Davidge Award

The Davidge Award is an annual prize for the best literature review by a PhD student on an innovative topic in ceramics. All entries that are accepted after peer review will be published in the journal. The winning entry will receive a £500 prize, a certificate and their paper will be made free to access for the following year.

The award is run and judged by the Editors of Advances in Applied Ceramics: Structural, Functional and Bioceramics (AAC), the specialist ceramics journal of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IOM3), and is open to current PhD students studying for a materials science and engineering related qualification at any academic institution worldwide. The submission should be submitted during the PhD or within one year of completion.

The Award commemorates the distinguished contributions to the science and application of ceramics made by the late Roger Davidge (1936–97). During a career spent largely at AERE Harwell during the laboratory’s heyday, and also at Leeds and Oxford universities. He pioneered the introduction of fracture mechanics concepts to ceramics. His research in areas that included fracture, toughness, fatigue, thermal shock and the statistics of mechanical fracture made an outstanding contribution to knowledge on these subjects.

The deadline for the award is the 1^st September of the year of the award. Entries made after this deadline will be considered for the following year.

Entries must be in English and review a topic relevant to current research in ceramics science and engineering. The judges will assess both the technical content (justification for the review; coverage and interpretation of the literature) and style (use of English and structure) of each review.

For full instructions on your submitting your review please read our ‘Davidge Award Guidelines’.

The maximum length of reviews is 7000 words, and the scope must be carefully considered in view of this restriction. Focused reviews of novel or developing areas are preferable to broader reviews of areas covered by existing reviews or monographs.

A literature review is not the same as a thesis introduction. The review must be self-contained and critical (i.e. it should comment on and interpret the literature) and must not refer to unpublished work. Basic theory and established knowledge should be covered briefly, with references to existing reviews and textbooks. The review should focus on unresolved questions and conclude by identifying areas where further work is required to advance the field.

Credit will be given for the effective use of illustrations to convey key concepts and to compare and synthesize data from different sources.

The judges’ decision is final and absolute in all respects. Publication in AAC may be subject to the completion of revisions recommended by the judges or specialist reviewers. Once a review has been accepted, it is the candidate’s responsibility to obtain any necessary permission to reproduce figures or other material for which he or she does not hold copyright.

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