The Open Science Charter
We (Frontiers Research Foundation) invite our fellow scientists, innovators, and the public everywhere to sign this open letter to demonstrate an unwavering commitment to accelerated and trusted Open Science. Together, we can shape a world where knowledge is freely accessible, solutions are rapidly shared, and humanity's brightest minds can collaborate without barriers for the betterment of all.
Frontiers Research Foundation, a not-for profit organization based in Lausanne, Switzerland, was established in 2006 by Henry and Kamila Markram with the mission of accelerating scientific solutions for living healthy lives on a healthy planet.
Human activity is destabilizing the global ecosystem, threatening life on the planet. It is a complex and huge problem to solve, but science can provide the solutions – with the scientific method ensuring that the knowledge used to build our future society is objective, robust and reproducible.
The COVID-19 pandemic saw the world, for the first time in history, align in the face of an urgent problem. It prompted an unprecedented race among scientists and businesses. Governments introduced policies based on science to enforce behavioural change. Medicines, vaccines, and strategies were developed in record time.
The results were phenomenal, and humankind proved that it could tackle a global challenge, with science as the key. The Frontiers Research Foundation was therefore established to accelerate, disseminate, and mobilize science to achieve this goal.
The Foundation’s mission is three fold:
As part of its work to facilitate open science and debate to help tackle global challenges, the Foundation there launched three major initiatives.
In 2007, the Frontiers Research Foundation launched Frontiers, an open science and open access science publisher.
Open science refers to the process of making scientific results, methods, and data publicly available, while open access ensures peer-reviewed and published scientific articles are freely available to anyone.
Frontiers has subsequently become one of the largest and most-cited science publishers in the world; it has more than 100,000 editors and is accessed for free by tens of millions of researchers every month.
In 2013, the Frontiers Research Foundation launched Frontiers for Young Minds.
This is a freely available science journal edited by kids, for kids. It is impossible for schools to help children follow all the latest science that is shaping their future, but kids need to be prepared for the great challenges that lie ahead.
Young Minds has educated tens of millions of children and their families worldwide about cutting-edge science. It has also introduced a new generation to the peer-review process, allowing children to interact with and challenge the world's leading scientists, including Nobel Prize winners.
In 2022, the Frontiers Research Foundation launched its third initiative, an international science competition called the Frontiers Prize.
The program currently includes the Frontiers Planet Prize, which aims to directly fund and accelerate scientific research to stabilize our planetary ecosystem.
This international science competition offers three awards of CHF 1 million each for scientific breakthroughs that show the greatest potential to help keep humanity within any one of the nine boundaries, as described by the Stockholm Resilience Centre.
The prize’s international champions each receive funding and worldwide exposure for their research. The prize money is awarded as a grant to the winner’s research institution to fund their continued research.
National and International Champions become part of the Frontiers Planet Prize alumni network, and have opportunities to share their research and findings at events, scientific conferences and summits, in collaboration with the Frontiers Planet Prize partners.
The Frontiers Planet Prize program will expand in coming years to include prizes for each of the nine planetary boundaries, plus one for health, as well as further prizes covering other major scientific areas.
Please visit the Frontiers Planet Prize website at www.frontiersplanetprize.org to learn more about the Prize.