ArticleHardwareX2020
Economic savings for scientific free and open source technology: A review.
Article in HardwareX, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 53 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
53 citing papers in PubMed, 169 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Development and Evaluation of a Low-Cost Open-Source Nasometer.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
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- IoMT Architecture for Fully Automated Point-of-Care Molecular Diagnostic Device.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- The pivotal role of open source knowledge transfer to achieve universal energy access.iScience · 2025Review
- Open instrumentation, like open data, is key to reproducible science. Yet, without incentives it won't thrive.Philosophical transactions. Series A, Mathematical, physical, and engineering sciences · 2024Article
- Emerging technologies in citizen science and potential for insect monitoring.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Hybrid FFF/CNC: An open source hardware & software system.HardwareX · 2024Article
- A choice, not an obligation : Releasing scientific software as open source should be the responsibility of the authors.EMBO reports · 2024Article
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- Low-cost air, noise, and light pollution measuring station with wireless communication and tinyML.HardwareX · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
1 author at 1 institution in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Both the free and open source software (FOSS) as well as the distributed digital manufacturing of free and open source hardware (FOSH) has shown particular promise among scientists for developing custom scientific tools. Early research found substantial economic savings for these technologies, but as the open source design paradigm has grown by orders of magnitude it is possible that the savings observed in the early work was isolated to special cases. Today there are examples of open source technology for science in the vast majority of disciplines and several resources dedicated specifically to publishing them. Do the tremendous economic savings observed earlier hold today? To answer that question, this study evaluates free and open source technologies in the two repositories compared to proprietary functionally-equivalent tools as a function of their use of Arduino-based electronics, RepRap-class 3-D printing, as well as the combination of the two. The results of the review find overwhelming evidence for a wide range of scientific tools, that open source technologies provide economic savings of 87% compared to equivalent or lesser proprietary tools. These economic savings increased slightly to 89% for those that used Arduino technology and even more to 92% for those that used RepRap-class 3-D printing. Combining both Arduino and 3-D printing the savings averaged 94% for free and open source tools over commercial equivalents. The results provide strong evidence for financial support of open source hardware and software development for the sciences. Given the overwhelming economic advantages of free and open source technologies, it appears financially responsible to divert funding of proprietary scientific tools and their development in favor of FOSH. Policies were outlined that provide nations with a template for strategically harvesting the opportunities provided by the free and open source paradigm.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.