Azbee Awards Judging Agreement

Overview & Commitment

The Azbee Awards of Excellence Judging Agreement lays out the terms and requirements judges must agree to in order to be accepted as a judge. It clarifies judging constraints and concerns particular to the B2B publishing industry, ASBPE's expectations of judges, confidentiality standards, and the rewards provided for our judge volunteers. You must accept the following terms to submit your judge application.

1. Professional Standards & Objectivity

• Audience-Centric Evaluation: Judges must examine entry materials with the intended B2B audience in mind, rather than the judge’s own personal background or industry. Consider how well the entry serves its specific readership.
• Adherence to Rubric: Judges must score based strictly on category requirements and the official scoring rubric only. 
• Style Neutrality: There is great variety in publishing styles across B2B journalism, including research journals. Differences in publishing style or format should not negatively affect scoring.
• Unbiased Approach: Judges must make every conscious attempt to set aside personal, topical, author, or stylistic biases that may affect their scoring, evaluating all entries fairly and ethically

2. Conflicts of Interest Policy

• Prohibited Categories: Judges are strictly prohibited from scoring:
  • A category they, their colleagues, their publications, or their parent companies have entered for the current competition year.
  • A category containing submissions from a direct competitor.
  • A category containing submissions from a former employer where a professional or personal bias exists.
• Permitted Relationships: General professional networking or casual professional relationships do not constitute a conflict of interest.
• Disclosure & Recusal Process:
  • If a judge believes they have a bias or conflict of interest with a category or single entry, they must alert the Awards Committee with a clear, honest explanation.
  • The Awards Committee will review the situation and respond with next steps. For isolated conflicts, the judge may be asked to recuse themselves from a single entry, which will be reassigned. For broader conflicts, the judge will be reassigned to a different category entirely.

3. Confidentiality & Non-Disclosure (NDA)

• Strict Privacy: Judges review recently published B2B journalism, proprietary data, and industry insights – and in many cases have access behind an entrant publication’s paywall. Such entry materials, proprietary data and scoring records contain sensitive, and often competitive, trade information. 
• No Sharing or Use: Judges agree to keep all entry materials, scoring and judge login credentials strictly confidential. Judges must not copy, share, distribute, or use any portion of the submitted entries for personal benefit or direct professional use without requesting permission through the Awards Committee and receiving written permission from the entrant publication’s editorial leadership.
• Public Silence: Judges agree not to publicly discuss upcoming winners prior to the official public winners’ announcement by ASBPE. Further, judges agree not to publicly discuss or announce their assigned categories, individual entries or scores at any time. 
• Judge Privacy: While ASBPE publicly thanks and recognizes our judges each year, we do not publicize which judges were assigned to specific categories as a precaution against harassment. A list of judges assigned to each category is shared for co-judge interaction only and must not be shared outside of the active judge pool.

4. Entrant Feedback

• Constructive Comments: Judges are strongly encouraged to leave positive and constructive comments on each entry. Constructive feedback allows entrants to learn, improve their work, and creates an immediate return on investment (ROI) for participating in the competition.

5. Rewards & Guidelines (Azbee Bucks)

• Earning Structure: Judges receive Azbee Bucks (a coupon value) as a reward for completed scoring:
  • Earn $5 in Azbee Bucks for each entry scored (e.g., a category with 10 submissions yields $50; 20 submissions yields $100).
  • There is no cap on the total amount of Azbee Bucks a judge can earn, though the Awards Committee endeavors to distribute judging workloads fairly.
  • Additional Azbee Bucks can be earned by stepping in to cover scoring assignments when other judges are unable to complete theirs.
• Redemption Rules: Azbee Bucks may be applied toward any eligible ASBPE expense. When a judge accumulates $200 or more in Azbee Bucks, $100 of the balance will be earmarked specifically for annual conference registration. To redeem Azbee Bucks, judges can simply email the Awards Committee to request a unique coupon code, noting the specific ASBPE expense they would like to cover.
• Deadlines & Forfeiture:
  • Screening and judging deadlines are structured to keep the competition programming on schedule. Scoring must be completed in full by the provided deadline.
  • If a deadline extension is requested and approved, the judge will forfeit 25% of the earned Azbee Bucks for that assignment.
  • A judge who fails to score all entries in an assigned category will forfeit all Azbee Bucks for that category (excluding approved single-entry recusals).
• Expiration: Azbee Bucks remain valid for 15 to 16 months, expiring alongside the final registration deadline for the following year’s annual conference. Judges will receive email updates regarding their Azbee Bucks balance at least twice a year.

Agreement & Commitment

• By submitting the Azbee Awards judge application, the judge agrees to commit their time, professional integrity and effort to scoring assigned categories in accordance with the terms outlined above.

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