Wikipedia:WikiProject Molecular Biology/Computational Biology/ISCB competition announcement 2014

Winners
The winners of the 2013 competition were:
 * 1st Prize Japefruit and Xelotath19 for their improvements to the Point accepted mutation article.
 * 2nd Prize Amkilpatrick for his contribution to the Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology article.
 * 3rd Prize Benno89 and Vongap for their creation of the SNV calling from NGS data article.

'''This page is for the 2014 competition. Entries have now closed.'''

ISCB Wikipedia Competition
The International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) announces an international competition to improve the coverage on Wikipedia of any aspect of computational biology. A key component of the ISCB's mission to further the scientific understanding of living systems through computation is to communicate this knowledge to the public at large. Wikipedia has become an important way to communicate all types of science to the public. The ISCB aims to further its mission by increasing the quality of Wikipedia articles about computational biology, and by improving accessibility to this information via Wikipedia. The competition is open to students and trainees at any level either as individuals or as groups.

This year there will be three different competitions that you can enter. These are for (1) English Language article, (2) Other Language article and (3) Multimedia contributions.

The prizes for the best English Language article provided by the ISCB will be:
 * 1st prize - $500 (USD) and 1 year membership to the ISCB.
 * 2nd prize - $250 (USD) and 1 year membership to the ISCB.
 * 3rd prize - $150 (USD) and 1 year membership to the ISCB.

The prizes for the Other Language article provided by the ISCB will be:
 * 1st prize - $300 (USD) and 1 year membership to the ISCB.
 * 2nd prize - $150 (USD) and 1 year membership to the ISCB.

The prizes for the Multimedia Contributions provided by the ISCB will be:
 * 1st prize - $300 (USD) and 1 year membership to the ISCB.
 * 2nd prize - $150 (USD) and 1 year membership to the ISCB.

How to Enter
Deadline: 12th January 2015 

The competition will officially start on the 1st September 2014 and finish four months later on the 12th January 2015. For each article that is entered in the competition, the difference in article quality between these two dates will be reviewed. Contributions made before the 1st September or after the 12th January will not be counted.

To enter, you should select the article or articles you intend to work on and record that along with your Wikipedia user name at the Competition Entries web page (WikiProject Computational Biology/ISCB competition entries_2014). If a group of authors intend to contribute to the same article, all Wikipedia user names should be listed.

Articles should be chosen in the area of computational biology. The Computational Biology WikiProject have selected over 1,200 English language articles that it considers within the scope of Computational Biology. Any article in this collection would be an excellent starting point for an entry. A list of articles within scope of Computational Biology ordered by quality is available via Category:Computational Biology articles by quality. Below, we list a few articles that are considered of good quality and would be good examples to follow:


 * Multiple sequence alignment
 * Rosetta@home
 * Metagenomics

If you plan to start a new article, please contact WikiProject Computational Biology to make sure the article would be considered within the scope of the project. This year for the first time we are considering non-English language articles. These articles may be original articles or they can also be translations of Wikipedia articles in another language.

Training
To make the best possible contribution to Wikipedia it is important to understand what content should be added to Wikipedia and how best to go about adding content. We strongly recommend that entrants read the PLoS Computational Biology article describing 10 Simple Rules for Editing Wikipedia. In addition, entrants who are not familiar with Wikipedia editing should take an online training course.

Rules and Regulations
Only articles listed on the Competition Entries page will be considered. At most, two articles or multimedia entries can be “claimed” per entrant or group. Once an article or multimedia entry is “claimed”, it is considered as out of bounds for other entrants in the context of the competition. However, "claiming" an article or multimedia entry does not provide an entrant with any ownership rights over it; all Wikipedia norms on collaborative editing must be respected. Claiming an article or multimedia entry in one language does not stop other entrants claiming the corresponding ones in another language.

This year, eligible articles are not limited to the English Wikipedia. All contributions to the competition will be reviewed by students nominated by the ISCB Student Council. A shortlist of the best 6 English language articles, the 6 best Other Language articles and the 6 best Multimedia entries will then be examined by the Judging panel. Any entrant may claim an article or multimedia entry and edit pseudonymously, but if shortlisted, he or she must identify themselves to one of the judging panel, with proof of student/trainee status, to be eligible for a prize. In the case of a group entry, the group will need to decide and implement how the prize will be distributed among the members. Please note that multiple people editing from one Wikipedia account is not permitted, therefore each member of a group must edit from their own account.

The following criteria will be used for judging the article entries:
 * Clarity of writing
 * Depth of knowledge of the subject area
 * Quality of figures and photos used to illustrate the article

The following criteria will be used to judge Multimedia entries
 * The quality of the illustrations
 * The size of the contribution
 * The impact of the contribution for Computational biology

The judging panel will be composed of:
 * Alex Bateman
 * Burkhard Rost
 * Predrag Radivojac
 * Janet Kelso
 * Tomás Di Domenico
 * Darren Logan
 * Daniel Mietchen

The competition is open to trainees and students at any level.

For educators and course coordinators
This competition provides an excellent training opportunity and we encourage its use as a class assignment. Course organisers should consider adding any such classroom uses in the Wikipedia Schools and University programme:


 * School and university projects

Footnote

 * All content added to articles during this competition must adhere to the basic policies and guidelines of Wikipedia. This includes:
 * No plagiarism. Material must not be copy and pasted from other sources (including textbooks, journals or websites), but instead should be reformulated in your own words and be appropriately cited.
 * No copyright infringement. Images, figures, graphs or text may not be used if under copyright with a non-free licence. Only files available through Wikimedia Commons will be considered.
 * The judges will be assessing this, and any article found to have plagiarized text or to contain non-free material under copyright will be disqualified. Please note that it is permissible to translate a Wikipedia article from one language to another but this has to be indicated.