AT EOSC

This project prepares Austria’s coordinated application to become a candidate national EOSC Node, delivering a comprehensive Project Charter aligned with the EOSC Federation Handbook v2.0 (in particular Chapter 3.3) and the requirements of the EOSC Tripartite Governance.

The project will define the scope, mandate, governance, operational model, and sustainability of the Austrian EOSC Node as a nationally coordinated gateway connecting Austrian research infrastructures, services, and organisations to the EOSC Federation. It will establish a clear operational structure with distributed responsibilities across participating organisations and a sustainability plan ensuring long-term viability. Building on the established coordination framework of ACONET Association (Mandated Organisation to the EOSC-A), operated by the EOSC Support Office Austria, the project consolidates national stakeholders including research performing organisations and research infrastructures, ensuring institutional anchoring and long-term strategic commitment.

Six concrete deliverables will result from the project. A Project Charter aligned with EOSC Federation Node requirements, covering governance, mandate, scope, services, sustainability, and federation integration. Designation of the five mandatory Node roles defined in the EOSC Federation Handbook v2.0: Coordinator, Operations Manager, Cybersecurity Officer, Legal/Privacy Officer, and Communication Officer. An implementation roadmap defining the organisational, technical, legal, and operational steps toward Node candidature. A national stakeholder alignment and engagement plan ensuring institutional commitment and clear distribution of responsibilities. A comprehensive risk, gap, and readiness assessment with mitigation strategies. And a technical preparation plan addressing interoperability, service onboarding, monitoring, and compliance requirements.

Taken together, these outputs will significantly reduce organisational, technical, and governance risks, enabling Austria to submit a mature, sustainable, and well-coordinated EOSC Node application.

The Austrian EOSC Node will provide a coordinated national gateway for Austrian research performing organisations, research infrastructures, and their associated services, enabling researchers to participate coherently and effectively in the EOSC Federation. It will advance ERA Policy Agenda objectives by integrating national research systems, promoting Open Science practices, and enabling cross-border data reuse, all while ensuring alignment with Federation governance and technical architecture.

The Node will translate EOSC Federation-wide policies and standards into coordinated national implementation pathways, provide structured feedback channels for national priorities, and reduce fragmentation, transaction costs, and barriers to participation. By supporting both established and emerging service providers, it addresses inclusiveness and long-term capacity building. Anchored in trusted public institutions, it will also strengthen Europe’s digital sovereignty, governance, and research integrity.

FAIRness of Austrian research outputs will be directly enhanced through coordinated service onboarding, implementation of EOSC interoperability standards, standardised metadata, persistent identifiers, and machine-actionable access protocols. Coordinated training and operational support will improve the findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability of datasets, software, and publications across disciplines, borders, and EOSC Nodes.

By connecting Austrian infrastructures and services to EOSC multi-node use cases, ESFRI initiatives such as AUSSDA/CESSDA, DiSSCo/Natural History Museum, and DARIAH-CLARIAH, and European Common Data Spaces such as the EMM Survey Registry, the Node will increase Europe’s data-driven research competitiveness and reinforce the robustness and interoperability of the EOSC Federation.

This preparatory project, through the development of a comprehensive Project Charter, lays the foundation for ascalable and sustainable Austrian EOSC Node by defining governance, operational models and service onboarding procedures that will guide future implementation.

To ensure smooth evolution of Node operations, services will be onboarded iteratively: a first batch of operational services (TRL 9), identified via a national survey in Q4 2025, will be prioritized. Preliminary onboarding processesand lessons learned will inform subsequent rounds, ensuring efficiency and success as additional services are integrated. Monitoring mechanisms will track resource usage, enabling infrastructure scaling in response to growing demand.

Engagement with the Federal Ministry for Women, Science and Research (BMFWF) will continue to ensure thevalue of the Austrian EOSC Node to the scientific community and the larger Austrian society becomes clear. This is crucial to ensure all relevant authorities at federal and regional level commit enough resources to the growing needs of the system.

Sustainability will also be achieved by developing realistic business models in collaboration with universities and service providers, leveraging experience from SharedRDM project, member of the “Cluster Forschungsdaten” under the leadership of the Ministry.

By combining iterative service onboarding, strategic institutional engagement and alignment with national andEuropean frameworks, this project ensures that the Austrian EOSC Node will be robust, scalable and sustainable. Sustainability will be ensured through integration of the future Austrian EOSC Node into existing national coordination structures, continued support from EOSC Support Office Austria and alignment with national funding frameworks.