Austrian Research and Technology Report 2020

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Austrian Research and Technology Report 2020
Research sectors
Institutions conducting R&D activities are divided in-
to four sectors of performance: business enterprise, 
government, private non-profit, and higher educa-
tion. The business enterprise sector includes the 
company R&D sub-sector and the institutes’ sub-sec-
tor (“Kooperativer Bereich”). The former comprises 
private and government enterprises conducting mar-
ket-oriented research for commercial benefit. The 
latter refers to institutions that regularly carry out 
R&D, most of which is done as collaborative projects 
for other companies. It includes the members of the 
Austrian Cooperative Research (ACR) association, 
and the competence centres of the COMET pro-
gramme. Some research institutes that were previ-
ously considered part of the institutes’ sub-sector 
(“Kooperativer Bereich”) are categorised in the 2017 
R&D survey as belonging to the government sector, 
in accordance with the European System of National 
and Regional Accounts (ESA). These are primarily the 
Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT), JOANNEUM 
RESEARCH Forschungsgesellschaft mbH, and some 
research institutions closely associated with them. 
Due to the relatively large size of these two institu-
tions, there is now a correspondingly large increase 
in the volume of government R&D funding.
The government sector includes general R&D in-
stitutions of the federal government, regional gov-
ernments, local governments, various Chambers, so-
cial insurance institutions and private non-profit in-
stitutions funded and controlled by the public sector 
and, since 2017, it also includes the Austrian Acade-
my of Sciences (OeAW), previously categorised as a 
higher education institution. 
The higher education sector includes the public 
universities, including teaching hospitals, private uni-
versities, universities of the arts, universities of ap-
plied sciences, the University for Continuing Educa-
tion Krems, university colleges of teacher education, 
federal higher technical institutes/colleges, and oth-
er higher education institutions. 
The private non-profit sector refers to non-profit 
institutions whose status is predominantly private or 
under private law, confessional or other non-public 
bodies.
With regard to funding, five different sectors are 
identified: the business enterprise sector, public sec-
tor, private non-profit sector, higher education, and 
funding from abroad. The abroad sector includes 
funding both from foreign-based firms and from in-
ternational organisations including the EU.