/resources/iot-surveys/assets/iot-developer-survey-2019.pdf

12. Gibb, A., 2015. Building open source hardware: DIY manufacturing for hackers and makers. Pearson Education.

13. Raymond, E., 1999. The cathedral and the bazaar. Knowledge, Technology & Policy,12(3), 23-49.

14. Pearce, J.M., 2014. Open-Source Lab: How to Build Your Own Hardware and Reduce Research Costs, Elsevier, Amsterdam. See: https://www.appropedia.org/Open-source_Lab

15. Pearce, J. M. (2014). Cut costs with open-source hardware. Nature, 505(7485), 618-618.

16. Zhang, C., et al. 2013. Open-Source 3D-Printable Optics Equipment. PLoS ONE 8(3): e59840

17. https://doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.2160 .

18. Pearce, J.M., 2016. Return on investment for open source scientific hardware development. Science and Public Policy, 43(2), pp.192-195.

19. Heikkinen, I.T.S., et al, 2020. Towards national policy for open source hardware research: The case of Finland. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 155, p.119986.