Special Criteria for Research Student Papers for the NIRS Competition inIntegrated Communications

Formatting

1. Remove mentions of a paper's authors, co-authors and academic supervisor from the title page, the main body and the page headers. IMPORTANT! Information on authors/co-authors, academic supervisors, and place of study is provided only in the supporting questionnaire that is filled in when submitting the paper. The title page must not contain any reference to your home university and city; it should state only the title of your paper and the relevant keywords.
2. Please make sure that your paper is limited to 60,000 characters, including spaces. We will count the entire volume of the file, which includes the bibliography, all annexes (or appendices), the title page, and the contents. Footnotes will be disregarded for the purposes of calculating the overall volume of the paper. 
3. It is not permitted to use screenshots in the paper, with the exception of captions, graphs and tables, data collection tools (e.g., interview guides, screeners, questionnaires, observation minutes, etc.), as well as code tables, transcripts of interviews and focus groups, completed journals, and observation/experiment minutes, etc. See the "Special Criteria" section for further details. Papers that include screenshots of textual data not pertaining to those data types listed above (e.g., a bibliographical list) will be considered without taking such screenshots into account, for the purpose of reducing the paper's word count . IMPORTANT!
4. Only those papers saved in the following formats will be accepted for the Competition: .doc, .docx, .rtf or .pdf; the file's volume may not exceed 200 MB.
5. Each borrowing must be matched by a footnote with a bibliographical link to the source literature, formatted in accordance with the GOST P 7.0.5-2008 and GOST P 7.0.108-2022 standards. If a paper has been written in English, it should follow the APA formatting style.
6. The paper must provide an in-depth analysis of the topic stated in the paper's title. The main body should focus on the core of the problem at hand; arguments must be clear and concise; and the presentation thereof must be logical.
7. The main body must be in four sections:
   • The Introduction performs the function of the reader's first immersion in the given research topic through providing substantiated reasons for selecting the given topic and the author's research interests, as well as contextualising the research topic by demonstrating sources that are critical for the reader's comprehension of the objectives and structure of the given research study. 
   • The main body should contain at least two chapters: conceptual and empirical. The Literature Review should recreate the academic discussions dedicated to the given research topic and should include a critical analysis of the key research works on the topic, while also enabling the precise specification of the research problem by means of posing a research question, as well as conceptualising the key concepts and terms and stating the hypotheses (if necessary). The premise of the conceptual part should serve as the basis for developing the research design, which must include descriptions of the techniques for collecting primary data (IMPORTANT!) and its subsequent analysis. In the empirical part, the author should perform an in-depth analysis of the empirical data and present a substantive interpretation of the research findings.
   • The Conclusion must feature a correlation between the research findings and prior academic discussions, while also outlining limitations on and future prospects for research. The Conclusion may specify the applied and academic significance of the research work, as well as give recommendations drawn from the research results.
   • The List of Cited Sources and Literature (mandatory element) and annexes (or appendices) (if necessary). The paper must conclude with the List of Cited Sources and Literature, which must be formatted as per the GOST Р 7.0.100– 2018 standard (if the paper is in Russian) or APA style (if the paper is in a foreign language).
8. Papers must exhibit an academic writing style and use commonly accepted terminology pertaining to communication approaches, definitions, abbreviations and symbols. It is not permissible anywhere in the main body of the paper to substitute appropriate academic and professional/specialised terms with media-style or journalistic phrasing and common cliché phrases or professional jargon.
9. Authors may use generative model technologies (e.g., texts, program code, captions, etc.) in their papers submitted for the Student Research Papers Competition (NIRS Competition), with the mandatory proviso that they explicitly disclose the use of such generative technologies in their abstracts. Within their Competition paper, a participant must explain precisely how they utilised AI, either in the Introduction or the Conclusion. Specifically, the following must be indicated: the purpose of applying AI, the full title of the AI used, name of the relevant source/site, description of the AI application method (information on prompts, sequence of actions, etc.) If the main body includes an AI-generated text, a respective footnote must be provided, along with details on the AI application method in the relevant section. 
10. It is not permissible to use AI (IMPORTANT!): for writing the entire paper, generating a text based entirely on AI (without research work involving primary sources), committing plagiarism, fabricating the results of one's own work (e.g., for generating titles of non-existent sources), or without disclosing the use of AI and the AI application method used.