Foreword:

In order to benefit from the research achievements of elites and innovators and create a society with advanced knowledge, capable of producing science and technology, and relying on human capital, thinkers and scientists, especially the young and talented intellectuals of the country, play a decisive role. Public support for promoting a culture of value creation and supporting applied scientific projects is an executive approach to giving importance to the efforts and hope of the country’s youth. In this regard, the Jamili Science and Technology Foundation has organized a permanent scientific competition and event, i.e., the Young Scientists Festival.

Chapter 1: Definitions

The terms used in this regulation are extensively defined below:

• Festival: The Young Scientists Festival is a non-governmental event whose executive planning began in 2016 with the support of the Jamili Science and Technology Foundation with the aim of supporting basic sciences and applied and technological projects.
• Responsible/principal Idea Creator: Responsible idea creator is a researcher who applies for funding by submitting a project to the festival.
• Proposal: A proposal is a document in which the applicant states his/her proposed project.
• Portal: The portal is designed for submitted projects in which all details of the screening, judging, finalization, and monitoring stages are recorded in a transparent manner and will be traceable by the responsible idea creator.
• Project Supervisor: A person who is introduced by the Secretariat and supervises the proper implementation of the supported project, in accordance with the scientific content of the approved project and the agreement.
• Judging Team: Committees consisting of prominent scientific and technological individuals that the festival, as a specialized institution, is responsible for evaluating the projects submitted to the festival.
• Judges’ Database: Includes all national and international expert judges in various fields of Basic Sciences (Mathematics and Computer Science, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Geology) and experts in the field of entrepreneurship and other fields if there is a special approach in the same year.
• Secretariat Expert: A person who cooperates with the relevant secretaries to coordinate and follow up on activities related to the scientific and business committees, and to formally review ideas received in the portal.
• Ministry of Science, Research and Technology (MSRT): This refers to the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
• Basic Sciences: This refers to the fields approved by the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology, including: Geology – Biology – Mathematics and Computer Sciences – Chemistry and Physics. In addition to the Basic Sciences, one axis is announced each year as a special approach with the approval of the Secretariat based on the needs of the country.
• Faculty Member: This refers to professors working in the field of Basic Sciences at universities across the country who have an employment order issued by the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology.

Chapter 2: Festival’s Judging Structure & Member Duties

Article 1: Head of the Scientific and Business Committee

The duties of the heads of the Scientific and Business Committee are as follows:

Head of the Business Committee

• Coordinate with the team to ensure that projects with international members are sent to at least one non-resident judge in the country;
• Review and confirm the correctness of the selection of projects recognized as silent, up to 10%, and if more than 10% are identified, a decision will be made in coordination with the festival secretariat;
• Review and evaluate the resumes of candidates for the head of the jury and the judging teams;
• Monitor the activities of the head of the jury, the judging and scientific evaluation team and report to the secretariat;
• Initial evaluation of projects submitted to the secretariat;
• Attend in-person and online meetings of the secondary screening and judging team;
• Professional review, evaluation and scoring of business projects being implemented or completed at the festival;
• Ranking of the top startup business projects and selection of the final laureates of the festival will be announced in coordination with the judging team of this section;
• Compile written responses to scientific/specialist requests or issues related to scientific judging to individuals and organizations;
• Study and monitor the interim and final reports of the selected business teams if referred by the secretariat;
• Presenting the festival’s business report in the same edition (monitoring reports extracted from the projects submitted to the festival and providing suggestions for improving the festival for the future editions).

Head of the Scientific Committee

• Review and evaluate the resumes of candidates for the head of the jury and the jury teams;
• Review and evaluate the resumes received in the Young Faculty Member section;
• Supervise the activities of the head of the jury, the jury team and scientific evaluation and report to the secretariat;
• Initial evaluation of the projects submitted to the secretariat;
• Review and confirm the correctness of the selection of projects recognized as silent, up to 10% of each discipline, and if more than 10% are identified, a decision will be made in coordination with the festival secretariat;
• Attend in-person and online meetings of the screening and secondary judging teams;
• Coordinate with the head of the jury to ensure that projects with international members are sent to at least one non-resident judge in the country;
• Study and monitor the interim and final reports of the selected teams if referred by the secretariat;
• Present the scientific report of the festival in the same edition (monitoring the reports extracted from the projects submitted to the festival and providing suggestions for improving the festival for the future editions).

Article 2: Judging Team

Requirements for selecting members of the jury team

Five individuals of the relevant and expert faculty members are proposed to the secretariat by the head of the jury committee of each specialized field and approved after review.

• The members of each field’s team must be one of the prominent faculty members of universities and research centers and have a successful scientific position;
• They must be committed, specialized and have more than five years of experience in scientific/industrial activity and be committed to maintaining the confidentiality of ideas available for judging;
• The orders of the jury committee are issued for a period of two years, renewable once, upon the proposal of the secretary of the scientific committee or the secretary of the business committee and approved by the festival presidency.

