AGU, the world’s largest organization of Earth and space scientists, is accepting nominations for its 2020 journalism awards through 15 March 2020. 

In 2020, AGU plans to present the David Perlman Award for Excellence in Science Journalism-News and the Walter Sullivan Award for Excellence in Science Journalism-Features. Additional information about the awards is below. 

This year, AGU expanded the length of the nomination cycle for its union awards, medals and prizes to allow nominators ample time to construct nomination packages, and to help in growing the overall selection and diversity among nominees. 

Submissions for all awards should be made through AGU’s online nomination system. Please see instructions for using the online nomination system at the bottom of this release or by clicking here.

Additional AGU journalism award information:
Nominations are open for the following awards through 15 March 2020:

The Perlman and Sullivan awards each honor specific stories reported by journalists in the past year (i.e. 2020 awards honor 2019 stories). Journalists are welcome to nominate their own work for these awards, or someone may nominate a story on the reporter’s behalf. Anyone (AGU members and non-members) may submit a nomination for the award. A nominee may only submit one entry or be nominated once for each award in a given year (i.e., one entry for the Perlman and one entry for the Sullivan). However, nominators may submit multiple nominations (nominate multiple people) for each award. Each award consists of a plaque and a $5,000 award.

 

For the Perlman and Sullivan awards, nominations may be from any country, in any language (English translation required), and in any news medium, except books. Entries will be judged by how well they meet one or more of the following three criteria: Brings new information or concepts about AGU sciences to the public’s attention, identifies and corrects misconceptions about AGU sciences, and makes AGU sciences accessible and interesting to general audiences, without sacrificing accuracy.

 

Both the Perlman and Sullivan award selection committees will also consider accuracy, initiative, originality and clarity. The Perlman award selection committee may also consider the timeliness of the news story, whether it was published first, before other media outlets, and whether it contains information of exceptional originality, importance, surprise or secrecy.

 

The deadline to submit nominations for AGU’s 2020 journalism awards is 15 March 2020. Winners will be presented with their awards at AGU’s Fall Meeting 2020 in San Francisco. 

 

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Founded in 1919, AGU is a not-for-profit scientific society dedicated to advancing Earth and space science for the benefit of humanity. We support 60,000 members, who reside in 135 countries, as well as our broader community, through high-quality scholarly publications, dynamic meetings, our dedication to science policy and science communications, and our commitment to building a diverse and inclusive workforce, as well as many other innovative programs. AGU is home to the award-winning news publication Eos, the Thriving Earth Exchange, where scientists and community leaders work together to tackle local issues, and a headquarters building that represents Washington, D.C.’s first net zero energy commercial renovation. We are celebrating our Centennial in 2019. #AGU100

 

 

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Instructions for using the online nomination system

 

To submit a nomination, visit the journalism awards nomination system home page. Before you can submit a nomination, you will need to login to the system by clicking the “Continue Log in” button on the left-hand side of the screen. 

 

You will then be directed to a login screen. You will need to login to the system using your AGU account. If you do not have an AGU account, you will need to create one by selecting the “Create a new account” option and filling out the required information. (If your organization is not listed or can’t be found, please enter Organization Not Listed in the “Organization Name” field and fill out the “Suggest Your Organization” field with the name of your organization). 

 

After logging in, you will see the home page for the journalism awards. This year, AGU is accepting nominations for the Perlman and Sullivan awards. To submit a nomination, click on the text “Click here to submit a nomination.” 

 

On the nomination form page, please first select the award for which you are entering a submission (Perlman or Sullivan) using the dropdown “Category” menu. 

 

Fill out the nomination form with all the required information. When you have completed the nomination form, you can “Save” the nomination to come back to later, or “Save and Finalize” to submit the nomination. 

 

You can access saved nominations using the “In Progress” option under “My Nominations” on the left-hand side menu. Click “Edit” to edit the nomination or “Remove” to delete the nomination. You can access submitted nominations using the “Complete” option under “My Nominations” on the left-hand side menu. 

 

To submit an additional nomination, click the “Submit” button on the top navigation bar. A nominee may submit only one entry for the Perlman and Sullivan awards in a given year (i.e., one entry for the Perlman and one entry for the Sullivan).