Epainos Prize

Epainos Award and Young Regional Scientist Sessions
(EAYRS)

Formal goals

The Epainos Award/Young Regional Scientist (EAYRS) Sessions are organized each year at the ERSA Conference, and provide a special platform for paper presentations by young scientists with an in-depth discussion of the papers by senior scholars in the field.

The EAYRS sessions are organized according to the following two principles:

  • Offering more time for each presentation, in particular to increase the amount of feedback a young scientist receives on her or his paper, and to provide more opportunity for other young scientists to participate in scientific discussions.
  • Assigning specialist senior discussants (typically session chairs), experts in the specific field, to each paper that is presented. They will be asked to provide a written version of their comments, with a level of dedication that is considered normal when writing referee reports for scientific journals. The comments are supposed to be presented in a constructive manner and should be targeted at improving the paper. Suggestions for further research can be a useful complement to a review. A standardized evaluation form with guidelines is made available to the reviewers.

The sessions are primarily targeted to Masters and PhD students, and young scholars of comparable age. Participants should not yet have reached the age of 33 years on 1 September of the year of the conference. In case of multi-authored papers, this age limit applies to all authors. Each individual participant is only allowed to submit one paper (as first author or co-author). None of the authors is supposed to have a senior position at a faculty. All submissions have to be written in English. Submissions should not already have been submitted to a Journal on the date of April 30 of the year in which the Conference is organized. In case of an excessive number of submissions a pre-selection may be made. Papers that are not accepted for one of the Epainos-sessions will automatically be scheduled in one of the R-sessions of the conference.

Every participant of the Young Scientist Sessions competes for the Epainos Award, which is awarded to the best paper presented in the EAYRS Sessions. The winner will be announced during the conference dinner. The first prize winner will receive € 600. A second prize will also be awarded, comprising € 300. In case of multiple first prize or second prize winning papers, the monetary rewards will be split equally (over papers).

The prize-winning papers will be considered for publication in the flagship journal of the Regional Science Association Internationsl, viz. Papers in Regional Science. Because the paper will be subject to standard review procedures, publication is not guaranteed. The prize winners will also be anounced on the ERSA website and in the ERSA newsletter. The prize winning paper will be made downloadable from the ERSA website.

Those interested in the Young Scientist Session and the Epainos Award can indicate this when submitting their paper by selecting the relevant box in the electronic registration form. They are explicitly asked to confirm that all authors are aged below 33 and that the paper has not been submitted to a Journal at April 30th.

The full paper should be submitted before the same deadline applying to R-sessions (14th April, 2010), using the standard procedures of paper submission for the conference.

Criteria

The criteria used for assessing the papers have are:

  • The paper is conceptually sound
  • The work is innovative
  • The structure of the paper is logical and efficient
  • The style of writing is attractive
  • The paper is well-positioned in the literature
  • The paper provides a useful contribution to the field of Regional Science

These criteria are included in the standardized evaluation form for reviewers and all reviewers are explicitly asked to score papers on these criteria (on a 1-5 scale). The scores are made available to the Jury members as background information that can assist them in ranking the papers.

Jury

The Epainos Jury consists of 6 members, among which 5 permanent:

  • The chair
  • The secretary
  • The editor-in-chief of Papers in Regional Science
  • Two other ‘permanent’ members
  • The chair of the Local Organizing Committee

Each Jury Member has one vote in the selection of prize-winning papers. The chair of the LOC has no vote in issues concerning the planning and organization of the EAYRS (such as proposals for new Jury Members).

Permanent members are appointed by the EOC for a period of 5 years. The Jury proposes new members for appointment to the EOC.

A brief description of the main tasks of Jury members is as follows.

The chair has the main tasks of:

  • Chairing the yearly Jury meeting and making sure that the selection procedure of prize winning papers is procedurally fair (and efficient);
  • Providing feedback, advice and assistance to the Secretary in case any unforeseen difficulties with the LOC, participants or chair-discussants should arise (which has never happened so far);
  • Announcing the prize winners during the conference dinner;
  • Reading the papers carefully in order to make well-founded contributions to the discussions that will precede the selection of the winning papers.

The secretary has the main tasks of:

  • Carrying out all practical correspondence with the Local Organizing Committee, the Epainos Jury, and chair-discussants in the months prior to the ERSA conference;
  • Grouping the papers submitted into thematic sessions and inviting chair-discussants (experts in the field), if desired after consulting other Jury members for suggestions for chairs on specific themes;
  • Checking whether all authors of papers submitted are younger than 33 and have no senior position at a faculty;
  • Making the papers available for Jury members and chair-discussants (since recently by putting them on a temporary web site);
  • Providing instructions to chair-discussants;
  • Collecting written reviews for each paper and making these available to the Jury members in time, preferably with a summarizing table;
  • Making sure that a meeting room and time will be available for (and known by) the Jury during the conference, and that prizes will be available during the conference dinner;
  • Reading the papers carefully in order to make well-founded contributions to the discussions that will precede the selection of the winning papers.

Other members have the main task of:

  • Reading the papers carefully in order to make well-founded contributions to the discussions that will precede the selection of the winning papers.

Chairs/discussants

Apart from chairing the session and discussing the papers, a chair/discussant prepares a written evaluation and provides advice on prize eligibility. The latter is not included in the written evaluation, as a copy of this evaluation should be given to the paper presenters during the session. The written evaluation is sent in electronic format to the secretary, no later than two weeks before the conference starts. Awards The funding for the prizes is covered on an equal share basis by ERSA and the LOC. The prizes include, apart from the money sums, a printed certificate, and a local gift. The former is arranged by the secretary in cooperation with the LOC; the latter by the LOC.

EAYRS in the conference programme

The sessions are in principle planned in parallel – i.e., simultaneously – with one block of the program of two hours being reserved exclusively for the EAYRS sessions. This secures attendance at an appropriate level, provided the block of sessions is planned at a ‘normal’ time slot (in particular not an ‘early bird’). A good time slot is the slot just before or after lunch on the second or third full conference day (but before the conference dinner). In each session, in principle three papers are scheduled.

This version: September 16, 2007 (officially approved at Jury meeting of August 30, 2008, in Liverpool, UK).