Frontiers Planet Prize Award Conditions
These Frontiers Planet Prize Award Conditions form an integral part of the Award Agreement between the Frontiers Research Foundation and any Recipient of the Frontiers Planet Prize as such terms are defined below.
1. Definitions
Preamble
The capitalized terms used in these Award Conditions shall have the meaning defined below:
1.1 “Award” means any monies awarded to the Main Recipient by the Foundation as part of the Frontiers Planet Prize and as detailed in the Award Summary.
1.2 “Award Agreement” means the agreement consisting of the Award Summary (for the Main Recipient), respectively of the Co-Recipient Form (for any Co-Recipient) and of these Award Conditions
1.3 “Award Conditions” means these Frontiers Planet Prize Award Conditions
1.4 “Award Summary” means the summary attached to the award letter sent by the Foundation to the Main Recipient providing the details of the Award.
1.5 “Co-Recipient” means any institution with which the Main Recipient has agreed to share the Award, as specified in a signed Co-Recipient Form
1.6 “Co-Recipient Form” means the form signed by a Co-Recipient following the process described in Section 5 of these Award Conditions
1.7 “Foundation” means Frontiers Research Foundation, a Swiss law foundation registered under no. CHE-113.160.145 and having its address at C/O Frontiers Media SA, Avenue du Tribunal-Fédéral 34, 1005 Lausanne, Switzerland
1.8 “Main Recipient” means the institution receiving the Award on behalf of an elected Frontiers Planet Prize International Champion, as designated in the Award Summary
1.9 “Participant” means the Principal Investigator/Lead Scientist and any other person or third party working in any capacity on the activities in view of achieving the Purpose
1.10 “Principal Investigator/Lead Scientist” means the lead researcher who applied for the Frontiers Planet Prize on behalf of the research team responsible for the research project defined in the Award Summary, or any other senior member of the research team as indicated in the Award Summary
1.11 “Purpose” means the purposes specified in the Award Summary and any Co-Recipient Form
1.12 “Recipient” means each of the Main Recipient and, if applicable, any Co-Recipient(s)
2.1 The Award Agreement forms a contractually binding agreement between each Recipient and the Foundation.
2.2 Recipients are responsible to inform Participants of all requirements applicable to them pursuant to the Award Agreement and must take reasonable steps to ensure the compliance of all Participants with these requirements.
2. Award Agreement
3.1 The Award shall be used only for the Purpose.
3.2 Recipients shall document and account for the use of the Award as necessary to demonstrate that it was solely used for the Purpose.
3. Purpose
4.1 Each Recipient shall ensure that the Award is strictly earmarked for use in relation to the Purpose and is accounted and managed separately from other funds used to finance the Recipient’s other activities that are unrelated to the Purpose.
4.2 The full amount of the Award shall be allocated to the Purpose, without deduction of any overheads or indirect costs by Recipients. Overheads or indirect costs are defined as costs that are not directly linked to the Purpose but are necessary for the general operation of a Recipient and the execution of activities it carries out. Such overheads or indirect costs include, in particular, a Recipient’s administrative costs, utilities, rent for facilities, general office supplies, depreciation of equipment, and other costs associated with providing a supportive environment for research. The amount of the Award shall be allocated for the work of the research group who conducted the awarded research, in principle led by the Principal Investigator/Lead Scientist.
4.3 If the Principal Investigator/Lead Scientist of the research group having received the Award transfers to another institution, the Main Recipient shall, in good faith and upon agreement with the Foundation, ensure that any remaining Award money follows the Principal Investigator/Lead Scientist to such new institution, so that the Award continues to be used for the Purpose. In such case, the new institution of the Principal Investigator/Lead Scientist will become a Co-Recipient and the process described in Section 5 will apply.
4. Use of funds
5.1 In cases where senior contributors to the awarded research are based at other institutions, the Main Recipient must work collegially with these researchers in using the Award amount for any research conducted at such other institution. In this context, if another institution should benefit from the Award, as a Co-Recipient, the Main Recipient undertakes to communicate without delay and in writing to the Foundation:
a) General information about the proposed Co-Recipient including the name of the institution, its address and the name of the person duly authorized to represent it:
b) A brief description of the involvement of the proposed Co-Recipient in the awarded research;
c) the proposed allocation of the Award between the Recipient and the proposed Co-Recipient;
d) the proposed use of the Award by the Co-Recipient;
e) any further information as reasonably required by the Foundation to ensure the compliance with the Award Agreement.
5.2 In case the Foundation agrees with the Main Recipient sharing the Award with the proposed Co-Recipient, the Co-Recipient shall complete and sign a Co-Recipient Form, using the model form provided by the Foundation. No money forming part of the Award can be transferred by the Main Recipient to the Co-Recipient before the Foundation acknowledges receipt of the completed and signed Co-Recipient Form.
