Terms & Conditions of Use

The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (ABN 41 687 119 230) (CSIRO) operates the website, https://education.cosmosmagazine.com/, including all subdomains (Cosmos Education Platform) through its editorially independent business unit CSIRO Publishing.

While CSIRO aims to provide balanced coverage of scientific topics in the content it produces, commissions or acquires, user contributions to the Cosmos Education Platform reflect the views of those participants. CSIRO does not endorse the views or material contained in users’ contributions.

1 These Terms of Use

1.1 You may use and contribute to the Cosmos Education Platform subject to the following terms and conditions of use (Terms of Use). These Terms of Use set out the terms and conditions on which CSIRO allows you to access the Cosmos Education Platform. By accessing, browsing or otherwise using the Cosmos Education Platform, you accept these Terms of Use. If you do not accept these Terms of Use, you are not entitled to access or use the Cosmos Education Platform and you should leave and cease using it immediately.

2 Cosmos Education Platform

2.1 The Cosmos Education Platform is made available free of charge. We do not guarantee that the Cosmos Education Platform, or any content on it, will always be available or be uninterrupted. Access to the Cosmos Education Platform is permitted on a temporary basis. We may suspend, withdraw, discontinue or change all or any part of the Cosmos Education Platform without notice. We will not be liable to you if for any reason the Cosmos Education Platform is unavailable at any time or for any period.

2.2 All access to, and use of, the Cosmos Education Platform is at your own risk. You are responsible for making all arrangements necessary for you to have access to the Cosmos Education Platform. You are also responsible for ensuring that all persons who access the Cosmos Education Platform through your internet connection are aware of these Terms of Use and that they comply with them.

2.3 The Cosmos Education Platform and the content on it are provided for general information and entertainment purposes only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of any content on the Cosmos Education Platform.

2.4 CSIRO hosts or uses other platforms relating to the Cosmos Education Platform, and third party social media platforms (such as Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn). These may change over time at our discretion.

2.5 If you engage with CSIRO on third party social media platforms, your use of those platforms will be governed by their own terms of use and privacy policies.

2.6 CSIRO does not endorse, support, sanction, encourage, verify or agree with any comments, opinions or statements posted by any users on the Cosmos Education Platform or any social media platforms that CSIRO uses. Any information or material posted, uploaded, commented on or tagged by users online or on any social media, including advice or opinions, are the views and responsibility of those users.

2.7 You must not post, upload or tag any comment, content or link to the Cosmos Education Platform that does not comply with these Terms of Use.

3 Submitting comments and online forms

3.1 In order to submit a comment in response to content available on the Cosmos Education Platform you may be required to use a display name.

3.2 You must provide a genuine email address to create an account and comment on content on the Cosmos Education Platform. This will not be displayed publicly. This is to prevent spamming or phishing attacks. You should not post your email address or any other personal information publicly on the Cosmos Education Platform, as comments and other submissions can remain online indefinitely and may be found through search engines or online archives.

3.3 CSIRO may refuse to publish your comments at its sole discretion. Grounds for refusal may include, but are not limited to, information that is:

(a) offensive, indecent, harassing, bullying, obscene, abusive or defamatory or otherwise unlawful;

(b) likely to infringe any intellectual property right;

(c) inappropriate in its use of brand names, registered trade marks, company or organisation names, or names of high-profile or public figures;

(d) inappropriate in its promotion of political, religious, social or economic issues; or

(e) likely to violate any law regarding harassment, discrimination, racial vilification, privacy or contempt.

3.4 CSIRO may moderate any comments or submissions on the Cosmos Education Platform and may remove any content that, in our opinion, is inappropriate. While we may review the content regularly, there may be times when inappropriate content is viewable before it can be removed.

3.5 CSIRO does not undertake to inform users when any content has been moderated or removed. We may provide warnings, or otherwise block users from posting or commenting on the Cosmos Education Platform at our sole discretion in accordance with these Terms of Use or applicable laws.

3.6 When you post personal information in publicly accessible areas on the Cosmos Education Platform, this information becomes available to anyone with access to the internet. This information can be collected and used by others. If you publicly post personal information online it is accessible to anyone and you may receive unsolicited messages from other parties in return. We recommend that you refrain from posting any information that you do not want seen in these public areas.

4 Subscription to Cosmos Education newsletters

4.1 In order to receive the latest information and news from CSIRO in relation to the Cosmos Education Platform you may register your email address in our newsletter database. This database is hosted either by a third party email service provider or CSIRO. Both CSIRO considers your privacy and the security of your details are a priority.

4.2 CSIRO will not use your subscription information for any other purpose without your consent.

4.3 If you have subscribed to the Cosmos Education newsletter, you can opt out of receiving this at any time. You can control your mailing preferences by accessing your Cosmos Education Platform account or clicking the link contained in each newsletter.

5 User Participation

5.1 Children accessing and contributing to the Cosmos Education Platform must be supervised by an adult who is their parent or guardian, or who has obtained appropriate consent from their parent or guardian.

5.2 You may be held legally responsible for the content you submit to CSIRO and the Cosmos Education Platform.

5.3 All material published on the Cosmos Education Platform is at the sole discretion of CSIRO, having regard to these Terms of Use and applicable laws.

