Austrian Research and Technology Report 2020

Time to Contract:
The Time to Contract is the period between the receipt of an application by the re-
search funding organisation and the finalisation (sending) of the contract to the grant recipient. However, 
research funding agencies use different definitions for time to contract which are explained in footnotes. 
This will be harmonised in future years.
Grants:
The volumes of the projects acquired by the research institutions are also stated as approval sums 
(“awarded”). Only those projects newly acquired in the relevant reporting year are shown and not the 
ongoing projects, in order to avoid double counting.
Reporting dates:
All budget figures and employee headcounts are recorded as of 31 December of the 
relevant reporting year.

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2. Key Players in Research Funding and in Non-university Research 
159
Glass Ceiling Index:
According to SHE figures, this index compares the percentage of women as a share 
of all employees with the percentage of women in management positions.
139
The Index can take all values 
between zero and infinity. A value below 1 means that women are relatively overrepresented in manage-
ment positions, a value above 1 means that women are underrepresented. The higher the value, the great-
er the level of underrepresentation.
The 
Technology Readiness Level (TRL)
is a scale used to assess the state of development of new tech-
nologies based on a systematic analysis. It indicates how advanced a technology is on a scale of 1 to 9. 
TRL 1 refers to basic research that is still very far from application, TRL 9 to technologies that have already 
been successfully implemented.
139 See European Commission (2019e):

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3. Artificial
Intelligence (AI)

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