1. Papers should address an important area of information science, including information retrieval, user interfaces and formal methods.  The perceived importance of the topic of the paper in terms of contributing new knowledge or advancing the field of information science will be a prime factor in judging the papers.

2. Papers must be co-authored by no more than one faculty member and at least one student currently in SIS. The award was established to encourage collaborative research between faculty and students.

3. Papers must be of high scholarly quality and worthy of publication in a refereed journal. The content of the papers must demonstrate a thorough and well-disciplined knowledge of the area as well as a formal presentation of the concepts and ideas.  Theoretical presentations should be expressed using a formal deductive or inductive procedure.  Experimental presentations should follow the procedures for a formal research study.

4. Papers must communicate the authors’ intent in a concise and logical manner. The organization of the ideas and concepts should be such that the sequence or flow achieves a continuity so that the separate parts logically build to the conclusion or final statement.

5. Papers must be comprehensive and thorough. This requires that adequate background information, definitions, assumptions and concepts be presented in a manner that does not require judgments to be made about missing elements or ambiguous terms or ideas.

6. The length of the paper should permit publication in a refereed journal (e.g., Journal of the American Society for Information Science Information Sciences, Information Processing and Visual Language, etc.)  The length should approximate no more than seven to eight pages of single space journal print.

The decision of the panel of judges will be final. The winner will be notified and will receive a check for the amount of $500.  The name of the winner will also be listed among the honorees in the Annual Honor Convocation at the University of Pittsburgh.