Austrian Research and Technology Report 2020

Fig. 1-2: Trend in funding for research and experimental development carried out in Austria, new allocation of 
research premium, 2009–2019 (index, 2009=100)
100
110
120
130
140
150
160
170
180
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
Public sector excl. research premium
Business enterprise sector 
incl. research premium
Abroad
Gross domestic product
Total R&D
Source: Statistics Austria, global estimate as at 28 April 2020. Calculation and graphic: WPZ Research; the category “Public sector 
excl. research premium” includes the categories “Federal government”, “Regional governments”, “Other” (= “Other public-sector fund-
ing” incl. the higher education sector and “Private non-profit sector”).

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1. Current Trends
17
eign-based firms, it is not companies as a whole, but 
Austrian companies that make a disproportionately 
large contribution to the funding for R&D carried out 
in Austria.
R&D survey 2017
Changes to the survey methodology
In Austria, national R&D surveys with a mandatory 
duty of disclosure have been carried out in all sec-
tors of the economy ever since the reporting year 
1998. Since 2007 these have taken place every two 
years, so the survey presented here relates to the 
reporting year 2017. The R&D surveys are conducted 
using the methodology defined in the OECD’s Fra-
scati Manual, which ensures that the data collected 
can be used for international comparisons. The re-
porting year 2017 was the first time that the survey 
had been based on the 2015 revised edition of the 
Frascati Manual (previous version: Frascati Manual 
2002).
1
The 2015 Frascati Manual has no major changes in 
comparison to the previous version, but newly formu-
lated recommendations result in changes to the de-
sign of the survey questionnaire, which can lead to 
discontinuity in data series and consequently to lim-
ited comparability of the new data with those from 
earlier surveys. For practical reasons some Austrian 
national changes were made at the same time as the 
transition to the 2015 Frascati Manual.
2
The most significant change in the new Frascati 
Manual definitions concerns the interpretation of the 
research premium. This is now no longer classified as 
government funding, but instead as internal R&D 
funding. This means the research premium is now in-
terpreted as funding from the business enterprise 
sector, with the result that this is correspondingly 
higher in comparison to previous surveys. This effect 
1 https://www.oecd.org/sti/frascati-manual-2015-9789264239012-en.htm
2 See Statistics Austria (2019).
3 See OECD (2018, 47).
4 See OECD (2018, 47).
5 See Statistics Austria (2019, 19).
6 See Statistics Austria (2019).
is further magnified by the increase in research pre-
mium from 10% in the 2015 R&D survey, to the pres-
ent 12%. Since the research premium is still reported 
separately, it is nevertheless still possible to make a 
comparison with previous years, using appropriate 
conversion calculations. 
The definition of “research and experimental de-
velopment (R&D)” has not changed; it still refers, as 
before, to “creative and systematic work undertaken 
in order to increase the stock of knowledge – includ-
ing knowledge of humankind, culture and society – 
and to devise new applications of available knowl-
edge”.
3
An addition to the definition is that the activ-
ity concerned must be “novel, creative, uncertain in 
outcome, systematic, transferable and/or reproduc-
ible.”
4
However, in Austria there were in practice “no 
or only minimal changes in the reporting practices of 
companies”.
5
A further change concerns the reporting of ex-
ternal employees as a separate category; this re-
lates to people working in R&D who are not em-
ployed by the unit carrying out the R&D. This would 
be for example self-employed consultants, contrac-
tors or leased employees. Previously these were 
not included if the expenditure on their services 
was accounted for in other running costs. Further-
more, the higher education sector is now reported 
as a separate funding sector, whereas previously 
these institutions were included under “other” in 
the government sector. The effects of these two 
changes are minimal, however. There is a larger im-
pact from a change in the collection of data from 
the institutes’ sub-sector (“Kooperativer Bereich”), 
which is now done using the same questionnaires 
as for the business enterprise sector, rather than 
the government sector, as previously.
6

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