Researchers shall be placed in the position to make contributions to scientific developments on a global scale. Quality and performance according to international standards are to be the decisive criteria for public research funding. Bottom-up initiatives shall be supported and promoted by means of incentives. It has to be a long-term political objective of all attempts at equal opportunities and promotion of women and their rights to guarantee a proportional representation of women in all areas of publicly funded research. This has to be implemented in all programmes run by publicly funded research funding institutions.
Basic research is indispensable.
The universities have a major role to play in this field. It is a central concern of the Research Strategy to create new jobs in research, mainly at universities, and to promote the new generation of academics. New integrated research systems shall open up new perspectives through interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity. Research, educational and technology policy have to be made coherent, and research policy has to be integrated into other policy areas. On the basis of the Research Report 1999, the discussion process is to be continued until summer 1999 and Green Paper on Austrian Research Policy is to be prepared.