The project involves establishing an institutionalised national network for infrastructure to coordinate, plan and manage research facilities, services, research information and research data. Taking into account national and international strategies and standards, ARI&Snet sustainably strengthens Austrian agendas in the field of digital research support and ensures the long-term operation of both existing and newly developed services.

These shared services act as a catalyst for open science and contribute to the further development of Austria as a future-oriented research location. They also form the basis for an effective information and service platform for Austrian research. ARI&Snet creates sustainable synergies between digitisation projects, research institutions, the BMBWF and digitisation initiatives such as the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). This generates significant added value for the digital and social transformation in higher education.

STARTING POINT

Multifaceted initiatives have been launched and implemented in the areas of digital research infrastructure, research data management, research information and open science. Unfortunately, it has not yet been possible to make these results known to a broad community in order to build on them and develop services for the national research landscape.

An important impetus for establishing a sustainable strategy was provided by the call for proposals on "Digital and Social Transformation in Higher Education" initiated by the Federal Ministry of Education and Science (BMBWF). In order to proactively generate synergies between projects, "project clusters" were formed. The "Research Data Cluster" (CFD) played a key role in the thematic area covered by this application. In the CFD, four regionally distributed lead partners (TU Vienna, University of Vienna, TU Graz and University of Innsbruck) discussed the results and challenges of the projects represented in the cluster and presented them to interested target groups.

The Cluster “Research Data” has thus laid the foundation for coordinated planning and coordination of digital research support services, which now needs to be institutionalised in order to ensure sustainable results, the best possible use of resources and international positioning. In order to ensure long-term anchoring, professional implementation of networking activities and comprehensive services, a central and neutral infrastructure is needed that represents the interests of all research partners and formulates the participation, rights and obligations of the participants in a binding manner based on a sustainable set of rules.