5.3 The Main Recipient agrees that any amounts paid to a Co-Recipient will be clearly documented and included in the reports foreseen in Section 6.
5. Sharing of the Award
6.1 Recipients acknowledge and agree that applicable laws and principles of good governance require that Recipients report regularly to the Foundation regarding the use of the Award by Participants to ensure that the Award is used solely for the Purpose and in compliance with the terms of the Award Agreement.
6.2 To achieve the objectives set forth in Section 6.1, the Main Recipient shall provide reports to the Foundation indicating the use of the Award each year on 31 May. This report shall include all relevant information about the activities undertaken for the Purpose by the Principal Investigator/Lead Scientist and any other Participants, since the payment of the Award or since the last report.
6.3 Upon achieving the Purpose or upon use of all the funds granted under the Award, the Main Recipient shall provide the Foundation with a final and consolidated report of the activities carried out with the Award and the outcome of such activities.
6.4 The Main Recipient’s reports provided in Section 6.2 and 6.3 shall include:
a) all relevant information regarding any Co-Recipient(s)’ use of their shared portion of the Award and Co-Recipients are responsible to provide the Main Recipient all required information as necessary to enable the Main Recipient to fulfil its reporting obligations pursuant to this Section 6; and
b) all relevant information demonstrating that the Award was solely used for the Purpose and that Recipients complied with their obligations under Section 3 and 4 of these Award Conditions.
6.5 Recipients agree to provide any additional information or document requested by the Foundation as reasonably necessary for the Foundation to verify the respect of the conditions included in this Award Agreement.
6.6 The Foundation reserves its rights to consult the budget and/or the accounts of any Recipient relating to the use of the Award.
6. Reporting
7.1 Recipients shall ensure that all their activities in relation to the Purpose are carried out in accordance with the requirements arising from the Award Agreement, as well as in compliance with all applicable:
a) laws, regulations and codes of practice, including but not limited to those relating to health and safety, data protection, modern slavery, safeguarding, anti-bribery, tax evasion and relevant export regulations and financial sanctions laws; and
b) ethical and scientific guidelines and principles.
7.2 Recipients shall not use the Award or any part thereof for lobbying purposes or for similar legislative or political activities.
7. Compliance
8.1 As between any Recipient and the Foundation, all data and results generated by such Recipient and Participants in relation to the Purpose, whether patentable or not, subject to copyright or not, shall be the sole property of the Recipient who owns all intellectual property rights pertaining thereto.
8.2 Unless otherwise agreed in writing between the Foundation and any Recipient, the Foundation has the right to use information relating to the awarded research, materials and documents received from such Recipient (notably summaries for publication, deliverables, as well as any other material, such as pictures or audio-visual material, in paper or electronic form) or any Participant for policy, information, communication, dissemination and publicity purposes.
8.3 The right to use a Recipient’s materials, documents and information is granted in the form of an open access Creative Commons Attribution License of similar licence (as defined in Section 9 below), or an equivalent royalty-free, non-exclusive and irrevocable license, which includes the following rights for the Foundation:
a) use for its own purposes;
b) distribution to the public after first publication made by the Recipient;
c) editing or redrafting (including shortening, summarizing, inserting other elements (e.g. meta-data, legends, other graphic, visual, audio or text elements), extracting parts (e.g. audio or video files), dividing into parts, use in a compilation);
d) translation, storage in paper, electronic or other form, archiving, in line with applicable document-management rules;
e) processing, analyzing, aggregating the materials, documents and information received and producing derivative works.
8.4 If materials or documents are subject to moral rights or third-party rights (including intellectual property rights or rights of natural persons on their image and voice), each Recipient must ensure that it complies with its obligations under these conditions (in particular, by obtaining the necessary licenses and authorizations from the rights holders concerned).
8. Intellectual property rights, publications
9.1 Full disclosure of the Award must be made to each Recipient’s administration or other competent authority as appropriate.
9.2 Each Recipient will (and shall ensure that the Participants will):
a) disclose to all audiences and in all publications relating to the activity carried out with the Award that the Foundation has provided an Award to support such activity;
b) acknowledge support from the Foundation in material related to funded activity; and
c) disclose any other relationship the Foundation may have with any individual speaker, collaborator, moderator or Recipient which a reasonable and ethical person would expect to be disclosed in the relevant context.
9.3 The Foundation may use the reports communicated by Recipients pursuant to Section 6, or any parts thereof, to fulfil its own reporting to authorities or third parties (e.g. donors), as well as use (and authorize third parties to use) such information for the promotion of the Foundation and the Frontiers Planet Prize on all media. In that context, the Foundation may publicly disclose the financial and non-financial support provided directly or indirectly to any Recipient, including, without limitation, the Recipient’s name, the Award and the Purpose, and Recipients agree to such disclosure and shall ensure that the Participants agree to the disclosure of their name, title and affiliation.
