Research Instruments and Operating Tools : How Open Science Contributes to Technology

In all the experimental sciences, research instruments are at the heart of laboratory life and developing new tools, empowering and refining the existing ones, defining quicker and more effective procedures, are common facts in every lab that does research in either science or engineering. Despite so, in recent years, technology development in academia has been evocated more often in relation to commercialization of science, and technology transfer of research-derived applications. By using a methodology of semantic analysis, the paper presents an assessment of the importance of such activity in the career of a sample of American star physicists