OPEN ARCHAEOLOGY PRIZE
The ASOR Open Archaeology Prize is awarded to the best open-access, open-licensed, digital contribution to Near Eastern archaeology by an ASOR member.
Eligibility: This competition is open to all ASOR members. Members may submit their own project or nominate the project of another ASOR member. A panel of researchers will judge the quality and significance of submitted materials. Evaluations will be based on the project's scholarly merits and potential for reuse in research or teaching. To be eligible, projects must be freely available on the Web (ie not password-protected) and downloadable in an open, reusable format. All content must be provided under licensing terms no more restrictive than the Creative Commons Attribution, Noncommercial, Share-Alike License (see details below). These open licensing terms will help maximize the impact of your research and ensure that others can build on your contributions.
Submission Deadline: October 16, 2009
How to Participate: To compete, email submissions and nominations to Sarah Whitcher Kansa, the competition organizer at (skansa@alexandriaarchive.org ). Please use subject heading "ASOR Open Archaeology Prize Entry." In the body of the email, include your project name, its url, and the license you have attached to it. (Note: The license must also be clearly marked on the web site of the project itself.) Please also include your institutional affiliation and a brief background of what purpose the project serves, when it was developed, and who (if anyone) has funded it. For assistance with licensing, please feel free to contact the competition organizer. If you are nominating a project, simply explain the nomination and provide contact details for the project director. Please note: You must be a current ASOR member to compete. Click here for the online membership form.
You may also submit an entry on DVD by post to:
The Alexandria Archive Institute (Open Archaeology Prize)
125 El Verano Way
San Francisco, CA 94127
The Prizes: First Prize is $500 in cash. Second Prize is a $200 gift certificate from the David Brown Book Co., co-sponsors of the competition. Judges from the ASOR community (Junior and Senior Scholars) will review all entries and winners will be announced at the members meeting of the ASOR conference in November 2009.
Examples of Eligible Projects:
- A published paper with accompanying data (in
spreadsheet format)
- Digital materials (videos, games, slideshows)
to enhance museum exhibits or instruction
- Software (and its documentation) that can
further scholarship in the archaeological community
- A "library" of media (such as
slides) with associated metadata (keywords, notes, etc.)
- A video or slide show with accompanying source
files and materials that facilitate reuse
- A specialist database (such as a faunal or
plant assemblage, or a corpus of seals, beads, or ceramics), with
contextual information and photos, if available
Winners of past ASOR Open Archaeology prize competitions can be viewed here.
Access, Documentation and Copyright Requrements:
- Choosing a License: All content must be
licensed with a Creative
Commons License that does not restrict the creation of
"derivative" (modified or adapted) works. Please visit creativecommons.org for more
details on copyright licensing. Remember, you can only license
copyrighted content that you own; please do not submit material
that does not belong to you!
- Submissions can be hosted on any personal, commercial,
or institutional website, so long as they are available free of
charge and without login or password restrictions.
- Submissions must be available in open or
widely used file formats. A single submission can be made available with
multiple file formats to maximize its potential for reuse.
- Submissions must have adequate documentation (titles, keywords, authors, etc.) to facilitate discovery and reuse. Meaningful reuse of materials also requires the availability of documentation about data and media collection methods, organization, structure, and meaning.
- If you have useful photo libraries, datasets and linked publications, but no place to put them on the Web, you are welcome to post your project to the Open Context database (www.opencontext.org). Please contact the competition organizer for instructions on how to do this.
About: The ASOR Open Archaeology Prize is one of a series of such competitions sponsored by the Alexandria Archive Institute, promoting the development and use of open educational resources in archaeology and related disciplines. The Open Archaeology Prize aims to enhance community recognition of open scholarly communication. The competition is supported by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the David Brown Book Company.