5.4 Your contribution may be edited or removed from the Cosmos Education Platform by CSIRO at its sole discretion. Grounds for editing or removal may include, but are not limited to, where CSIRO considers any material to be:

(a) defamatory, or otherwise unlawful or that it violates any law regarding harassment, discrimination, racial vilification, privacy or contempt;

(b) false or misleading;

(d) abusive, offensive or obscene;

(e) inappropriate, off topic, repetitive or vexatious. CSIRO also reserves the right to reject contributions from participants who dominate the discussion;

(f) likely to compromise your privacy or the privacy of other contributors or CSIRO staff, or which contains inappropriate or personal information;

(g) seeking to endorse commercial products or activities or to unduly promote commercial products or services;

(h) a deliberate provocation of others;

(i) inappropriate for any other reason at the sole discretion of CSIRO.

6 Linking

6.1 CSIRO publishes links to external sites at its sole discretion.

6.2 CSIRO is not responsible for, and does not endorse, the content on external sites.

6.3 CSIRO may, at its sole discretion, remove user-posted links for any reason, at any time, with or without notice to the user.

7 Copyright

7.1 CSIRO makes content available on the Cosmos Education Platform under Creative Commons Licence – AttributionNonCommercial-NoDerivs CC BY-NC-ND, available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/deed.en.

7.2 You are welcome to quote content from the Cosmos Education Platform and share it with others, however you must attribute the URL of the Cosmos Education Platform where you found that content.

7.3 When you submit content to the Cosmos Education Platform, you represent and warrant that you have all necessary rights, including without limitation, copyright, in the material that you are contributing, and that the material will not infringe any third party rights and is not defamatory. You agree that CSIRO may use the material at its discretion, whether online or in any other form or media now known or later discovered, including without limitation:

(a) republishing or archiving that material; and

(b) for internal training purposes.

8 Privacy and security

8.1 CSIRO will not share your details with any third party unless it is part of the service you requested or we are otherwise permitted or required by law to do so.

8.2 Under no circumstance will CSIRO sell or receive payment for licensing or disclosing your personal information.

8.3 If you are required to make an online payment via the Cosmos Education Platform, this payment will be administered by secured payment systems. CSIRO will not have access to, or retain your credit card or payment details.

8.4 You are solely responsible for maintaining the secrecy of your passwords and any personal information.

8.5 We use cookies and similar technologies such as pixels and local storage to recognise you when you return to our Services. We use them in various ways, for example to log you in, remember your preferences (such as default language), evaluate email effectiveness, show relevant ads, and personalise information.

8.6 We respect Do Not Track (“DNT”) settings in browsers. If you’re logged out of our services and have DNT enabled, we will not set cookies. By logging in you are opting to allow CSIRO to ignore the DNT setting and to use cookies in order to provide you a personalised experience.

8.7 Some third-party services that we use, such as Google Analytics, may place their own cookies in your browser. These Terms of Use cover use of cookies by CSIRO only and not the use of cookies by third parties.

9 Collection of Information

9.1 CSIRO collects two types of information on the Cosmos Education Platform. The first type is anonymous information. CSIRO automatically gathers anonymous information to monitor the use of the Cosmos Education Platform (such as the numbers and frequency of visitors to the Cosmos Education Platform). We only use such data in the aggregate. This collective data helps us determine how much our audiences use parts of the Cosmos Education Platform, so we can improve the Cosmos Education Platform and ensure their appeal to our broad range of users.

9.2 The second type of information that CSIRO collects on the Cosmos Education Platform is personal information. CSIRO will collect personal information that lets us know the specifics of who you are, such as your name, email address, or postal address, when you provide it to us. With this information, CSIRO can provide more personalised and enhanced services for its members, volunteers and subscribers.

9.3 You can choose not to receive information about the Cosmos Education Platform (for example in the form of newsletters) when you are filling in the registration form on the Cosmos Education Platform, or in your account settings.

9.4 How much of your personal information you choose to disclose to CSIRO is completely up to you. The only way we know something about you personally is if you provide it to us.

9.5 CSIRO will only use the personal information you have chosen to provide us for the purpose for which you provided it. CSIRO will not use it for any other purpose without your consent.

10 Disclaimers

10.1 CSIRO does not warrant or represent that the Cosmos Education Platform, or any content on any of it, will be free from errors or omissions. Some of the content is provided by third parties and CSIRO accepts no responsibility for that content. While we use reasonable efforts to check the information we include on the Cosmos Education Platform, we make no representation that all or any of that information is complete, accurate or suitable for any purpose.

10.2 By using the Cosmos Education Platform, you agree that CSIRO will not have responsibility to any person in relation to information on the Cosmos Education Platform including, without limitation, for any false, inaccurate, out-of-date, inappropriate or misleading information or for any interpretation or opinion or conclusion you may form as a result of using the Cosmos Education Platform.

10.3 The Cosmos Education Platform is updated periodically and the information available on it changes from time to time. In no event will CSIRO be liable for any loss arising as a result of the inaccuracy, incompleteness or alteration of information contained on the Cosmos Education Platform.

10.4 To the extent permitted by law, CSIRO will not be liable for any special, indirect or consequential damages or any damages whatsoever resulting from loss of use, data or profits, whether in an action of in contract, in tort or under statute arising from or in connection with the use of, or performance of, or reliance upon any information on the Cosmos Education Platform.

10.5 The views expressed by CSIRO presenters or other content contributors are their own and CSIRO shall not be liable for any damages arising from use of this information.