This initiative aims to build a collaborative database of open science hardware projects around the world. It started with projects from Latin America as part of my PhD and now we want to make it global as part of the Global Open Source Hardware community.
The map database is in Wikidata, although some items are missing geographic coordinates (that's work in progress). Contributions can be easily added to Wikidata through a form (see contribution guidelines in this repo).
The benefits I see from this approach are:
- Anyone can contribute;
- Map is updated everytime you visit it;
- Easy to link with other sources of data (wikipedia articles, github repos, journal articles);
- Engagement with the bigger wikimedia community
I see two problems having the map only in Wikidata:
- There is a small possibility of vandalism
- The map looks horrible
That's why I keep a periodic backup of the database in this same repo, which is displayed as a pretty map via a simple python script. This is the "official" map.
You can contribute by adding nodes, translating data, enhancing visualizations or anything else that comes to your mind.
Check the contribution guidelines to see how.
Problems, questions, suggestions? jarancio[at]unsam.edu.ar