The full submission guidelines for 🧻 The Bad Writing Award are below, and for any queries please contact us.
Eligibility guidelines:
- Nominations are open to any academic work written in English by any author of any nationality, provided that the work is published for the first time by an academic journal between 1st January and 31st December of the year for which submissions are open.
- Although the work’s first publication must fall within these dates, it is still eligible if it was previously published in another language but was published in English for the first time in the judging year.
- In the awards first year nominations will be considered eligible if they were published anytime from the 2nd October 2018 until the end of 2023, as the 2nd October 2018 this was the date the Grievance Studies article went public in the New York Times. We have chosen this starting date in order to acknowledge Grievance Studies valuable contribution to rationality and reason in academia.
- Nominations must contain:
- Nominated text
Being any section of an academic article, from a line to a page in length, that the nominee feels is so badly written, so egregious, or contains such bad arguments, ideas or propositions that the nominee feels are worthy of special attention, criticism and/or ridicule. Special consideration will be given to text containing unnecessarily incomprehensible and impenetrable academic jargon. - Name of the article
This is the name of the article the nominated text is contained within and must be published in a recognised academic journal of any size. - Name of the Journal
This is the name of the Journal the nominated text and its containing article is published within. - Name(s) of the authors
This is the name of the author or authors of the nominated article.
- Nominated text
- Anonymous Articles
Nomination's which are published anonymously may be considered, at the discretion of the judges, if the entry is in the spirit intended by the award. - The final decision of what constitutes an academic article and a recognised academic journal, remains with the judging panel for the year of submissions in question and the administrators of the award.
- There is no entry fee for nominating a work.
Judging Decisions:
- The judges may request the award’s administrators to call in works that have not been submitted as part of the call for submissions process.
- Likewise, the judges and award administrators retain the right to decline a nomination should they deem it unsuitable or inappropriate for the award.
- The decisions of the award’s administrators in support of the judging panel are final.
Award Dates
- Nomination period - 2nd April to February 28th each year
- Jury Deliberation - 1st to 31st March each year
- Shortlist announced - Approx 16th March each year
- Winner announced - 1st April each year
Good luck!