Inside the Grant Program
Journal of IA
Experience the Journal of Information Architecture, an international peer-reviewed scholarly journal whose aim is to facilitate the systematic development of the scientific body of knowledge in the field of information architecture.
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Progress Grant Details
About the Award
The Information Architecture Institute (IAI) will offer two USD $1,000 Progress Grants for 2010.
Each Grant award will consist of a Certificate for the winning author (or co-authors) and a check for USD $1000 issued directly to the primary applicant.
Schedule (note updated milestones)
- November 30, 2010 - Application deadline for 2010 Grants
- December 15, 2010 - Grant recipients announced and first half of grant awarded
- February 15, 2011 - Grant recipients submit brief progress report to the grant jury
- June 1, 2011 - Completed work submitted to grant jury, work published on iainstitute.org, and second half of grant awarded
Submission Guidelines
Topic & Content
Applications should propose work that will forward the theory and practice of information architecture. This can include original research, a helpful synthesis of existing research, the development of a new technique, method or tool, or something that could otherwise support the IA community of practice.
A successful grant project could:
- help solve a particular problem or challenge for IA practice or theory
- illuminate or explain an otherwise unclear or overlooked issue
- improve an existing approach, with verified results
- create helpful connections and syntheses between IA and one or more other disciplines
Proposal content should address the points explained below, under "Selection Criteria & Process." Previous grants have been awarded to students, academic researchers and practitioners. Topics have included IA in higher education, a new card sorting technique, the use of internet cafes in developing contexts, and an intranet review toolkit.
Please note: The quality of the proposal is considered to be an indicator of the quality of the potentially funded project's outcome. Therefore, the IAI jury will be looking for more than a cursory summary, or loosely defined approach. While we recognize many details will not materialize until work is underway, the applicant's concept, general approach and plan of execution should be detailed as thoroughly and clearly as possible.
Format
The proposal should provide:
- Description of the problem or hypothesis
- Methodology to be used
- Explanation of how the resulting work will benefit the theory or practice of IA
- Conditions under which others can use the results (e.g. Creative Commons license)
The application package should include:
a) a cover letter, stating:
- the primary (and associated) author's name(s), address, email, and affiliation;
- and that the attached proposal is being submitted for the IAI Award;
b) the proposal itself:
- no author identification (applications will be forwarded to jury without author identity)
- should be 2000 words or fewer
c) a preliminary budget showing how the project funds would be spent.
Additional Details:
- Grant applications should be emailed by November 30, 2010 to grants2010@iainstitute.org.
- Questions can be directed to the jury chair, Samantha Starmer (sstarme@rei.com).
Selection Criteria & Process
The IAI Progress Grant Jury will review and evaluate the proposals based on the following criteria:
- potential benefit to the field of information architecture
- effectiveness of how project's budget will use granted funds
- viability to be successfully completed in the allotted time frame
- overall quality and thoroughness of the proposal
Each voting juror will assign points to each eligible proposal, based on the evaluation criteria, and will transmit the scores for each proposal to the Jury Chair.
The Jury Chair will total the points from all jurors; the grant recipients will be those with the highest-scoring proposals. In cases of a tie, the tying nominees will be re-evaluated.
The Jury Chair will communicate the jury's decision to the IAI board of directors, and notify the grant recipients.
Note: In the absence of qualified proposals, the Jury may refrain from granting awards for that year.
Award Process
Half of the grant amount will be awarded when the grant recipients are announced and half when the work is completed. Progress grants will only be awarded to proposals of sufficient quality, clarity, and originality.
Distribution & Publication
While copyright (if applicable) of the resulting work is owned by the work's author(s), the IAI requires that the resulting work be published on the IAI website to provide a continuing resource for Information Architects and as a general benefit for the IA community at large, as well as available as reference for future IAI learning & research initiatives.
Authors are also encouraged to publish their results in any format they choose, such as presenting at professional conferences, or on their own website, blog, or as part of a larger work.
Award Jury for 2010
The IAI Awards Jury is composed of six members, including the Jury Chair, and are appointed by the Chair of IAI Grant Jury for a one year term. The 2010 Jury members are:
- Samantha Starmer, REI, USA, Jury Chair
- Andrew Hinton, Macquarium, USA
- Keith Instone, IBM, USA
- Matthew Milan, Normative Design, Canada
- Judit Pónya, University of Szeged/Fluxon Ltd., Hungary
- Andrea Resmini, University of Borås/FatDUX, Sweden
Eligibility & Conditions
The Information Architecture Institute Grant Jury is the sole jury for this award. Grant jury members are not eligible to apply for the award themselves. In the case of no acceptable applicants or ineligible applicants, the awards may not be granted.
No more than one application may be submitted per person (including multi-authored submissions).
The proposal must fall within the scope of information architecture and result in a piece of work that is either original research or product that is of general use to the information architecture community.
The proposal must describe work that will be completed within the guidelines (see the CFP) after receiving notice of proposal acceptance.
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This page was last modified on November 2, 2010 11:18 AM.