Roadmap for an hardware publication ecosystem - Workshop at the Open Science Conference 2023 on 28 June 2023

Research hardware represents physical artifacts and may incorporate mechanical, electrical, and even software components. It is an inherent part of research, together with research data and research software. However, while the latter have been recognized as research outputs by funders and institutions (leading for example to the creation of novel career paths in academia), research hardware has not received much attention so far. There is also no specific publication pathway or specific repositories for hardware documentation. In 2022, the Open.Make project collected user stories about researchers' perspectives on hardware publication. They combined this knowledge with the work of the FAIR Principles for Research Hardware RDA interest group and experience in hardware engineering to propose a hardware publication system. In this workshop, this proposition was discussed with professionals in scholarly communication, institutions and political influencers. The goal was to create a roadmap for the creation of an ecosystem for the recognition of hardware as a research output, its quality control and therefore a publication system for research hardware engineers