Abstract:Large instruments are important tools for exploring frontier fields and promoting scientific and technological progress, while the open sharing of instruments can accelerate the pace of scientific and technological innovation and boost the implementation of innovative development strategies.Based on the evaluation organized by the Ministry of Science and Technology, descriptive statistics and negative binomial regression were performed to examine primary characteristics and influencing factors to the open sharing of large research instruments in China. First, the level of open sharing of large instruments is constantly improving, but the overall utilisation efficiency of open instrument resources is not high, and there is still much room for improvement. Second, the performance of sharing exhibit significant heterogeneity with region, department, and property: a) the economically developed eastern region has the highest number of participating units, yet the overall level of sharing is the lowest; b) research institutes have a higher level of sharing than universities, both in terms of shared units and eventual level of sharing; c) units belonging to Chinese Academy of Sciences earn best scores on average. Third, the level of sharing is highly related to units’ attentiveness, i.e. more attention with better results.