The following are the official rules of the 2011 PhD Challenge. Any entry that fails to meet any of the following guidelines will be disqualified. All final decisions about eligibility are left up to the judging committee. We refer to the “challenge nickname” as the phrase defined in the Call for Participation that must appear in an author’s name for a contest entry.

Paper Eligibility

In order to qualify for consideration in the PhD Challenge, the paper submitted as your final entry to the contest must satisfy the following criteria:

• The main content of paper must be written in English.
• The challenge nickname must be easily viewable by the human eye (i.e., no white text on a white background).
• The challenge nickname must be in the same font size as all other author listing(s) in the paper byline.
• The challenge nickname must appear in the same location as the majority of the other authors (i.e., the author listing that contains the challenge nickname may not be put as a supplemental author in the back of the paper if most of the authors are listed on the first page).
• The challenge nickname must appear in the submitted paper’s PDF metadata.
• The challenge nickname must be surrounded by English-style quotation marks in between the target author’s first name and surname (i.e., John “Dirty Old Man” Smith). If the author does not have a surname, the challenge nickname should appear after the author’s first name (i.e., John “Dirty Old Man”). You may also add the definite article “the” inside of the challenge nickname for first-name-only authors (i.e., John “The Dirty Old Man”).
• No additional letters, spacing, or punctuation may be added or removed from the challenge nickname.
• Either the male or female version of the challenge nickname may be used regardless of the author’s sex, but the selected nickname must be complete; that is, you may not swap words from the different versions and use an amalgamation of the two.

Conference/Journal Eligibility

All contest entries must appear in an academic conference proceedings or journal that meets the following criteria. The right to make the final decision about the eligibility of all conferences/journals is reserved to the discretion of the judging committee.

• The conference proceedings or journal must be in English.
• The conference must be reputable and legitimate peer-reviewed academic publication (e.g., no pay-to-play submissions) and part of an established organization (e.g., The New England Journal of Medicine, IEEE, Nature).

Student Eligibility

All applicants to the PhD Challenge must meet the following criteria. Note that exceptions will be made for distinguished undergraduate entries from those who plan on attending graduate school.

• All applicants must be a graduate students at the time the paper was submitted for review at the conference/journal. Any postgraduate graduate program is acceptable, including (but not limited to) MS, MFA, PhD, JD, MD, MEd, DMA, etc.
• All applicants must be from an accredited university or institution of higher learning.

Submission Requirements

• All submission entries must include the URL for the official download version of the paper containing the challenge nickname.
• All submission entries must include instructions for where to locate the challenge nickname in their paper.
• All applicants must consent to having their names and publication information posted on the PhD Challenge website. Note, however, that only the winning submission will be listed.