Austria
Over the past decade, open science culture has grown in Austria largely thanks to government initiatives and collaborative efforts by several projects. One of the key turning points was the launch of the Open Access Network Austria (OANA, currently known as the Open Science Network Austria) by the Austrian Science Fund and Universities Austria (Österreichische Universitätenkonferenz, uniko) in 2012, in order to better coordinate country-wide efforts.
Ten years later, Open Science Austria (OSA) is continuing the activities of OANA.
In 2021, the EOSC Support Office Austria started its work. As the mandated organisation for representing Austria in the EOSC Association, it is striving for a coordinated development of the Austrian Open Science Policy and the EOSC.
Austria has been playing a relevant role in the development of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) since its early stages, and Vienna was even chosen as the location for the official launch of the project on 23 November 2018.
Austria is represented in EOSC-Pillar by the University of Vienna - which also leads the work package on the National Initiatives Survey - and in a range of other EOSC-related initiatives by major institutions in the field of research, such as TU Wien in the EOSCsecretariat.eu project.
If you are part of an Austrian Open Science initiative and want to learn more about EOSC, check out the EOSC-Pillar Ambassadors Programme.
Roadmap for consolidating National Initiatives
Within the EOSC-Pillar project, the so-called "Transversal Task Force" conducted a series of interviews to further gain insights into the national landscape, analyzing the status of National Initiatives and specifically of Mandated Organisations in the realm of the EOSC Association.
The full report, completed Oct 2021, is available here, while the excerpt focusing on the Mandated Organisation for Austria is here.
Legal and Policy Framework and Federation Blueprint
Within the EOSC-Pillar project, Work-Package WP4 compiled a thorough study of the legal and policy state of the art in the involved countries (Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy), identifying commonalities and gaps or challenges, and proposing recommendations for researchers on the rules and procedures with respect to legal issues regarding open access, open data, and cross border data access.
The full report (last update, Sep. 2021) is available here, while an excerpt containing details on Open Science Regulations and Policies, National copyright laws, Personal data protection laws in Austria is available here.
EOSC Observatory
Check out the EOSC Observatory, a policy intelligence tool being developed by the EOSC Future project for monitoring policies, practices, and impacts related to the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). It will support the EOSC community in tracking the implementation of EOSC and the policy makers in developing actionable policies.
EOSC Steering Board Representative:
Stefan Hanslik - Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research (BMWFW)
EOSC-Pillar partners:
