Rules

A. AIM

The aim of the Antitrust Writing Awards ("Awards") is to promote competition scholarship and to contribute to competition advocacy. Each year, the Awards Jury contributes to this achievement by selecting the best writings published.

A Board and two Steering Committees, composed of leading enforcers, academics and counsels, participate impartially in this selection and seek to reward the most meaningful antitrust publications of 2018. In order to ensure impartiality, members of the Board, the Steering Committees and Editorial Committee are not eligible to compete.

The Awards consist of:

 “Best Articles”: best academic publications (peer-reviewed or student journals) and best business publications (non-peer-reviewed journals, briefs, memoranda, posts etc.) published by individual authors;

 “Best Soft Law”: best non-enforcement tools published by competition agencies such as guidelines, market studies, white papers, etc.

 “Best Newsletters”: Ranking of best law firms antitrust newsletters.

B. BEST ARTICLES

1. Eligibility

Articles eligible must have been:

 accepted for publication, published, or released in print or electronic format in English between January 1st and December 31st, 2018; and

 made freely available on the Internet (SSRN, academic websites...) or on the Awards website in order to allow the Jury to vote.

Articles can be co-authored and eligible authors must be natural persons.

Articles will be classified in Academic and Business categories:

 Academic: long articles accepted for publication, published, or released in print or electronic format in academic peer-reviewed journals, chapters of academic books or student journals…;

 Business: short articles accepted for publication, published, or released in print or electronic format in professional publications, such as non-peer reviewed journals, briefs, memoranda, blogs...

Each of these categories is sub-divided as follows:

• General Issues
• Concerted Practices: including criminal cartel enforcement, civil federal, state, and private enforcement, treatment of joint ventures, vertical restrictions
• Monopolization/Unilateral conduct: including attempted monopolization and invitations to collude
• Mergers: substantive merger analysis, merger enforcement and guidelines
• Intellectual Property: issues relating to antitrust and intellectual property
• Private Enforcement: issues relating to antitrust private enforcement
• Cross-border Issues
• Procedural Issues
• Asian Antitrust: issues relating to antitrust enforcement in Asia (China, Japan, India...)
• Economics: including economic theories, models, and statistical tools used in the antitrust field

2. Selection & Voting procedure

2.1 Jury’s Choice

The Editorial Committee selects two pools of eligible academic and business articles based on Concurrences readers’ submissions and the Steering Committees’ suggestions.

The Steering Committees will vote on their favorite articles, resulting in a short list of 40 finalists (20 Academic and 20 Business). Finally, the Board votes for the 20 award-winning articles.

Articles are judged according to writing, scholarship, originality, practical relevance and the contribution they make to competition advocacy. There are two award-winning articles for each of the sub-categories mentioned on item 1 above, being one for the Academic category and one for the Business category. However, the Board reserves the right to award fewer awards than planned if the articles under consideration do not meet the standards of the Awards.

2.2 Readers’ Choice

Readers will be able to vote online on their favorite article starting in January 2019 until March 25, 2019. The most voted articles both on the Academic and Business categories will be announced as the winners during the Gala Dinner on March 26, 2019.

Each reader can vote only once per article and the votes are anonymous, with no personal information from the reader being stored on the website.

C. BEST SOFT LAW

The “Best Soft Law” selection aims to contribute to developing antitrust culture and awareness. Alongside the ICN’s work, it seeks to support international antitrust advocacy by drawing attention towards the most meaningful competition agency practices. It aims at singling out some of the most interesting administration practices that could be usefully applied more generally.

1. Eligibility

Eligible publications are non-enforcement tools such as guidelines, market studies, white papers etc., issued by competition agencies between January 1st and December 31st, 2018. Publications are judged according to practical relevance, innovation and the contribution they make to competition advocacy. English versions or detailed English summaries are required to be made freely available on the agency’s website.

2. Selection & Voting procedure

The Editorial Committee invites competition agencies to submit their best soft law documents. The Steering Committees and Readers then vote for the best documents. The number of winners may vary between 5 and 10, depending on the actual number of submissions.

D. BEST NEWSLETTERS

While the Best Articles Awards reward individual articles, the Best Newsletters Ranking rewards antitrust newsletters and related free access professional publications considered overall. The Best Newsletters Ranking’s goal is to promote competition advocacy by selecting the best of these publications so that counsels can know what they should read first, depending on the subject matter.

1. Eligibility

Antitrust professional publications include newsletters, client briefs, memoranda, blogs etc., made freely available on websites of both law firms and economic consulting firms. Eligible authors are corporate entities.

Publications:

 must have been released in English between January 1st and December 1st, 2018; and
 are case or text summaries commenting on specific cases, regulations, guidelines must be at least one-page long. Articles that do not refer to a specific case or text (i.e., they cover general antitrust issues or comment various cases) are not considered for the purposes of this Ranking; and
 cover more than one case will not be considered unless each case is treated individually and is at least one-page long.

Publications are ranked according to 10 categories:

• Readership: based on a questionnaire sent to over 6,500 counsels, where they acknowledge having received the publications)
• Counsels’ Choice: based on a questionnaire sent to over 6,500 in-house counsels where they express their preferences among the surveyed publications
• Country Coverage: based on the number of jurisdictions issuing the decision/guideline and not the number of countries actually affected by the decision
• Case Coverage: based on the number of cases (including laws or regulations) reported in the publications of each firm
• Cartels: based on on the number of articles concerning cartels in the publications of each firm
• Mergers: based on on the number of articles concerning mergers in the publications of each firm
• IP & Antitrust: based on the number of cases concerning antitrust and IT published in the publications of each firm
• Private Enforcement: based on the number of articles concerning private enforcement issues published in the publications of each firm
• Asian Antitrust: based on the number of cases concerning antitrust in Asia published in the publications of each firm
• Accessibility: based on objective criteria (pdf/html/print publications, access to archives…) and subjective criteria (search engine features…) of the website of each firm

2. Selection & Voting procedure

The Editorial Committee selects a pool of eligible newsletters and related antitrust professional publications. The assessment of the above Awards and Rankings is based on a combination of objective - and subjective criteria where relevant - together with individual interviews.

For the Readership and Counsels’ Choice rankings, the Editorial Committee sends a questionnaire to the over 6,500 in-house counsels subscribing to Concurrences Review and e-Competitions Bulletin. Any in-house counsel or general counsel dealing with antitrust law is eligible to vote. Firms considered in the ranking can direct their clients to the online questionnaire in order to include in the survey their own contacts’ votes. A business e-mail address is requested in order to make sure only in-house counsels vote.

E. TERMS

1. Submissions

The deadline for submitting Articles and Soft Law documents is December 2, 2018.

2. Publication

The Awards results will be made public at the Gala Dinner, which will take place on March 26, 2019, the day before the ABA Antitrust Spring Meeting in Washington, DC. The Awards results will also be announced via social media and emails to subscribers to Concurrences Review and e-Competitions Bulletins after the Gala Dinner. The results are made available on this website. A detailed report is published in a special print issue of Concurrences Review.

3. Terms of Use and Privacy Policy

Individual votes remain confidential. Click here to read the Terms of use and our Privacy Policy.

4. Miscellaneous

The Awards are managed by Concurrences Review. Concurrences Review, acting as the event manager, works to ensure that a sufficient number of quality articles and publications are submitted and surveyed, checks eligibility, and organizes the Awards ceremony. Any unexpected issues will be dealt with by the Editorial Committee of the Awards.