Library Graduate Student Prize: Frequently Asked Questions
Eligibility
Yes. Professional students, including health sciences students, are encouraged to apply.
Yes. UC Davis postdoctoral scholars across all fields are eligible to apply.
Yes.
Yes. Current Graduate students enrolled in Fall quarter who completed the submitted work while at UC Davis are eligible.
Yes! There are many ways to find and access library resources, and it is not necessary to have consulted a librarian to be eligible for this prize.
No. The work must be unpublished.
Yes. This does not count as “publication.”
If your work has been published or accepted for publication at the time of the application deadline, it is not eligible for the Graduate Student Prize. For example, if your work is accepted for publication in November, even if it is not set to publish until January 1st, it would NOT be eligible for this prize because it was accepted for publication before the application deadline.
Yes.
Yes. As long as the applicants can:
- clearly show they made effective use of the UC Davis Library’s resources and/or services,
- clearly show the significance of the topic and how the proposal aims to bring a new point of view to the discipline, and
- clearly show the potential real-world applications and how it might help address real-world problems, reduce disparities, or promote broader societal benefit.
Preparing and Submitting the Application
You may submit only one project of which you are the primary creator, however you may be listed as a team member on other projects in which you participated.
For the Cover Letter, the word limit is 750 words. There is no word or page limit for the scholarly work. Applicants submitting very long works should consider if only a portion of the work is sufficient to demonstrate that the work meets the prize criteria. For example, students submitting a dissertation may choose to submit a chapter or two instead of the full dissertation.
Please review the Evaluation Process and Criteria section of the Library Graduate Student Prize page, and choose the project you think best meets the criteria on which the entries will be judged.
Applicants may use artificial intelligence tools within their submitted works and application materials. Applicants are required to adhere to the Library Graduate Student Prize AI Policy.
If you are unable to submit your work via the Application Portal, and you cannot upload elsewhere and provide a link to your work, please email librarygradstudentprize@ucdavis.edu for assistance.
No. Only the requested materials will be considered.
No. All applications must be submitted by 11:59 PM on the date of the submission deadline. Late applications will not be accepted. You cannot start your submission in the portal before the deadline and submit after 11:59 PM. The application portal will automatically close at 11:59 PM and you will no longer be able to submit.
Application Evaluation
Submissions will be screened for completeness and eligibility, then sent to judges who will evaluate each submission using the Library Grad Student Prize rubric (pdf).
Reviewers are instructed not to consider the disclosed use of AI within submission materials or the scholarly work in their assessments and to instead evaluate submissions based on the criteria in the Library Graduate Student Prize Rubric.
Yes, if you meet all of the criteria for eligibility, as described on the Library Graduate Student Prize page. Please note that criteria for eligibility, prize requirements and/or the rubric may change from year to year.