THINKING ABOUT ENTERING? HERE IS WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW!

Whether you are well versed in digital humanities or a complete novice, Gale Digital Scholar Lab lowers the barriers to text and data mining and can be used with many Gale Primary Sources, for example - The Times Digital Archive 1785-2019, Eighteenth Century Collections Online and Archives of Sexuality and Gender*. 

This is your chance to win 1 of 3 prizes and develop in-demand digital literacy skills and analytical experience that will get your work noticed at the same time. Your essay should focus on your methodology in the Lab, so aim to write something that can be read by non-subject experts who want to understand how you explored your subject. 

 

The important bits: 

  • Word count: craft an engaging essay of 1,500 to 2,000 words. 

  • Deadline: submit your essay and a cover letter, signed by a member of your faculty to confirm your student status, by December 15th, 2023.  

  • Language: essays should be written in English 

  • Essay Submission: Submit your essay and covering letter using this Entry Form

  • Questions: If you have any questions, email [email protected]. 

 

Remember, your essay must use Gale Digital Scholar Lab, so dive into this cutting-edge resource and explore its potential. This is your chance to develop in-demand analytical experience and get your work noticed.  Good Luck!

 

*Please note - access to specific Gale Primary Sources with the Lab will vary depending on what collections are available at your institution 

GUIDANCE FOR ENTRANTS - Tips on Writing a Great Essay

  • If you don’t know where to find Gale Digital Scholar Lab, or the Gale Primary Sources collections at your university, ask your library. They will often be in a databases list on the library website. 

  • Entries are encouraged on a variety of topics, subjects or themes. Gale Digital Scholar Lab enables students at subscribing institutions to analyse many of their Gale Primary Sources digital archives, and to upload their own text data for analysis.  

  • Entrants are strongly encouraged to include visualisations or data downloaded from Gale Digital Scholar Lab or screenshots of tool or cleaning configurations to illustrate their methodology. 

  • Essays should be as thorough as possible in describing the research methodology. Entrants should consider submitting the exact steps, tools settings and configurations that were used to create an analysis. Including the search history used to create a content set, or a link to a downloaded version of the content set will allow reviewers to properly judge the methodology used.  

  • Entrants should also consider including the raw analysis data download in an appendix to enable replication and review of their process.  

  • References should appear as endnotes with continuous numbering in Chicago style 17th edition, e.g:  

    • Pollan, Michael. The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. New York: Penguin, 2006 

  • You can cite Gale documents using the ‘cite’ function in the Document Viewer, e.g.:  

  • Guidance on citing Gale Digital Scholar Lab is here.  

 

Terms and Conditions

  • The competition is open to any current undergraduate student or masters student from a relevant discipline (primarily Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, but students from other disciplines may enter) 

  • Entrants must be a qualifying student in the 2023/2024 academic year and must prove their status by attaching a covering letter to their entry, signed by a member of their faculty.  

  • The competition requires an essay of 1500-2000 words that focuses on students’ use of Gale Digital Scholar Lab and requires the student’s institution to have a current subscription to Gale Digital Scholar Lab.  

  • Students may enter more than one essay into the competition.  

  • An entry that is deemed to plagiarise existing research, or which alters visualisations or analysis to produce favourable conclusions not suggested by the data analysis will be disqualified from the competition.  

  • By agreeing to these terms and conditions, entrants agree not to submit any material that contains offensive or inappropriate content. Any submission judged to be containing inappropriate content will be disqualified from the competition.  

  • Entries must be written in English but can contain references to non-English sources or content. 

  • Entries will be judged by the Gale Digital Scholar Lab product management team. All decisions are final.  

  • Prizes are $200 for 1st place, $150 for 2nd place and $100 for 3rd place. Prizes will be distributed in the form of a pre-paid gift card, emailed to the winners. 

  • In addition to awarding prizes, Gale reserves the right to highly commend entries on the basis of their characteristics (highly commended for Sentiment Analysis use, highly commended History essay etc). Highly commended essays will not receive a cash prize but will be published on the Gale Digital Scholar Lab Showcase.  

  • Entrants retain intellectual property rights to their work. Entering this competition does not restrict an entrant publishing their essay in another forum such as an academic journal or blog. By entering this competition, entrants assign the intellectual property rights to their entry to Gale for the express purpose of publishing their entry on the Gale Digital Scholar Lab Showcase. This showcase is open access and Gale reserves the right to quote any entry for the purpose of advertising, including on social media.

  • Personal data is collected under the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA) and the General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679 (GDPR) and will only be used to: 

  • Inform prize winners and honourees 

  • Identify authorship of essays on the Gale Digital Scholar Lab Showcase

  • By agreeing to these terms and conditions, entrants’ consent to their personal data being shared outside the UK for the purpose of entry judging.  

  • The competition is run under English law but is open to any qualifying student from any Gale Digital Scholar Lab-subscribing institution globally.  

  • The competition complies with the requirements of the British Code of Advertising, Sales Promotion and Direct Marketing (“CAP Code”), which is accessible here: https://www.asa.org.uk/codes-and-rulings/advertising-codes/non-broadcast-code.html  

  • Closing date for this competition is December 15th, 2023.