Austria

Austria has put in place the necessary organisational structures and funding from national sources for a full implementation of Open Science on all levels of its research activities. Its major universities and research performing and funding organisations have joined forces in various networks and consortia, with the EOSC Support Office Austria (EOSC SOA) as a very active operational unit of the ACONET Association, the country’s Mandated Organisation. Together, the members of EOSC SOA strive for a coordinated development of the Austrian Open Science Policy and EOSC goals. Austrian institutions are also part of several EOSC-related Horizon Europe projects (including EOSC Focus, FAIR-IMPACT, and SKILLS4EOSC), where they are involved in technical as well as organisational aspects of the development of EOSC. The institutional support from the Federal Ministry for Education, Science and Research (BMBWF) for providing national funding has been essential for the overall successful strategy. A national policy that rounds up the current landscape was approved in early 2022. 

ACONET Association

The ACONET Association ^[1] is the signatory of the Memorandum of Understanding with the EOSC Association and thus the Austrian EOSC Mandated Organisation. To carry out the work this entails towards the implementation of EOSC, however, ACONET Association has created a dedicated body, the EOSC Support Office Austria (EOSC SOA). ACONET Association’s role can therefore be understood as legal representative with no operational plans or executive power over the specific EOSC-related tasks in Austria in which its members may be involved. This is done by the EOSC SOA, whose members include all leading Austrian research performing organisations. Founded in 2021, EOSC SOA thus acts as the coordinator of EOSC activities in the country and as closest link to the EOSC Association. Its operational goals translate those of the EOSC Association into the national context. Contact: Paolo Budroni (paolo.budroni[at]tuwien.ac.at).

Despite its short existence, EOSC SOA has managed to achieve an identifiable division of roles thanks to structured working methods and a clear information infrastructure. Several of its members are currently involved in Horizon Europe consortia (EOSC Focus, SKILLS4EOSC and e-IRGSP7) to develop and implement EOSC. Contact: contact[at]eosc-austria.at. 

A further recent initiative is the platform created in 2021 by the Austrian University Conference (uniko), called Open Science Austria. Its goal is to keep members up to date about the evolving Open Science landscape in Europe and beyond through strategy papers that enables to make informed decisions.

Austria also counts with several national generic and discipline-specific e-infrastructures and services, including repositories for data and publications, high performance computation clusters, etc. (a full list as of 2021 can be found in the Appendixes of the Austria Country Profile Q4/2022). Many of them are linked to EU-wide initiative and projects through various projects and networks.

[1] Not to be confused with the National Research and Education Network (ACOnet), originally funded by the Austrian Ministry of Science within the  framework of the ACONET Association and was established in 1990 under  the responsibility of TU Wien. Since 1992 ACOnet has been operated by the University of Vienna.