Terms & Conditions

ADJUDICATION

The awards are given for an individual’s or team’s or organisation’s sustained work over a period of time, and not just for their outputs.
The outputs are used by the adjudicators as evidence of the nominee’s contribution.
The panel can call for interviews with candidates if this is considered necessary.
Information provided may be subject to verification and clarification. However, no more information than that supplied with the nomination will be actively sought.
The adjudicators reserve the right to consider any nomination in another category from that chosen by the nominator where they consider such category more appropriate.
The adjudicators reserve the right to withhold an award in any of the categories.
The decision of the panel is final and no correspondence will be entered into.
With regard to the contribution which is recognised by the awards in the individual/researcher categories, this contribution must be made in South Africa in the defined period. However, it can be based on work commenced or developed/advanced abroad. Short visits of less than a year are discounted.

ELIGIBILITY

Only living persons and the teams in organisations still in existence will be considered for awards.
Previous winners will not be considered for awards again except where the relevant time period has elapsed and new work is covered.
Previous winners in the Research for Innovation or earlier organisational categories (now called Innovations) are eligible for nomination provided that the innovation/s put forward does/do not represent a duplication of the contribution which was previously recognised.
Whilst a nominee or project or team might be considered in different categories, only one award can be made for a particular contribution.
Finalists and winners must be prepared to have their photographs published in the media and to be interviewed.

NOTE 1

1a) In regard to a further nomination for a winner in any of the Emerging Researcher or Researcher or Management or Lifetime categories, the period of new work should be appropriate for the new nomination and the previous work discounted.
1b) In regard to a winner in the Engineering Research Capacity Development award, the award recognises the merit of the nominee’s work in addition to the capacity development achieved. Thus a further nomination in other categories should discount the work considered for the previous award and be appropriate for the new award.
1c) In regard to winners of the Data for Research award, this is regarded as a standalone award; nevertheless where the nature of the contribution previously awarded included the collection of data, should a nomination in another category be considered at some stage, the original collection would have to be discounted.
1d) Previous winners of the Innovation awards, must simply base any further nomination on new work.
1e) A previous winner of the Communication award can submit a later nomination in this and other categories but should then discount their communication work on which the earlier winning award was based.
1f) Where a winner is included in a team which forms the subject of another nomination in the same year or a later year, the nominator must take deliberate and explicit steps to exclude the work which is to be/was recognised in the award to the individual winner.

LIABILITY

The NSTF cannot be held responsible for decisions made on the basis of false or inadequate information supplied.
Complaints made to the NSTF regarding plagiarism etc. will be referred to the relevant ethics or professional bodies for further action.
Completed nominations must be received by the closing date. No late entries will be accepted. Extensions to the closing date will only be granted on application in writing where force majeure circumstances apply.
Where, at the closing date, the number of nominations are considered by the adjudication panel to be insufficient, either overall, or in certain categories an appropriate extension will be announced.
The costs of attendance at an NSTF meeting (for recognition of finalists) and Awards Gala Dinner (for the announcement of winners) will not be covered by the NSTF and is the responsibility of the finalist or the employer of the finalist. If nominated NGOs do not have funding for attendance, they can contact the NSTF Office on awards@nstf.org.za to discuss possible options.

NOMINATION DOCUMENTS

The online Registration must confirm that the nominee is aware of the intent to nominate him/her/them and agrees to the nomination.
The final Nomination Form must contain a declaration by the individual or, in the case of nomination for a team or organisation, the team leader (as applicable) must show acceptance and professional accountability for the nomination content as a whole (see https://nstf.org.za/individual-researchers-related-activities-awards/).
Dedicated Nomination Forms are provided for each of the awards categories (except for the Special Annual Theme award as explained elsewhere). In some cases these have been clustered into one form.
Where a candidate is nominated in more than one category, the relevant Nomination Forms must be completed for each category. It is requested that further Nomination Forms do not repeat the material provided in the principal Nomination Form (the first Nomination Form that was completed). Further Nomination Forms should cross-refer to the principal form where applicable, and provide only the additional or altered material relevant to the category. However care should be taken to ensure that all information necessary for adjudication has been included, bearing in mind that the interpretation of the criteria vary to a degree between the categories.
All criteria are relevant and require a response. However, information provided under one criterion should not be repeated under others.
Motivations (not including the explanatory text provided) should be no more than 400 words in any one section and no more than 1 500 words altogether.
The motivation must be succinctly set out and amounts or statistics included, such that the work/projects which form the basis of the nomination are clearly identified and described under the headings.
The term ‘work/projects’, should be taken to include a portfolio or a range of projects and is meant to embrace research projects, construction projects, development projects or communication projects as may be appropriate.
Patentable and private information disclosed in the motivation under the criteria should be so indicated and will then be treated as such and fully protected.
The nominee needs to be involved in the preparation of the submissions to ensure accuracy and comprehensiveness. We require this to be confirmed on the nomination form.
Where the nominator prepares the material, the nominee should be aware of and approve the strategy of the approach, as well as the submission content.
The nominee may prepare the nomination themselves. However to achieve a detached perspective it needs to be set it out in the third person.