Open physical infrastructures
Open physical infrastructures are shared facilities, equipment, instruments, and other material resources that support research and can be used by researchers or other relevant groups. They can make research capabilities available beyond the organisation that owns or operates them and can support collaboration across institutions, disciplines, and countries. For such infrastructures to support open science requires broad and equitable access, long-term sustainability, and governance that reflects the needs of research communities and society.
Physical open science infrastructures can take many forms, for example
- major scientific equipment and sets of instruments
- open laboratories and accessible research facilities
- open innovation testbeds and incubators
- science shops, science museums, and science parks
- infrastructure for non-digital research materials, such as chemical reagents.
What makes a physical research infrastructure open is principally that access to it is shared as widely as is appropriate, rather than being restricted to a single organisation or closed group. Shared access can help reduce inequalities in research capabilities by enabling researchers and institutions to use equipment, facilities, or expertise that they could not provide themselves.
Physical infrastructures can also provide places for collaboration and exchange. The production of new knowledge can benefit from interdisciplinary spaces where researchers can interact with, for example, engineers, software developers, artists, innovators, and other groups. UNESCO also encourages infrastructures that facilitate interaction between science and society.
Like virtual infrastructures, physical infrastructures require long-term funding, maintenance, technical expertise, and clear responsibilities for their operation and development. Systematic long-term investment in technical infrastructure as well as the human resources needed to maintain it is necessary. Open science infrastructures are often non-commercial, with a strong basis in the researcher community.