9. Disclosure
10. Dissemination and commitment to Open Science
10.1 Recipients must disseminate the outcome of the awarded research as soon as feasible, in a publicly available format, subject to any restrictions due to the protection of intellectual property, security rules or legitimate interests.
10.2 Recipients must ensure that any publication peer-reviewed scientific publications relating to the Purpose is made in open access and in particular, that:
a) at the latest at the time of publication, a machine-readable electronic copy of the published version or the final peer-reviewed manuscript accepted for publication, is deposited in a trusted repository for scientific publications;
b) immediate open access is provided to the deposited publication via the repository, under the latest available version of the Creative Commons Attribution International Public Licence (CC BY) or a licence with equivalent rights; for monographs and other long-text formats, the licence may exclude commercial uses and derivative works (e.g. CC BY-NC, CC BY-ND); and
c) information is given via the repository about any research output or any other tools and instruments needed to validate the conclusions of the scientific publication.
10.3 Recipients (or authors) must retain sufficient intellectual property rights to comply with the open access requirements. Metadata of deposited publications must be open under a Creative Common Public Domain Dedication (CC 0) or equivalent and provide information at least about the following: publication (author(s), title, date of publication, name, acronym and number; licensing terms; persistent identifiers for the publication, the authors involved in the research and, if possible, for their organizations and the Award. Where applicable, the metadata must include persistent identifiers for any research output, or any other tools and instruments needed to validate the conclusions of the publication
11.1 The Award does not create any form of joint venture or other partnership between any Recipient, any Participant and the Foundation and it is the sole responsibility of each Recipient and Participant to carry out the awarded research project in compliance with the Purpose and to comply with any associated contractual or legal obligations.
11.2 The Foundation does not accept any responsibility for financial or other liability incurred by any Recipient or Participant that may arise out of any activities carried out in relation to the Purpose or any Award.
11.3 The Foundation does not employ any of the Participants or any other members of the Recipients. It is the Recipients and Participants’ responsibility to issue any necessary contracts of employment in relation to the Purpose and to comply with any relevant employment law and regulation.
11.4 The Foundation cannot be held responsible in case of delay or impossibility to transfer the Award amount to the Main Recipient for reasons beyond its control (embargo, financial regulations or other special circumstances beyond the Foundation’s control).
11. Independent parties and waiver of liabilities
12.1 The Foundation may at any time reduce or revoke the Award and require the return of any Award money, if a Recipient, any Participant (or any other person having powers of representation, decision-making or control, or person essential for the award/implementation of the Purpose):
a) has committed irregularities or fraud in the use of the Award;
b) has used the Award in a manner inconsistent with the Purpose or has otherwise breached any material obligation of the Recipient under the Award Agreement (including serious breach of ethical or scientific principles); or
c) is bankrupt, subject to insolvency or winding up procedures, its assets are being administered by a liquidator or by a court, it is in an arrangement with creditors, its business activities are suspended or it is in any analogous situation arising from a similar procedure provided for under national legislation or regulations
12.2 The Foundation will formally notify the concerned Recipient(s) of the reduction, respectively of the revocation, and the reasons why. Any concerned Recipient may, within 30 days of receiving notification, submit observations if it disagrees with the reduction, respectively, the revocation. The Foundation will take these arguments into account but will use its sole discretion in deciding whether to reduce or revoke the Award, depending on the seriousness of the situation. In the event of a partial or total reduction (revocation) of the amount of the Award, the Foundation will be entitled to obtain reimbursement of the Award amount paid in accordance with these conditions, within 20 days of the notification of the reduction or revocation decision.
12.3 The Foundation may require a Recipient to establish an escrow account with a reputable financial institution agreed upon by both parties where the Foundation deems such measure necessary to ensure its use for the Purpose and the original intent of the Award.
12. Award reduction or revocation
13.1 The Foundation may freely assign any or all of its rights and obligations under the Award Agreement to any third-party.
13.2 Recipients shall not assign any or all of their right all of its rights and obligations under the Award Agreement to any third-party without the prior written approval of the Foundation.
13. Assignment
14.1 The Award Agreement is governed by the laws of Switzerland.
14.2 Any dispute arising out in relation to the Award Agreement shall be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of Lausanne, Switzerland.
14. Govering Law and Jurisdiction
Last updated : 03 December 2024
Frontiers Research Foundation
c/o Frontiers Media SA
Avenue du Tribunal-fédéral 34
1005 Lausanne Switzerland