We classify three levels of engagement ranging from more focused to more general audiences: (a) Research: sharing with research peers; (b) Applied: sharing with those who can apply the work, such as industry and educators; and (c) Society: sharing with the general public. This structure is based on our experiences working in compliant mechanisms and is one way to describe the various audiences, but there are alternative routes that can be taken between levels depending on the project intent and complexity of the information shared.
Here, we take an early effort from our lab as an illustrative example to discuss the progress from sharing files with research peers, to making them available to educators, industry, and broader society (see Fig. 1). Over ten years ago, before the start of a wider maker culture in academia and before an international movement on open science hardware, we…
