The Austrian NeuroCloud (ANC) is a FAIR-enabling repository designed to support sustainable research data management in cognitive neuroscience. The ANC is committed to the long-term preservation, accessibility, and FAIR stewardship of cognitive neuroscience research data. As a domain-specific, open repository, the ANC enables researchers to manage and share data across the entire research lifecycle, from acquisition and curation to publication and reuse.
The repository serves the cognitive neuroscience research community, with particular attention to the needs of Austrian institutions and publicly funded science, while remaining open to international collaborators. Through its stewardship framework and dedicated team, the ANC ensures that data remains curated, documented, and accessible for the long term, supporting reproducibility and future discovery.
The ANC was developed in response to fragmented and inconsistent practices in storing, preserving, and reusing research data across labs, studies, and institutions. From its inception, it aimed to offer a comprehensive, standards-based platform tailored to the workflows and challenges of cognitive neuroscience.
Initiated in 2020 with funding from the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research (BMBWF), the ANC began as part of a national digitization initiative focused on advancing digital and social transformation in higher education. Initial work focused on analyzing the research data lifecycle, selecting an appropriate software framework, and designing workflows for data acquisition, organization, and metadata enrichment. These were tested through pilot datasets to ensure practical applicability.
To broaden its scope, the Digital Neuroscience Initiative (DNI) was launched in 2021 with funding from the State of Salzburg. This complementary effort introduced expertise from law and computer science, enabling the ANC to:
- Develop legal and policy frameworks for handling neurocognitive data, including GDPR and Austrian FOG compliance
- Build a scientific knowledge graph linked to cognitive ontologies for domain-specific querying
- Acquire the hardware infrastructure necessary to host ANC data and services, including an integrated computing environment
In 2024, the ANC was selected for three FAIR-IMPACT support programs, where it refined its policies, enhanced support for machine-actionable metadata, and prepared for interoperability with European infrastructures.
Now in 2025, the ANC is transitioning into regular operations with continuing support from its host institution, the University of Salzburg. The ANC has been included in the university’s performance agreement with the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research as a national infrastructure for the preservation of (neuro)scientific data, and supports the ANC through with institutional infrastructure and legal frameworks, as well as through the funding of two permanent positions.
Beside support from university, ANC has also been included in the EOSC Macro Roadmap and in the INCF infrastructure registry, reflecting its strategic role in the global open science ecosystem.
Looking ahead, the ANC is preparing for integration with the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) and actively contributes to community standards, projects, and initiatives. It is committed to ensuring that datasets are discoverable, interoperable, and integrated with relevant national and international infrastructures. The platform supports an increasing number of datasets, ranging from small-scale exploratory studies to large, multi-year longitudinal projects, from both Austrian and international research institutions.
By combining domain-specific insight with legal, technical, and institutional support, the ANC is establishing itself as a cornerstone of Austria’s neuroscience data infrastructure — and a model for trusted, FAIR-aligned data stewardship across Europe.