Research collaboration agreements

You are never a contractual party to an agreement

In a research collaboration, it is advised to have a collaboration agreement that regulates such aspects as who does what and that protects your right to publish and how research data and results may be used during and after the project. The University is always the party that signs these types of agreements. Individual members of staff are never a contractual party. Agreements are signed by the authorised signatory as defined in the Vice-Chancellor’s decision-making and delegation procedure for Umeå University.

Sometimes, collaboration partners may want to sign personal agreements, such as non-disclosure agreements with their counterparts at Umeå University. If you were to sign such an agreement where you are a party, you risk facing personal liability in the form of penalties or damages. They can potentially be substantial and Umeå University cannot reimburse you for these costs.

See who may sign agreements in the Vice-Chancellor’s decision-making and delegation procedure (umu.se/en/legal-framework/)

Head of department’s certificate

For agreements that may result in the University co-funding a project, the head of the concerned department(s) must sign a head of department’s certificate.

Download the template for head of department's certificate

When is an agreement needed?

Some factors that may lead you to consider having an agreement for your research project are:

• that you collaborate with someone who works at a company;
• that your partner is located in another country;
• that you will be processing personal data or biobank material in your research project;
• that one of the parties administers financial resources that the others will use;
• that the funding body requires that there is an agreement between the parties;
• that you use background material in the project that needs to be protected; or
• that there may be results that can be commercialised.

The necessary agreement is determined by the content of the collaboration and with whom you are collaborating.

Terms and conditions about rights to research results

Umeå University cannot accept terms and conditions regarding the right to results, known as intellectual property rights, in an agreement with an external party without all researchers in the project accepting these terms and conditions. This is because researchers are covered by intellectual property rights of academic staff (lärarundantaget), which means that you as a researcher own the rights to your results.

Find out more about intellectual property rights of academic staff and your right to results

As such, all participating researchers in a research project must sign a researcher’s certificate before the University can sign an agreement giving your partner the right to access the results. By submitting the researcher’s certificate, you acknowledge that you are prepared to offer the partner the right to use or take over your rights to the results on reasonable terms. If you do not accept the terms, the consequence is that the University cannot enter into the agreement with those terms or that you cannot conduct any work in the project. In this way, you have a form of veto over how the intellectual property rights are managed.

Technical-administrative staff, such as project assistants and doctoral students, are not covered by the intellectual property rights of academic staff exception and do not sign researcher’s certificates.

Download the template for researcher’s certificates

If you agree to the terms and conditions, you may later need to enter into a separate agreement governing the right to and compensation for the specific result. In that agreement, you are the signing party, not the University. Umeå universitet Holding AB can help you negotiate these types of agreements.

As a principal investigator, you are responsible for ensuring that all participating researchers understand the terms of an agreement and that they sign the researcher’s certificate before conducting any work in the project.

If consultants or subcontractors are used by the University in the research project, any agreement with them must regulate management of their intellectual property rights.

Assistance drawing up agreements

Fill out the contract review form and contact the Legal Affairs Office if you need to draw up an agreement. For the fastest assistance possible, describe as clearly as possible how the project will be run and who will be responsible for its various parts. You are responsible for producing all documentation that is relevant for the agreement.

If you are going to use biobank material and/or health data in your research project, contact the Section of Biobank and Registry Support (previously the Biobank Research Unit).

Documentation for contract review

Then send the documentation to universitetsjurist@umu.se.