How to list a project on Österreich forscht

You run or participate in a citizen science project? This project could also be listed on Österreich forscht. There are no costs involved. The professional or institutional background of a project is not important. The only requirement is a project description in German, and it must be possible to participate in Austria. On Österreich forscht you can find projects of universities, associations, NGOs, museums and also of citizens.

But what are the advantages of having my project listed on Österreich forscht?

On the one hand, Österreich forscht supports the networking of citizen science practitioners, and on the other hand, Österreich forscht makes it easy for citizen science projects to be found by interested citizens. For this purpose, the Österreich forscht team offers several services that are exclusively available to projects on Österreich forscht:

• Your project is presented on Austria's largest citizen science platform with over 40.000 site visits per year: Every year, many people from all over Austria access Österreich forscht. They look for new projects, information on citizen science or read the posts on the Österreich forscht blog. Listed projects benefit from this additional outreach by potentially attracting new citizen scientists to a project or by drawing the attention of journalists to the project.
• If you are starting a new citizen science project and have few resources available, you can also use Österreich forscht as a project website and make your project information available there.
• Deep Linking: By linking to your project website on Österreich forscht and linking back to Österreich forscht on your project website, the findability of the project in search engines is significantly increased.
• Österreich forscht-newsletter: We promote your project via our monthly newsletter. In addition, you have the possibility to advertise short news from your project via the newsletter.
• Your project and project news will be promoted via the social media channels of Österreich forscht. We are also happy to promote the project's own social media channels via the corresponding handles. If you do not have your own social media channels, a campaign for your project can also be carried out on Facebook or Twitter in cooperation with Österreich forscht.
• Use of the Österreich forscht-blog: As a project listed on Österreich forscht, you have the possibility to independently publish posts on the blog without them having to be approved in advance by the blog's moderators. You can also create your own project team on the blog, which allows several people to publish blog posts on behalf of your project (this is very helpful if you have several project members who all want to share information from your project). This team can also be subscribed to by your citizen scientists, i.e. they will then receive an automatic email as soon as you publish a new blog post in the team. The blog posts are of course also promoted via social media and the newsletter. You can interact directly with your citizen scientists through the comment function in the blog. Every registered user can also rate your blog posts.
• You can publish project updates once a year in the annual performance report of Österreich forscht. This performance report is published on Österreich forscht and sent to all project coordinators on Österreich forscht and the representatives of all partner institutions in the Citizen Science Network Austria.
• Participation in events (co-)organised by Österreich forscht: Österreich forscht organises several events every year and offers special advantages to the projects, such as exclusive access.

If you are in the process of submitting a funding proposal for your project idea to a funding body, we will of course be happy to support you with a Letter of Support or Letter of Interest, if you would like to have your project listed on Österreich forscht after successful funding. Please note that for being listed you must also fulfil the quality criteria for Citizen Science projects on Österreich forscht.

How does the listing process work?

The first step is to determine whether the project meets the quality criteria for citizen science projects on Österreich forscht. To do this, you have to fill in this questionnaire. This questionnaire also contains FAQs on individual questions and of course all answers can be saved (in this case, please make sure you write down the password you use to save the incomplete form, as it is unfortunately not possible to recover the password). The questionnaire is only available in German, because we would need a German text for the evaluation. Attention: since the 10.02.2025, the Quality Criteria Catalogue version 1.2 is in force and all questions can also be viewed in advance on Zenodo. The questions correspond to the quality criteria.

Once the questionnaire has been completely filled in and sent to us, it will be examined by us as coordinators of Österreich forscht and, if necessary, also reviewed by members of the working group for quality criteria. If some answers are unclear or do not correspond to the criteria, we will contact the project management and give tips on how the criteria can be fulfilled. The questionnaire is then revised again by the project management and sent back to us. This process is deliberately designed as a dialogue and not as a classic application system. This means that the questionnaire can be filled in and resubmitted until all criteria have been met.

After a positive conclusion of the quality criteria process, we send an e-mail to the project management detailing exactly which contents we can present on Österreich forscht. This includes a project description, pictures, videos, and links to project websites or social media channels. After we have received this content from the project management, we compile it into a project page. Before the project is advertised via the Österreich forscht-channels, the project management can check all contents again and give the final OK.

If you have any questions about this listing process, please send us an email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. We are looking forward to getting in contact with you!