Tracks/Software/Judging

Status of this document: Draft for discussion

2014 Software Track Judging

Judging for the Software track will have area-specific requirements for medals as detailed below. These criteria evolve together with the iGEM competition, so please read carefully. Software Tools teams are also eligible for selection as Finalists, Grand Prizes, and Special Prizes at the iGEM 2014 World Championship Jamboree.

Bronze Medal

1. Register the team, have a great summer, and have fun attending the Jamboree in Boston.
2. Create and share a description of the team's project via the iGEM wiki.
3. Present a Poster and Talk at the Regional Jamboree and World Championship Jamboree.
4. Develop and make available via the The Registry of Software Tools an open source software tool that supports synthetic biology.

Detailed Technical Requirements:

• Wiki documentation of project aims, methods and success
• Use git (from beginning of project)
• Submission of complete source code and any auxiliary files to GitHub
• Basic code documentation for outside developers
• Detailed installation or setup instructions for users (if applicable)
  • for web servers: provide Docker container of your server (details are being worked on by iGEM headquarters)
• Basic user guide

Silver Medal

In addition to the Bronze Medal requirements:

1. Follow best practises in software development so that other developers can modify, use and re-use your code.
2. Provide a comprehensive and well-designed User Guide.
3. Demonstrate the relevance of your development for Synthetic Biology.

Detailed Technical Requirements:

• Detailed API documentation, preferably, automatically built from source code documentation (use tools like doxygen, yard, rdoc, naturaldocs, etc)
• more than one realistic test case
• automated unit tests, documentation of test coverage
• collect one bonus point (see below)

Gold Medal

To earn a Gold Medal, in addition to the Silver Medal requirements, a team must:

1. Provide a convincing validation, testing the performance of their development -- experimental or by other teams. Note, even if the algorithm turns out not to work, they can still get Gold if their test is good and the analysis convincing.
2. Show how their software effects Human Practices in Synthetic Biology. This may include: ethics, sharing, innovation and creative process, ownership, safety, or security.

Detailed Technical Requirements:

• good test coverage
• excellent installation-, user- and developer documentation
• collect 3 bonus points (see below)

Bonus points

None of the bonus points are a strict requirement but you have to collect at least one or three of them in order to earn the Silver or Gold medal, respectively.

• 2-3 points for: experimental validation of your software or algorithm (experiments can be outsourced to other teams, labs or companies)
• 1 point for: use and support of [http://www.sbolstandard.org SBOL]
• 1 point for: re-use and further development of previous iGEM software projects (or parts thereof)
• 1 point for: use and/or improvement of existing synthetic biology tools or frameworks
• 1 point for: development of a well documented library for other developers rather than "only" stand-alone Apps for end users
• 1-2 points for: surprising us with something that is so cool or new that we would have never thought of it

Please note, these requirements are preliminary and will still be changed and fine-tuned by the software committee. Feel free to contact the software committee to ask for clarification or participate in the discussion.

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