EFJ guidelines for fair creative competitions

1. Everyone who enters the competition shall be recognised as the author of the work(s) they enter and shall keep their authors' rights in the work(s) they submit (their copyright).

2. Authors' moral rights shall be respected: the work(s) shall not be altered and the author shall be credited whenever and wherever the work is used or reproduced.

3. The competition organisers shall clearly state in the competition regulations the uses they wish to make of the work(s) submitted. The purposes of these uses shall be limited to promotion of the competition in material the competition organisers publish and agreed uses of the winning work(s) when publishing the results.

4. It shall be understood that authors grant to the competition organisers only these precise permissions for use of their work: that is, agreements. These agreements shall not be exclusive. These agreements shall terminate a reasonable time after the competition is judged.

5. The competition organisers must obtain a separate agreement from each author, offering fair compensation, before they sell on, hand over, publish, make available or distribute the work(s) submitted by any means or in any way not covered by the agreements clearly stated in the rules as above.

6. If the competition organisers intend to archive work(s) submitted, the exact method of archiving shall be clarified in the regulations. No further use shall be made of works from the archive without explicit agreement from their authors as set out above.

7. Authors have the right to know the names of the jury members making the decisions and the exact prizes. Adequate rules and procedures that prohibit any form of undue influence on the jury process must be developed.


Brussels, October 2010