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\begin{document}

\title{Open in order to open engineering}



\author[1]{Devin Berg}%
\affil[1]{University of Wisconsin-Stout}%


\vspace{-1em}



  
  \date{May 25, 2024}


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Engineering is a field that touches nearly every aspect of our lives.
Almost anything human-made that you come into contact with on a
day-to-day basis was worked on by an engineer during at least one phase
of its development before coming to fruition. Whether it was in the
initial design, the selection of materials, or the manufacturing method,
engineering is deeply woven into the fabric of our lives as well as our
economic, technological, and social development as a society. Despite
the importance of engineering to society, there remains a large portion
of our global population that are not able to participate as equal
partners in the engineering practice. This includes participating both
as consumers and contributors of engineering knowledge.~

\subsection*{Accessing engineering
knowledge}

{\label{826769}}

Despite the recent surge of interest in open access (OA) publishing
models, engineering work remains, for the most part, locked away in
traditional academic journals~\cite{fleischfresser2016}. A recent study found
that only \textasciitilde{}17\% of published manuscripts in engineering
can be accessed by the public for free~\cite{s2017}. This results
in a disadvantage for those who have limited ability to purchase access
to these resources, which is particularly hard felt in regions of the
world where engineering solutions are needed to solve some of our most
pressing problems such as access to clean drinking water and reliable
electricity.

The need for access to engineering knowledge does not reside solely in
the realm of academic publishing. Other areas where inequity in access
exists include educational resources and engineering tools such as
software and standards. Open educational resources (OERs) is another
area that has gained momentum in recently especially as people examine
the costs of higher education. The growth of OERs for engineering
doesn't seem to have taken off as quickly as in other fields such as
computer science or mathematics. Solutions are still needed here for the
development of engineering OERs that would provide alternative options
for both the engineering student at university and the individual trying
to learn on their own.~

\subsection*{Production of engineering
knowledge}

{\label{216770}}

The practice of engineering can include diverse array of work products.
The products can include code, multimedia, 3D models, sketches, physical
objects, writing, and everything in between. As such, it can be very
difficult to find a one-size-fits-all model to prescribe when promoting
the addition of open practices to the engineer's workflow. In terms of
the tools available to enable an engineer's work, many of the standard
tools that an engineering student is trained on and that they will later
utilize in the workplace are closed source, proprietary technologies.
Common examples include solid modeling software such as Solidworks or
PTC Creo and computational tools such as Matlab. Fortunately there is
much ongoing work occurring in the development of open source
alternatives to these packages such
as~\href{https://www.freecadweb.org/}{FreeCAD},~\href{https://brlcad.org/}{BRL-CAD},
and~\href{https://www.gnu.org/software/octave/}{GNU Octave}. While the
maturity of these projects varies and their adoption in the work place
is minimal, they show promise for the future availability and usefulness
of these tools. The real test is if more widespread adoption can be
facilitated such that continued development of these tools could be
incentivized.~

Engineering standards are another area where access is a major barrier
for small scale engineering practice. Engineering standards consist of a
set of criteria intended to ensure the proper execution of engineering
design as well as adherence to the proper safety specifications. In
general standards provide, well\ldots{} standardization. The trouble
with many engineering standards is that they can be expensive to
purchase, often in the range of \$400-500, for example. This raises the
same access issues as with anything else that carries such an expense.

\subsection*{Working toward open solutions for
engineering}

{\label{516001}}

While I have no expectations of being able to tackle all of the
aforementioned, I hope that between myself and the colleagues I work
with, we can make a small dent in the practice of open engineering. To
that end, I have organized an umbrella initiative
called~\href{http://openengr.com}{openENGR}~under which I organize the
various projects that we have undertaken to promote the overarching
goals of the breadth of engineering work more accessible to others and
make the process of practicing openness in engineering easier for
engineering researchers and practitioners.~

Current projects under this initiative
include~\href{http://tjoe.org}{the Journal of Open Engineering}~(TJOE),
a work in collaboration with~\href{http://pubpub.org}{PubPub} out of the
MIT Media Lab, and~\href{http://engrxiv.org}{engrXiv}, the engineering
archive, an eprint server for engineering built in collaboration with
the Center for Open Science on their platform,
the~\href{http://osf.io}{Open Science Framework}. Future efforts may
include \href{https://github.com/OpenEngr/engineering-the-book/}{OERs
for engineering}.

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