Index › Judging and Criteria › Entry and submission process

Entry and submission process

Record details

Branch	Judging and Criteria
Record	records/entry-and-submission-process
Subject scope	The ordinary sequence from published slate to announced outcome
Format	Reference record with a staged outline

Most cycles follow the same broad sequence regardless of size. The stages below are described generically; any given programme will compress or extend them.

Slate publication

The divisions and their criteria are published together. Publishing criteria after the entry window opens is generally treated as poor practice, because entrants cannot write to a standard they have not seen.

Entry window

A fixed period during which submissions are accepted. Windows usually carry a hard close because the verification stage downstream cannot begin while entries are still arriving.

Eligibility check

An administrative pass that removes submissions falling outside the stated period or trade area. This is separate from judging and normally carries no score.

Scoring and shortlist

Panels score against the published criteria and a shortlist is drawn from the results. Shortlist length is generally fixed in advance so that a strong field cannot quietly expand it.

Verification

Claims in shortlisted submissions are checked against supporting material. An entry that cannot support a claim is normally rescored rather than removed, unless the claim was central to its case.

Announcement

Outcomes are released at the end of the cycle. The gap between final scoring and announcement exists so that results can be prepared under embargo.