General Conditions:

• Iranian nationality, minimum age 40 years;
• Holds a PhD in the festival’s specialized fields;
• Is a national and international leader in his/her field of expertise;
• Has at least an associate professorship and a minimum H-index according to the following table:

• It is recommended that the faculty member be a member of one of the top universities or research institutes in the relevant field based on Google Scholar or Scopus reports.
• Based on the field of specialization, have more than 50 scientific articles and be the corresponding author in more than 30% of the published articles, in the scientific section and have more than 30 scientific articles in the start-up business section.

Scientific Conditions:

Have valuable scientific, educational and service achievements and honors, including some of the following:

1- Authoring a book or a chapter of a book published by reputable national and international publishers;

2- Authoring groundbreaking research articles that provide practical results;

3- Special scientific honors, such as winning internationally approved awards and prizes and research projects;

4- Research in the fields of fundamental science experiments and setting up educational, research or reference laboratories;

5- Significant educational, research and service activities such as writing standards, membership in the editorial board of scientific journals or membership in the scientific committee of conferences;

6- Inventions and discoveries registered in national or international authorities

7- Launching and managing an established knowledge-based business (over three and a half years) and winning national, regional or international entrepreneurship awards.

Duties of the Jury Team:

• The team must send the details of at least 10 expert judges from their respective fields, along with 5 to 10 non-resident Iranian judges, to the secretariat in Excel format in May for enrichment;
• Participate in the initial screening of received proposals in each field at the meeting of the expert committee of that field;
• In case re-review or review of proposals requiring review is required before the end of the review period, they must cooperate;
• Each member of the team is required to introduce at least 10 national and 5 international judges for inclusion in the review system;
• If necessary, experts are invited to the team meetings to provide expert opinions;
• The team is the decision-making authority regarding the initial scientific screening and the elimination of proposals that do not have the scientific, technical, and specialized level required for review, which should not exceed ten percent of the submissions of that group.

Article 3: Head of the Juries

Requirements for selecting the head of the jury

• The representative of each Basic Science field in the scientific committee is selected by introducing candidates by the country’s Basic Science faculties and evaluating them by a specialized council consisting of top Basic Science scientists in the secretariat;
• In the event of a withdrawal or emergency, the head of the scientific committee recommends a candidate from each Basic Science field to the secretariat;

The decisions of the head of the jury are issued for two years, renewable once, upon the proposal of the head of the scientific committee or the head of the business committee and approved by the festival’s presidency.

General Conditions:

• Iranian nationality, minimum age 40 years;
• Holds a PhD in the festival’s specialized fields;
• Is a national and international leader in his/her field of expertise;
• Has at least an associate professorship and a minimum H-index according to the following table:

• It is recommended that they be a faculty member of one of the top 3 to 5 universities or research institutes in the relevant field according to Web of Science or Scopus reports.
• Depending on the field of specialization, have 50 to 100 scientific articles and be the corresponding author in more than 30% of the published articles.

Scientific Conditions:

Have valuable scientific, educational and service achievements and honors, including some of the following:

1- Authoring a book or a chapter of a book published by reputable national and international publishers;

2- Authoring groundbreaking research articles that provide practical results;

3- Special scientific honors, such as winning internationally approved awards and prizes and research projects;

4- Research in the fields of fundamental science experiments and setting up educational, research or reference laboratories;

5- Significant educational, research and service activities such as writing standards, membership in the editorial board of scientific journals or membership in the scientific committee of conferences;

6- Inventions and discoveries registered in national or international authorities.

Duties of the Head of Juries:

• The head of the jury must introduce the specialized team of each discipline, which includes 3 to 5 faculty members who are experts in the relevant field, to the secretariat. The secretariat, in coordination with the scientific head, issues the decrees of the specialized team of each discipline. This team is responsible for the initial scientific screening of the received ideas and sending them to the expert judges related to the specialized field of the received idea;
• The head of the jury must receive at least 30 specialized judges from different areas of his discipline, along with 10 non-resident Iranian judges, in order to enrich the diversity of the system’s judges’ database from the members of his 5-member specialized team and send them to the secretariat in Excel format in May;
• Selecting specialized judges from the festival’s system’s judges’ database and sending projects with judging capabilities to the selected judge;
• Providing specialized guidance to the judges on how to judge and score the projects;
• Following up on the registration of the judging results by the subordinate judges;
• Responding in writing to the secretariat about technical errors and the performance of the judges in that discipline;
• Evaluation of the reports of the winners of previous editions of the festival and analysis of the status of achievement of the products of the selected teams of previous years;
• Sending the numbers of projects that are not related to that field and should be transferred to another category;
• Sending each project to 3 expert judges without any conflict of interest, and also sending each project with an international member (non-Iranian or non-resident Iranian) to a non-resident Iranian judge;
• The head of the juries is obliged to refer the relevant project to another screener if the screener does not respond within one week after the submission;
• To screen projects with international members, the system’s international judge bank must be used or a new judge must be announced to the secretariat by the head of the group;
• Monitoring the existence of specialized keywords for each judge in the system and observing diversity in the selection of judges (careful in matching the judge’s expertise with the subject of the project received by the festival and not sending more than 10 projects for judging to one judge);

