Confirms the high quality and German nationwide importance of the organisation and recommends maintenance of government subsidies
The senate of the Leibniz Association has confirmed the high quality and nationwide importance of Fiz Karlsruhe and recommended to the German federal government and the German federal states to continue subsidising it in the future. According to the evaluators, being the most important provider of sci-tech information in the German-speaking countries, Fiz Karlsruhe offers science and industry an excellent service and plays an important part in European and worldwide business, especially together with its STN partners.
In regular intervals, the senate of the Leibniz Association carries out evaluations of its 80 non-academic research and service institutions.
Its results and recommendations help the commission of the government and the federal states decide, whether the prerequisites for further public funding are met.
According to the experts, Fiz Karlsruhe at present holds a strong position on the international market for specialist information.
To ensure its competitiveness in the long run, however, Fiz Karlsruhe and the other publicly funded information service institutions in Germany ought to co-operate more closely in the future.
The evaluators recommend to bundle and network resources and services.
Fiz Karlsruhe should be the driving force and coordinator in this process, which, according to the evaluation report, is on the long run aimed at forming a European competence center for sci-tech information.
Fiz Karlsruhe's management sees the positive result of the evaluation as a confirmation of its new policy which is directed towards a new positioning of Fiz Karlsruhe: "We have already been actively promoting this process for several months, giving it top priority, and are ready to assume a leading part.
"As a first step, we will establish a close co-operation with Fiz Chemie Berlin, based on a joint strategy. "To this end, we have already signed a Letter of Intent in June", states CEO Sabine Brunger-Weilandt.
Andreas Barth, director online-service at Fiz Karlsruhe, adds: "Strategic co-operations, for example in multidisciplinary networks, are a central target of our new orientation.
"20 years of success with our largest business area - the sci-tech information network STN International - clearly show the chances offered by strategic alliances.
"In consequence, we will actively build up new partnerships, particularly with academic and scientific institutions".
The evaluators have explicitly welcomed the partnership of Fiz Karlsruhe and Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (MPG) established in order to develop an open access platform for a multidisciplinary research organisation.
With regard to its new strategic orientation, Fiz Karlsruhe's management profits much from the evaluators' recommendations.
A sustainably competitive competence centre for sci-tech information, capable of meeting the various challenges in an international environment, can only be realised through strategic alliances between the German information service institutions.
