Years ago when I was in grad school in chemistry I insisted that my work get published in a open journal. I actually got a very key step of my research from an open journal and I felt I should repay the act. This did not go over well since my PI was not yet tenured and ultimately it was his choice.
When you say "open notebook" does that mean outside people can see your results and contribute intellectually to the project? Is there a synthetic route to 9DS? I didn't see much on a quick google search but it doesn't look like a terribly difficult molecule to make.
I've been a robotics hobbyist for a few years and still can't answer any of those questions. I can get my turtlebot to follow me around and chase the cat though. Is there a practical programming robotics book/course out there? I've taken tons of math, controls, read robotics books, but still can't program anything harder than a PID or Kalman filter. I think part of that is me relying on ROS libraries too much.