As a Public Interest Group or GIP, OST is intended to be an inter-institutional platform serving its membership. Its purpose is to conduct projects of common interest to its members as well as to the broader research community, both public and private.

OST’s various projects and tasks can be seen in formal terms as constituting a production line whose output is improved on an ongoing basis by means of a quality control process. The various stages in the production line require an integrated effort by a range of skills.

OST maintains a unique database on R&D (~ 5 tera-byte) comprised of some 20 large corpuses covering various aspects of the R&D field, which are threaded together by geographic and thematic nomenclatures.

Thanks to the staff of researchers and trough scientific collaboration, OST participates in knowledge production on R&D while improving its indicators and services.

OST is a member of :

• the Scientific Interest Group IFRIS (Paris-Region Institute for Research, Innovation, and Society)
• the Public Interest Group AMUE (Agency for Mutualization o f Universities)
  the not-for-profit organization EUROLIO (European Localized Innovation Observatory)
• the network ENID (European Network of Indicators Designers)
• the consortium CHERPA Network working on the U-Multirank project to develop a multi-dimensional global ranking of Universities
• the not-for-profit organization IREG (Observatory on Academic Rankings and Excellence)