Announcement:
International SIL student competition: The best published limnological paper coming out of a PhD/MSc thesis

The prize: Plenary talk at the 2016 SIL Congress in Torino

We herewith announce an international competition, open to all students and early-career members of SIL, the International Society of Limnology. In this competition, the best paper in Limnology coming out of a PhD or MSc of a SIL member and published recently will be chosen. The competition winner will present his/her study as a 30-minute plenary lecture at the upcoming SIL Congress in Torino.
There will be two stages to this competition:
Stage 1 – national: each country will choose its one best paper that will enter the international competition. This stage will be organized by the national representative(s). Competition candidates should submit the following to their SIL national representative: (1) a filled registration form (attached) (2) a nomination letter written by an advisor or a senior colleague, and (3) their article. Competition candidates from countries with no national representative should submit their documents to Prof. Judit Padisak, the overall competition coordinator. Each country can submit only one paper, except countries with > 50 SIL members that can submit two papers. A committee will be set up in each country that will rank the papers according to scoring system detailed below and choose the paper(s) for Stage 2.
Stage 2- international: An international jury of 7 members from 7 countries will review the papers from the different countries and choose the winner, based on a scoring system detailed below.
Conditions for participating in Stage 1 of the competition:
 The candidate must be a SIL member
 The candidate must be the first author of the submitted article
 The candidate must be a student, or an early career professional that has finished his/her MSc or PhD in 2012 or later.
 The article must be in the field of aquatic sciences
 The article must be written in English
 The article must have been published or fully accepted for publication in 2013, 2014 or 2015
 A nomination letter highlighting the strengths of the article and explaining why it warrants being considered for this competition must be attached.
Deadlines:
15 October 2015 – deadline for articles and accompanying documents to the National Representative (NR) or to Judit Padisak in countries with no NR
15 December 2015 – deadline for submission of the winner article from each country to the SIL student prize competition coordinator, Judit Padisak.
15 March 2016 – The competition winner, the 2nd and 3rd places, and names of all those reaching Stage 2 of the competition will be announced.
August 2016 – Awards will be given to the competition winners at a special session, dedicated to this student contest, at the SIL Congress in Torino.
Criteria for evaluating the publications during the national screening and again at the international stage will be:
 Scientific/technical quality (score 0-20),
 methodological approach (0-20 )
 relevance and potential scientific impact of work carried out (0-20).

Awards
The awards will consist of one main and two subsidiary prizes, plus certificates to all those participating in Stage 2 of the competition:
 The main prize will consist of a certificate and a grant to attend the August 2016 SIL Congress in Torino, including registration fee and travel costs.
 During this meeting, the winning author will be required to give a dedicated Plenary Lecture (30 min) on his/her winning article.
 The winners of the subsidiary prizes will receive certificates and grants covering their registration fees to attend the SIL congress. They will be asked to present their papers as regular presentations
 All participants of Stage 2 will receive a certificate and be invited to present posters of their papers in the special session.
Dr Tamar Zohary
SIL general secretary-treasurer

Registration form:
SIL student competition for the best article coming out of MSc or PhD research
First name_______________
Family name_______________
Country___________________
Year of birth_________________
Mailing address__________________________________________________
e-mail address ___________________________________________________
Full reference of article submitted (authors names, year of publication, title, journal, volume, pages)______________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
Degree for which the article was performed (MSc or PhD)_________________
Year degree was competed______________
University in which the degree was completed__________________________
PhD or MSc supervisor(s) __________________________________________
Please highlight the main strengths of your article
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