Research Paper Competition – 4th Edition
There will always be something new and interesting to discover!
The Albanian-American Development Foundation, through the CleanScore project, has enabled the access to JSTOR for all the public partner universities – www.jstor.org. Being one of the biggest digital libraries of academic journals, books, and primary sources, JSTOR provides useful materials to all the students, professors, and researchers of different disciplines.
In order to encourage the scientific research among students, as well as the use of the digital library JSTOR, CleanScore has undertaken the initiative of organizing the Research Paper Competition – 4th edition.

The participation in this competition is open for all the students that are currently attending a study program at one of the High Education Institutions in Albania and in the region.
There is no limitation regarding the discipline of the research papers that will participate in the competition.
Admission criteria:
- Papers must adhere to the rules of the academic writing
- Papers must be original work and not contain plagiarism. The evaluation committee will conduct a check through the Akademia.al platform
- The research paper must be argumentative
- The paper must contain 2.000 – 2.500 words
- At least 50% of the references must be from JSTOR
- The paper should be in English
Winning papers will be announced at the end of the competition.
Important Months
15 February 2023 | Submission period |
March 2023 | Selection and evaluation of the papers |
April 2023 | Announcement of the winners |


Award ceremony of the third edition.
- Technical criteria
Layout: A4
Font: Times New Roman
Spacing: Single spaced
Font size: 12 pt
Margins: 1” at the four sides of the page
- The cover page must contain the following:
University details (Logo, University, Faculty, Department)
Student’s details (Name, Surname, Year of studies, Study Program)
Field of study & Paper theme
- Content
The paper should be divided into: Introduction, Development, Conclusions and Recommendations.
Each paragraph must have at least one reference. Each page must have no less than 3 references and the referencing method must be the same for the entire paper.
- References
The bibliography should be on a separate page at the end of the paper and is not part of the total word count. The format of the bibliography should be the same as the one used in the paper.
To get more detailed information on the correct referral forms click the link below.
Paper Submission:
Papers will be sent to the following email address. Only those papers submitted before the announced deadline and by the current students of the regional universities, will be accepted in the competition.
JSTOR@CleanScore.al

All the papers that will pass the second stage of evaluation by the evaluation committee, will receive a Certificate of Participation. This includes any paper that meets the technical criteria and passes the anti-plagiarism filter.
During the time that the call is open, in order to help interested students in participating, CleanScore will organize online meetings with the participation of experienced lecturers in the field of research and publication. Open online events will be held to introduce students to the JSTOR platform.