OSCA - Open Scientific Collections Austria

OSCA Perspectives

From Institutional Commitment towards National and European Infrastructures

September 11-12, 2025

Natural History Museum Vienna, lecture hall

The OSCA (Open Scientific Collections Austria) consortium is an association of natural science museums and university collections with the aim of building up skills and capacities for the digitization of natural science collections in Austria. The consortium will meet from September 11th to 12th, 2025, at the Natural History Museum in Vienna to discuss perspectives related to the digital transformation of natural science collections. In 2025, Austria will also become part of the European Research Infrastructure DiSSCo (Distributed System of Scientific Collections) as an early adopter, with the goal of establishing a federated European Infrastructure as a powerful tool for data-intensive research based on real world collection objects.

On the first day the talks will focus on the processes involved from institutional commitment towards national and European infrastructures. Various infrastructures will be presented and talks will outline the overall visions, emphasizing the richness and contextualization within the landscape of Research Infrastructures.

On the second day, a hands-on workshop and interactive training will give the opportunity to work on data transfer from institutions to the OSCA Cache, the national data aggregation node for DiSSCo.

Please use the main entrance of the Natural History Museum Vienna at Maria-Theresien-Platz to access the lecture hall. An entrance ticket to the museum is not necessary. 

The conference is free of charge. We kindly ask participants to organize their own travel to Vienna and accommodation in Vienna.

If you are interested in participating, please register by August 25,2025 via osca@nhm.at

Thursday, 11. Sept. 2025   

13:00

Welcome and Opening

Katrin Vohland (NHMW) and Karolina Begusch-Pfefferkorn (BMFWF)

 

Research Infrastructures – Capacity Building – chaired by Andreas Kroh (NHMW)

13:10

The Distributed System of Scientific Collections (DiSSCo)

Dimitris Koureas (Naturalis Biodiversity Center)

13:25

OSCA – hindsight – insight – foresight

Heimo Rainer (NHMW)

13:40

German National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI)

Torsten Schrade (Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur Mainz)

13:55

Ten Ways to Implement FAIR in AI: A Skills4EOSC Consensus Study

Curtis Sharma (TU Delft, University of Oslo)

14:10

Panel Discussion

Dimitris Koureas, Heimo Rainer, Torsten Schrade, Curtis Sharma, Stefan Hanslik (BMFWF)

15:00

Coffee break

 

Connections to Research Infrastructures – chaired by Kurt Zernig (Universalmuseum Joanneum)

15:40

ABOL´s niche in the multidimensional space of biodversity research in Austria

Nikola Szucsich (NHMW)

15:50

Environmental DNA and metabarcoding data: the applied side of reference databases and FAIR archiving practices

Bettina Thalinger (University of Innsbruck)

16:00

An update on the OSCA-ABOL pilot: a collection-based approach to generating reference DNA barcodes of the endemic flora of Austria

Dominique Groffman (University of Salzburg)

16:10

New methods of natural scientific analysis – new challenges for the digital natural history archive ZOBODAT

Michael Malicky (OÖLKG)/Magdalini Christodoulou (OÖLKG)

16:20

More than data – insights into Kulturpool

Julian Palacz (NHMW)

16:30

Panel Discussion

Nikola Szucsich, Christian Sturmbauer (University of Graz), Bettina Thalinger, Julian Palacz, Andreas Tribsch (University of Salzburg), Dominique Groffman, Magdalini Christodoulou

 Refreshments afterwards in the lecture hall

 

 

Friday, 12. Sept. 2025 

Hands-on Workshop

Naturhistorisches Museum Wien, Vortragssaal

Eingang über den Haupteingang des NHM Wien, Maria-Theresien-Platz. Einlass ab 08:30 Uhr.

Der Workshop findet auf Deutsch statt.

Data Publishing Processes

Raw Data

Data Cleaning

Mittagspause

IPT tool Data handling and publishing

Data Upload

Mapping to Data Standard DarwinCore

Metadata

Licencing

 

 

Download Agenda