In 2015 the vision of a federated system of infrastructures supporting research by providing an open multi-disciplinary environment to publish, find and re-use data, tools and services led to the launch of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). Against this background, bodies such as the EOSC Association on the European level and the EOSC Support Office Austria on the national one have been established. Within this framework and since research has always been at the heart of EOSC, we are eliciting visions, needs and requirements for research data and practices from researchers who are located at public universities in Austria. Let’s see what neurologist, intensive care physician and tropical medicine specialist Erich Schmutzhard has to say!