The Irish Naturalists' Journal Prize

| WINNERS |

 

In order to encourage both amateur natural historians and young professional naturalists, the Board of Directors of the Irish Naturalists' Journal have instituted an annual prize for the best scientific paper published in the Journal during each calendar year. The rules governing the award of this prize are as follows.

  1. One prize of £100 will be awarded annually. Two groups of authors will be eligible for the prize: young professional naturalists and amateur natural historians. The prize will be for a paper published in the Journal that is, in the judgement of a panel, an outstanding contribution to the natural history of Ireland.

  2. In any one year, only one prize will be awarded and the award will alternate between the two recipient groups. Thus in the first year, the award will be to a young professional naturalist, and in the second year to an amateur natural historian. However, the judging in the two categories will include papers published in the previous two years.

  3. Eligibility. To be eligible for consideration for one of the awards, the author should be either:

  1. A young professional naturalist: a student or recent ex-student at the start of their careers. It is anticipated that in the majority of cases this award will be given for a paper stemming from an undergraduate, master's or doctoral thesis. Normally this category will be restricted to persons under the age of 25 at the time of submission of the manuscript;

    or

  2. An amateur natural historian: a person who is not formally affiliated to a university or college or similar institution or organisation (e.g. the National Parks and Wildlife Service or the Environment and Heritage Service, Northern Ireland) where natural history or allied research is conducted. However, such work may have received financial support from sources such as the Praeger Fund provided this is stated explicitly in the paper. Exceptions will be made where the form of employment or affiliation to a university or college or similar institution or organisation is substantially different from the area of research reported in the paper.

For consideration by the Judging Panel, papers should be sole-authored. For jointly authored papers to be eligible, the young professional or amateur should be either the first author, or it should be made clear at the time of submission why they are not.

Recipients of the award shall not be eligible for further awards.

The Judging Panel will adjudicate on all matters of eligibility and their decision is final.

  1. The composition of the Judging Panel will be: the Chair of the Board of Directors of the Journal (who will chair the Panel), the Editor and the Secretary of the Journal, together with two other members of the Board of Directors who shall serve on the Judging Panel for no more than three years. The Judging Panel reserves the right to take external advice should this be deemed necessary. Members of the Judging Panel are not eligible for the prize.

  2. In judging the worth of a paper, the Judging Panel will take cognisance of:

  1. The originality of the piece of work and its contribution to science.

  2. The quality of the writing, graphical and tabular presentations and overall standard of communication.

The Judging Panel reserves the right not to award a prize in any given year, if it is judged that no paper is sufficiently meritorious.

  1. Recommendations of the Judging Panel will be forwarded to the Board of Directors of the Journal for approval.

  2. The prize will be awarded at the AGM of the Irish Naturalists' Journal.

Board of Directors, Irish Naturalists' Journal
21 January 2004