Call for Experts: Needs from the Austrian Research Communities
The European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) serves as a central European infrastructure providing open research data, services, and computing resources for a diverse community. Although Austria has an active open science environment, institutional and practical use (and awareness) of the EOSC remain limited.
At the European level, this challenge is being addressed through the Skills4EOSC project, which has established a Competence Centre Network, and through the ongoing EOSC Gravity initiative that is currently working to establish an EOSC Academy. These initiatives aim to increase the use of the EOSC and explicitly target (potential) users of EOSC services.
Accordingly, it would be appropriate to set up an inter-university working group — EOSC‑Connect Austria — within the framework of EOSC Austria, which will ensure at the national level that EOSC services are actually used. The group would do so by familiarizing educators and researchers with EOSC offerings, developing usage scenarios, and identifying needs — primarily through existing in-kind resources and the networking of existing partners.
Goals
- Engage and onboard diverse EOSC SOA partners to act as multipliers
- Identify concrete application areas for EOSC services in research and education
- Gather evidence-based insights on needs, gaps, and required actions
- Foster knowledge exchange and capacity building within Austria’s open science community
Connection to existing initiatives
The working group builds on existing national initiatives that, in recent years, have been involved in developing and consolidating services and offerings related to research data management (RDM), such as FAIR Office Austria, RDA Austria, SharedRDM, ClusterForschungsdaten, EOSC_SOA, and the Skills4EOSC Competence Centres. The aim is not to discuss the creation of new services or offerings, but rather for the working group to contribute to making the work of EOSC SOA and the services provided by the EOSC more visible and sustainably accessible.
As a starting point, existing directories and documentation of research infrastructures (for example, the Research Infrastructure Database of the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research), international needs and competence mappings, as well as national empirical findings will be used. These document researchers’ and educators’ accessibility, attitudes, and practices regarding open data, data management, and secondary data use. They serve as the basis for additional needs analyses and provide opportunities to select services in a targeted way and make them accessible to researchers and educators.
Timeline
| Time | Content | Outcomes |
|---|---|---|
| Q1 2026 | Establishment of the working group; kick-off with EOSC_SOA members Definition of structure, working mode, and thematic areas |
Working group formed and operating framework defined |
| Q2 to Q4 2026 | Three thematic online workshops (e.g.: “EOSC in Teaching”, “FAIR Use & Data Sharing”, “Disciplinary Use Cases”) Collection and presentation of usage ideas, possibly experimental |
Workshop outputs and documented innovative use cases |
| Q4 2026 | Synthesis and recommendations at the EOSC_Austria General Assembly Documentation of results and final workshop “EOSC Application Areas in Austria” |
Consolidated recommendations and dissemination within EOSC Austria community |
The working group will organize its official kickoff meeting as a round table on “Sustainable integration of stakeholders in open infrastructures”. Date/Time: Tue, 21 or 28 April 2026, 3:30-5pm CEST (to be confirmed). If you are interested to join the discussion, please reach out to dimitri.prandner@jku.at or stefan.reichmann@tugraz.at.
Members
Coordinator: Dimitri Prandner (JKU), Stefan Reichmann (TU Graz)
Members: open for new members to join
Expressions of Interest to join the working group are still being accepted via email to dimitri.prandner@jku.at or stefan.reichmann@tugraz.at.
Expected Outputs
- Activation of the EOSC_SOA community and strengthened national networking
- Documented usage scenarios and overview of needs
- Recommendations for the institutional anchoring of EOSC services
- Visible positioning of Austria as an active partner in the European open science landscape