Essay submissions wanted (teaching, theory, logic) | $500 top prize

COMPANY/PUBLICATION: AILACT ESSAY PRIZE IN INFORMAL LOGIC AND CRITICAL THINKING

Deadline: 1 September 2025

AILACT Essay Prize in Informal Logic and Critical Thinking

CALL FOR PAPERS [pdf version]

The Association for Informal Logic and Critical Thinking [AILACT] invites submissions for the 2025 AILACT Essay Prize.

This is the Prize’s 21sh anniversary.

• Prize: $500 U.S.

• Essays related to the teaching, theory, or normative practice of informal logic and critical thinking will be considered.

• There are no restrictions on authorship, except that no current Essay Prize Official or Member of the AILACT Board is eligible. Authors need not be members of AILACT, but are encouraged to be dues-paying members, so that the prize award can continue.

• Only original, unpublished papers are eligible for submission. Maximum length: 6,000 words (excluding abstract, footnotes, and bibliography)–include the word count of your essay on the title page. Authors submitting a paper previously submitted are encouraged to have made substantial revisions and improvements.

• Entries will be judged on the basis of their cogency, scholarship, style, creativity, and importance to the field. There is a limit of one entry per author.

• The jury members for the 2025 AILACT Essay Prize are, as approved by the AILACT Board of Directors: Sally Jackson, Professor of Communications, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Tim Kenyon, Vice-President of Research, Brock University; and Jose Gascon, Universidad De Murcia. The jury’s decision is final.

• To submit an essay, attach a PDF or MS Word document to an email, with AILACT ESSAY ENTRY on the “subject” line, and send it to the AILACT Essay Prize Administrator, Andrei Moldovan: mandreius@usal.es. Include in your email your name, a mailing address. Submit the paper ready for blind-reviewing: the author must not be identified in the paper or the file containing the paper or in the description of the document’s properties that is part of the file; and self-identifying references must be removed from the text, notes, and bibliography. Each page should be numbered.

• The deadline for receipt of submissions is September 1, 2025. The winner will be announced by December 15, 2025. AILACT will publicize the name of the winner on its website and at AILACT sessions held at American Philosophical Association divisional meetings in 2026.

• The prize-winning paper, and any “honourable mention” paper, will be considered for publication in Informal Logic , if it has not since been considered or accepted for publication elsewhere, and if the author consents to its consideration. The editors of IL will arrange for blind review of the paper if these conditions are met. The author will be expected to revise the paper in light of the IL reviewers’ suggestions, or to justify not doing so. Similarly, authors of such papers that are focused on the subject of critical thinking, might also consider INQUIRY: Critical Thinking Across the Curriculum as a journal for publication.

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CONTACT INFORMATION (please do not share the email address publicly):

Questions/submissions: mandreius@usal.es

Website: https://ailact.wordpress.com

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