Werner Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neurosciences, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany.
Graduate School for Neural and Behavioural Sciences, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany.
PLoS Biol. 2018 Sep 27;16(9):e3000014. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3000014. eCollection 2018 Sep.
Many efforts are making science more open and accessible; they are mostly concentrated on issues that appear before and after experiments are performed: open access journals, open databases, and many other tools to increase reproducibility of science and access to information. However, these initiatives do not promote access to scientific equipment necessary for experiments. Mostly due to monetary constraints, equipment availability has always been uneven around the globe, affecting predominantly low-income countries and institutions. Here, a case is made for the use of free open source hardware in research and education, including countries and institutions where funds were never the biggest problem.
许多努力正在使科学更加开放和易于获取；它们主要集中在实验前后出现的问题上：开放获取期刊、开放数据库以及许多其他工具，以提高科学的可重复性和信息获取。然而，这些举措并没有促进获取实验所需的科学设备。主要由于资金限制，设备的可用性在全球范围内一直不均衡，主要影响到低收入国家和机构。在这里，提倡在研究和教育中使用免费的开源硬件，包括那些资金从来不是最大问题的国家和机构。