Note 1: In exceptional cases, the head of the juries, in consultation with the jury team and with the approval of the secretary of the scientific committee and informing the secretariat, will decide on the possibility of sending more than 10 proposals to one judge.

• Monitoring the absence of a proposal in each year in that field for professors who are introduced as judges;
• Reading and monitoring the interim and final reports of the two selected teams if referred by the secretariat;

The judges must not have a conflict of interest with the applicant and the project colleagues. To this end, the judge accepts the commitment letter of no conflict of interest at the same time as accepting the judgment. The judge also is responsible not to communicate with the applicant about the received proposal during and after the judgment, and if the judgment begins, it will not be possible for the applicant to edit the proposal. Examples of conflict of interest include the following:

• The judge is one of the colleagues announced in the submitted proposal;
• The judge and the applicant have a professor-student relationship;
• The judge and the applicant must be affiliated with the same department.
• The judge and the applicant must have collaborated on a project or plan in the last 3 years.

Note 2: If the Secretariat becomes aware of a conflict of interest before the end of the judging period, the said plan will be referred to other judges. If it is after the end of the judging period, the plan will be removed and the judge accepting the plan with a conflict of interest will be transferred to the blacklist.

Article 4: Specialized Judges

Requirements for Selecting Specialized Judges

• Judges in the Innovative Idea Section must be first-rate faculty members of universities and research centers, and startup business section judges can hold successful and prominent industrial positions instead of being faculty members;
• Committed and specialized, with more than five years of scientific/industrial experience, and committed to maintaining the confidentiality of ideas available for judging;

Duties of specialized Judges

• Carefully review the materials, documents, and attachments of submitted projects and evaluate the ideas registered in the festival system in terms of scientific level, feasibility, and inclusion of points, and record the technical reasons for the registered points in at least 150 words, referring to the main weaknesses;
• Review the feasibility of the proposed project in such a way that there is a possibility of providing an explanation to the applicant in the event of an objection;
• Re-examine ideas requiring re-evaluation at the discretion of the festival secretariat and record the reason for the points entered in terms of the technical and feasibility of the proposed project;
• Participate in judging sessions online and in person if needed;
• The deadline for judging submitted projects is a maximum of 14 days from the time of submission, so if there is a lack of expertise or a conflict of interest in the submitted project, the inability to judge must be recorded in the system within 48 hours.

Chapter 3: Process of Idea Evaluation

Article 1: Screening of Projects

Only ideas completed in the system before the registration deadline can be submitted for scientific evaluation, and participants over 18 years of age with group priority (by entering the role of each individual in the group) can register an idea or business plan in the system.

Note 1: In the event of a written request through ticket registration in the registration system, the applicant can only be given editing access once before the idea registration deadline.

The scientific evaluation process is divided into two stages: initial scientific screening and scientific and specialized screening. The received projects are initially screened from a formal perspective by an expert of the scientific committee, and the result is announced in writing to the secretary of the scientific committee. Then, the secretary of the scientific committee refers the projects that are eligible for screening to the head of the judging group of each section for scientific screening. The head of the judging group of each section reviews the projects with the members of the team for scientific screening, and then the projects that are eligible for judging are referred to the judges of each team. The judging steps are as follows:

Initial Evaluation (Form and Structure)

• The Secretariat expert/scientific evaluator can check the completeness and absence of formal/structural problems in the project and inform the participant in case of a problem in the form of a “defect removal notice” only once for each project before the end of the idea registration deadline.
• If the field selected by the applicant does not match the idea title after the evaluation by the judge, after sending a ticket in the system from the Secretariat and confirming the change by the applicant, the Secretariat will select a field that is appropriate for the project.

Initial Scientific Screening

• The initial scientific screening in the specialized team is carried out by the group head and members of the specialized team according to the job description.
• The screening process must be carried out within a maximum of 10 working days with the presence of at least 3 members of the team, either in person at the secretariat or online with the coordination and presence of the festival expert.
• If the project is rejected in the first screening stage, the reasons for the rejection must be recorded in the system in a technical and specific manner in at least 200 words by the team.

