Austrian Initiatives to move Open Science & Research Data forward | Agricultural Information Management Standards (AIMS)

"The Austrian funding and research organizations have a very good starting position since they have achieved several OA agreements with publishers like IoP Publishing, Royal Society of Chemistry, Taylor & Franics and Sage.  Besides that, of particular importance are the Springer Compact Agreement, and the Vienna Principles.

Based on 16 Recommendations for the Transition to OA in Austria (developed by Open Access Network Austria: OANA), all scholarly publication activity in Austria should be OA by 2025. That means that the final versions of all scholarly publications resulting from the support of public resources must be freely accessible on the Internet without delay (Gold OA).

The Austrian Science Fund (FWF) has:

• provided books accessible free of charge in the FWF E-Book Library and in the OAPEN Library. The OAPEN Library’s annual data on book usage shows that the number of archived open-access books is rising steadily, as is the number of downloads per book;
• called for support of the Expression of Interest in the Large-scale Implementation of OA to Scholarly Journals initiated by the Max Planck Society (OA2020 – The Initiative).

Austrian Transition to Open Access - AT2OA is a new project involving 21 Austrian Universities under the lead of the University of Vienna. Its aim is to contribute to the transformation from Closed to Open Access of scholarly publications. 

IST Austria is committed to provide unrestricted and cost-free online access to scientific publications for all users and researchers as widely as possible. 

As a certified repository, AUSSDA – THE AUSTRIAN SOCIAL SCIENCE DATA ARCHIVE aims to systematically collect, document and disseminate digital quantitative data, and to guarantee its long-term availability, along with any accompanying documentation, while adhering to international standards. AuSSDA is integrated within the European ESFRI roadmap via its membership in the Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives (CESSDA). 

In the context of research data management, of particular note is the ​first e-Infrastructures Austria project. The importance of this project has been demonstrated in its results and many initiatives arisen out of it. In this context, it is worth noting a survey conducted on the handling of research data in Austria and directed at the scientific personnel of 20 public universities and three Austrian research institutions. As a result, templates for data management plans (DMP) were prepared, as well as, publications, guidelines, FAQ’s and other deliverables from cluster groups. "