Final Report Editor Ulrike Felt June 2003

Austrian policies on Public Understanding of Science 60
republic made no concerted effort to compensate these cultural and human losses.
There were no programmes for restitution or restoration by bringing exiled Austrian
77
scientists back into their institutions.TP
PT The policy adopted was mainly to avoid
addressing the problem explicitly. For the place of science in public perception, this
meant mainly resignation with regard to the present situation. No efforts were made to
actively communicate science to a wider public and where at all it was being
communicated, the focus was on the far away past of science and its outstanding
successes.
Secondly, the relatively slowly evolving Austrian Research and Development system –
measured by the expenditure for R&D in percentage of the GDP – is far behind the
average of European countries, a fact which could be interpreted in the light of the lack
of public presence of science. After years of promises and some efforts undertaken by
the respective governments Austria has just reached 1.8% GDP funding for R&D,
78
however it is still lagging far behind the European average.TP
PT The explanations given
for this situation are diverse: Many research-intensive fields of technological
development like aircraft building, computer and office technology are missing in the
79
Austrian industrial landscape.TP
PT Research in Austrian enterprises can be characterised
as mainly taking place in small and medium sized enterprises and mostly in sectors
with low level of innovation. As a result Austrian enterprises involved in research carry
only about 40% of the overall expenses on R&D, which is far below the EU as well as
the OECD average.
Furthermore many analysts of the Austrian situation stress, that a large segment of
Austrian research is conducted in the universities, which are 97% state funded. For a
long while research was – through the basic financing of the universities –
"automatically" also financed without evaluation or submission to any accountability
structures. This there was little competition between research institutions. As a
consequence no necessity was seen to really engage with a wider public and regularly
communicate about the work accomplished within the research institutions – a fact
which is undergoing a dramatic change while this paper is written.
Finally the minimal efforts that were made to create/shape a clear and active science
and technology policy should not be overlooked. Science and technology were seen
more as to be administrated instead of being driven by visions and political
engagement for future developments in this area. This would hold both for the
governments, which paid little attention to elaborating policies in this domain as well as
77
TP
PT Stadler F. & Weibel (1995): The cultural exodus from Austria (New York: Springer-Verlag)
78
TP
PT This statement would also hold if one takes other indicators such as number of scientists/working
citizen. Here Austria is together with Spain, Greece and Portugal at the end of the ranking in European
Countries. See B. Felderer & D.F.J. Campell (1994): Forschungsfinanzierung in Europa: Trends - Modelle
Empfehlungen für Österreich, (Wien: Manz). For the most recent figures see TUhttp://www.bmbwk.gv.atUT.
79
TP
PT Forschungsbericht 2000, Bundesministerium für Bildung, Wissenschaft und Kultur