Scientific and specialized screening

Ideas and projects eligible for judging are assigned to a selected specialized judge from the system’s judges database and new judges are added if there is no such expertise in the judge’s database upon the proposal of the heads of the jury groups;

• Study and review of reliable sources by at least three judges to judge the projects and give points to the ideas and projects, and each judge under his committee should not send more than 10 projects;
• Sending the ranking of the projects based on the points by the system and reviewing the top ranked projects in the field by the committee head and calling participants for an online interview or sending a clip introducing how to implement the idea or business plan;
• Final analysis of the ranked ideas and projects by the committee head and the scientific and business head and invited experts in the festival’s specialized commission to ensure the feasibility of the projects with the highest points for the final selection of the winners;
• The judging fee will be deposited to the account number of the esteemed judges in the system no later than one month after the end of the festival closing ceremony.

Note 2: The certificate of judging in Persian and English can be extracted from the system after the festival is over by the project itself.

Note 3: The screening process must be completed within 4 working weeks and the results of the judging must be sent to the Scientific Head and the Business Head by the head of the judging group.

Article 2: Judging Projects

After the team decides to send the applicant’s proposal to the judging process, the approved judges of the Research Management System (Kaiper) will evaluate the screened proposals based on the items in the table in Chapter Three.

Judgment Fee

A fee is paid to scientific and business judges according to the number of judgments listed in the system.

Note 4: The judgment fee rate is approved annually by the Specialized Commission.

Judging Regulations for the Young Faculty Member Section

The purpose of selecting the Young Faculty Member in the Young Scientists Festival is to support the implementation of research projects by active faculty members in the fields of Basic Sciences and the transformation of science into technology, entrepreneurship, and the country’s socio-economic development.

In the call announced by the festival each year, faculty members with the following conditions can register in the festival system and the documents received after scoring and ranking will be introduced at the closing ceremony of the festival in December of each year.

General conditions for participating in the Young Faculty Member section:

• Be a full-time or part-time faculty member of a university or research institute or scientific institution in the country.
• At the time of submitting the documents, the applicant must be no more than 44 years old.
• Have at least one degree in one of the Basic Sciences fields (Geology – Biology – Mathematics and Computer Science – Chemistry – Physics) and currently be employed in one of the universities or higher education institutions of the country under the supervision of the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology providing educational and research services and current research related to the fields of Basic Sciences.
• Have a good reputation at the national and international level in the scientific field and respect for research and professional ethics.
• Have no returned articles or articles published in fake or invalid journals.
• Have new scientific achievements (experimental and theoretical) that have been used in the development or manufacture of products or services to society.
• Have a valid achievement by presenting a national certificate from (Scientific and Industrial Research Organization) or international in applied fields such as patenting or obtaining a license from reputable organizations in the country for industrial-commercial production.
• Have a scientific-research article, book or chapter of a book published in scientific centers approved by the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology, according to the nature of the field.
• Have an applied or industrial research project leading to a product or service at the national or international level.
• Have a minimum H-index of 7 in Scopus (minimum 10 in Google Scholar) and a minimum educational evaluation average of 17.

Criteria for evaluating nominated faculty members:

The information uploaded by the applicant in the announcement system specified below will be scored and summarized. A consensus review based on the following additional items will also be considered in selecting applicants:

• The individual’s activities should be based on fundamental or applied Basic Science activities towards solving the country’s problems and challenges and developing knowledge-based businesses;
• The evaluation index of the applicant’s self-declaration letter should include key technological achievements in the field of Basic Science, impact on the development of application-oriented Basic Science, promotion of science in industry and society, production of a product of scientific and technical knowledge, solving a national or international problem, localization, direct impact of research on society;
• The applicant should have an impact beyond research activities in the fields of education, culture, and services to the community.

Information requested from applicants in the festival system:

• General Personal Information:
• Year of Employment:
• University/Research Institute of Employment:
• Faculty/Research Institute of Employment:
• Educational/Research Group of Employment:
• Academic Rank:
• Scopus Link
• Google Scholar Link
• ORCID Number
• Number of Articles as Corresponding Author:
• Number of National Patents
• Number of International Patents
• Number of Completed Projects with Industrial Employers:
• Number of Industrial Projects Underway:
• Number of Knowledge-Based/Technological/Innovative/ Startups in Table Format
• Name of Mass-Produced Applied Products:
• Industry/Company/Business Consulting
• Knowledge Transfer to Industry:
• Developed Infrastructures with Applicant’s Participation:
• Awards Received in the Field of Basic Sciences:
• Launching or Participation in the Establishment of Knowledge Based/Innovative/Technological Companies
• Conducting Commercialization and Entrepreneurship Training Courses
• Operating Licenses or Approvals for Industrial Products
• Localization and Improvement of Technical Knowledge to help Knowledge-based Production
• CV attachment:
• A letter stating major achievements in a maximum of 300 words
• Optional attachment: