ITEMA Conference Best Paper Award

Award Guidelines and Criteria

Purpose: The purpose of the Best Paper Award is to recognize and promote quality contributions to academic research and writing among scholars and students who present and publish papers at the ITEMA conference.

Eligibility: All full papers submitted and published in the ITEMA conference publications of the year (main proceedings and selected papers), regardless of the status of the first authors (i.e., scholar, student, educator, policy maker or professional, etc.) are eligible for competition for the Best Paper Award.

Initial Score based Selection: The 5 accepted papers receiving the highest scores in the review process are chosen as candidates.

Award Candidates Announcement: Authors of the 5 selected papers will be informed before conference publications finalization and the candidates will be announced on the homepage.

Award Selection Committee Work: The Scientific Committee members will score candidate papers.

Award Criteria: The Scientific Committee will consider innovation, significance to the research community, scientific impact and technical excellence.

Each paper will be given a score of 0 – 10 (where 0 is the lowest and 10 is the highest score) against each criterion.

Main criteria:

• Originality (weighting 40%) – Originality of contribution to knowledge with an emphasis on the paper’s innovativeness in: (i) theoretical development, (ii) empirical results or, (iii) policy development.
• Quality of Argument (weighting 30%) incorporating: (i) critical analysis of concepts, theories and findings, and (ii) consistency and coherency of debate.
• Positioning (weighting 15%) – Clear positioning of paper in existing international literature with a conclusion(s) that is both convincing and of significant potential.
• Writing Style (weighting 15%) – Quality of writing style in term of accuracy, clarity, readability, and organization of the paper.

Meta-criterion that is specifically applied to the Best Paper Award category is that the winner of the award should be a paper that substantiates a new and novel idea or approach contributing to the cumulative knowledge base of the field and is likely to inspire fellow scholars in their research, as opposed to just grinding out yet another example of a well-known approach or result (even if the study was neatly conducted and reported). In other words, it is the “WOW” factor that we hope to see in the winning paper.

Winners Definition: The paper receiving the highest score by the Scientific Committee members will be awarded as the Best Paper Award.

The author of an awarded paper, and co-authors if any, will be entitled to:

• A signed and stamped official award certificate with the name of the award, the name of the paper, and the names of the authors of the paper;
• The announcement of their achievement on a conference website;
• A one calendar year free membership in the Association of Economists and Managers of the Balkans – Udekom Balkans – www.udekom.org.rs), warranting full access to all the benefits of membership. If already an Udekom Balkans member, then this offer adds one year to her/his current membership.

Issues: If there is any issue arising before the final decision can be reached, the Scientific Committee will discuss it promptly.