Submission Requirements

Not meeting the International Competition’s acceptance criteria will result in lower scores in the final competition. 

All submissions must:

1.     Include the following information:

• Name of author(s).

• Age of author(s) on day of submission to the National Competition.

• Name of registered school or group.

• Country of residence.

2.     Fulfil the Format & Structure and the Dissemination criteria for its category.

3.     Be in written and/or spoken English or must have English subtitles.

4.     Focus on real and current local issues with links to the global context.

5.     Present possible and constructive solutions supported by credible sources e.g., local stakeholders, experts, academic research, etc.

6.     Include a credit role, footnotes or a bibliography with the sources of images, video footage, music and information not created by students (see information below).

7.     Identify and provide a brief explanation of how the submission is related to one or more Sustainable Development Goals. Submissions can focus on any of the Sustainable Development Goals, but an environmental lens is always required.

Please also note that; 

• Countries that run their National Competition after the YRE International Competition entry deadline may submit winning entries to the next year’s International Competition.

• Submissions can only be entered once and in one age category.

• Late submissions to the International Competition will not be accepted.

Ready to submit your work? Before you do, take a look at these checklists to make sure nothing is missing!

PLAGIARISM AND CITING YOUR SOURCES

Legal matters are especially important in today’s media. It is your responsibility to be aware of the rules and regulations relating to media content (text, photos and music) when you work on your submission. Any submissions that FEE finds to be of dubious legal standing will be ineligible to win the International Competition. If you have any doubts on this matter, please contact the National Operator in your country or YRE International head office.

Plagiarism, or using someone else’s ideas, words, images, videos and/or music and representing it as your own original work, is a serious offense. Therefore, it is very important that you properly cite, any ideas, text or other media that are not your own. You can cite your sources using footnotes, credit rolls for videos, or a bibliography. There are several online sources where you can check your written work, such as articles, for plagiarism. As stated in the criteria, all photos, articles, and videos should be your own originally work, and in the case of videos a minimum of 70 percent of the video should be your own video footage, images, etc. When reporting on issues and events, it is likely you will conduct additional research on your topic – and we encourage this! Just make sure that you can show where you found your information by citing it.

Find out more details about ethical journalism and plagiarism by clicking here.

MLA STYLE

MLA (Modern Language Association) Style is a way of citing ones sources and formatting one’s work in a way that allows the audience to follow one’s ideas in a clear format and easily find sources for interesting information. Using a citation style such as MLA fosters academic honesty and the credibility of one’s work. Website like EasyBib, BibMe or CitationMachine all have MLA style guides and can be used to automatically create citations in MLA style for news articles, videos, images, and more.

Check out our citation guide for more information.