Policies & Procedures - 6.1.3 Awards Nomination Process

- approved 6/99, updated 6/08, 12/09 -

The Communications Society's Awards Committee retains responsibility for the ultimate selection of winning papers and for the functioning of the awards process. It coordinates the nomination and decision processes and orders and awards certificates, plaques, and checks. ComSoc magazines and journals are defined as those financially sponsored, in whole or in part, by the IEEE Communications Society.

Magazine and Journals Editors-in-Chief are responsible for generating short nomination lists for their respective prizes, these lists become the major basis for decisions of the Awards Committee.  Nominations are solicited by each Editor-in-Chief from his/her Editorial Board, guest editors, and the readership.  Nominations may be solicited in a published notice.  These nominations are then screened/reduced to a short list and submitted to the Awards Committee for final selection.  (See specific details under each paper award.)
 
The Society welcomes nominations for Prize Papers published in previous years.  Such action will give a deserving colleague a chance for one of these prestigious awards.  A nomination should clearly state the authors, paper title, the publication and issue in which the paper appeared, and, in a few words, why the paper deserves an award.  It should then be sent to the Editor-in-Chief of the publication in which the paper appeared (see current EICs listed under “Publications Boards" at http://www.comsoc.org/about/boards/publications).

The short nomination lists for all prizes are to be submitted to the Communications Society Awards Committee no later than February 15th of the year following the year for which papers are considered.

Under normal circumstances, award presentations will be made at ICC each year.

IEEE Awards

The IEEE sponsors three paper awards, two of which overlap with the Communications Society awards.

W. R. G. Baker Award recognizes an outstanding original paper published in the past year in any IEEE journal, transactions, proceedings, or magazine.

Donald G. Fink Award recognizes an outstanding survey or tutorial paper published in the past year in any IEEE journal, transactions, proceedings, or magazine.

For an outstanding paper, recognition can be given at both Society and Institute levels. Editors-in-Chief may wish to nominate automatically the winning Communications Society papers for appropriate IEEE awards.