Quality sharing best practices for Open Science Hardware

This guide is a result of collaborative efforts by members of the Open Science Hardware Movement.

DOCUMENTATION is key. Best practices to ensure reproducibility:

• think about your audience - tailor documentation and design to them e.g. education, DIY, peer scientists, professional
• indicate purpose of documentation to manage expectations e.g. proof of principle vs. easy to make in educational workshop
• document along functionality and include meta information about design decisions
• connect all pieces of information well (using documentation tools like DocuBricks or linking them)
• include design files!
• name files intuitively and in detail
• instruction steps should be minute and explicit
• include a lot of media such as explanatory diagrams (very useful!), videos and pictures
• include calibration and testing instructions at modular points
• test your instructions without giving additional information - peer review
• bonus to let it go viral: include thoughts on possible improvements and modifications

DocuBricks provides an easy access to these practises.

DESIGN FILES best practices to ensure usefulness:

• provide design files in an open format wherever possible, see open source hardware definition
• share modifiable design files in addition to build files (provide more than only STL, PDF, DXF files or similar)
• design the project to be easily adaptable for common differences (metric vs imperial) and adaptations, ideally make parametric
• utilise asymmetric design to make parts fit together uniquely and avoid miss-assemblies
• name files with a clear name, material specs and number of pieces