TOPOS

TOPOS, the Transport fOrum / Observatory for Promoting Open Science

Born from a collaborative effort from key players in transport research promoting territorial and cross-border cooperation for Open Science, BE OPEN will design and develop TOPOS, the Transport fOrum / Observatory for Promoting Open Science, a tool which will contribute to create a solid knowledge base on the implementation of Open Science approaches in transport research, and in particular on current constraints and bottlenecks in this field.

TOPOS will have two major components:

the TOPOS fOrum for national and European stakeholders – public and private - to exchange ideas and share best practices for operationalising Open Science principles in transport research. This Forum will capture and present the common culture and practices of data stewardship in transport research.
the TOPOS Observatory which aim is to showcase the status and progress of open science uptake in transport research. This will be a collaborative effort with OpenAIRE which is currently developing a European Open Science Observatory, and will be based on existing efforts, i.e., the Open Science Monitor Framework developed in the EOSC pilot project, the DG-RTD Open Science Monitor, FAIR tools, TRIMIS. The new TOPOS observatory will follow the specifications of the Open Science Monitor Framework with the proper modifications to the difficulties and the complexity of promoting Open Science in transport. To this end, new schemes for membership and governance will be utilized and a portal area will be included to gather all research results.

TOPOS should lead, amongst other, to improved efficiency, quality and integrity and, when relevant, interdisciplinarity of transport research, speed up the path from research to innovation and promote citizen’s engagement in the scientific process.