As this newsletter is published, the deadline for ICA's awards nominations will have just closed, and the awards committees will begin their work of reviewing and evaluating the nominations submitted to them. In thanking them in advance for their efforts, it is my hope that their work is onerous! In other words, I hope that they have received many submissions-making their job harder, yes, but also more inclusive, more representative of ICA as a whole.

ICA's awards process has been under constant review in recent years. While award recipients have, undoubtedly, represented excellent scholarship in our field, there have been concerns as to whether the pool of nominations from which they were selected is sufficiently large or diverse, and in some years, certain awards have not even been made. These concerns have occasioned some deliberation and debate on the awards committees and at the Board of Directors' meetings, as I note below.

Several years ago (in 2005), the ICA Strategic Planning Committee presented a paper to the Board of Directors raising questions about the visibility of the awards (arguing, in other words, that too few members were aware of them, resulting in too few nominations), the composition and approach of the awards committees (being insufficiently diverse in membership and somewhat inconsistent year on year) and the criteria used to evaluate nominations (being rather vague and, potentially, subjective).

Perhaps controversially, that paper opened with the claim that 'America is an award-driven society,' the implication being that this may not be the case in some, even many, other countries - hence the low rate of award nominations from various parts of the world. It is certainly the case that in some countries - perhaps I should speak for my own - there is little practice of putting colleagues forward for awards, the very idea seeming rather brash and self-serving in the UK. But here as elsewhere, formal processes of evaluation play an increasing role in academic life, with criteria for establishing objective merit being newly sought to ground these processes.

Put positively, the argument that a professional association should identify and recognise excellent scholarship is an important one. It is indeed appropriate for ICA to celebrate the best work of its members during the past year, promoting this both among the membership and as a means of disseminating communication scholarship more widely. As the current chair of the Research Awards Committees, Christina Slade, observes, "The ICA awards have recognised many of our outstanding colleagues. They have had an important role in establishing our field in the broader academic context."

The process by which this is achieved must, of course, be fair and open. Since the Strategic Planning Committee's paper, significant improvements to the awards process have been introduced into ICA's procedures, and I shall take a moment to review these.

The composition of awards committees is now more diverse. The requirement of previous years that past winners should chair the following year's committee was removed to permit more flexibility in selecting chairs. Especially recently, efforts have been made to ensure that the composition of ICA committees, including the awards committees, sufficiently represents members from outside North America - for 2007-8, the balance on committees is roughly 50:50 (North America/rest of the world).

 The awards process has been as widely publicised as possible, and I thank Division Chairs and others who have circulated and responded to the call for nominations. In response to a proposal to improve the perception of the awards, titles were formally changed from 'best' (article, book) to 'outstanding'. And in response to suggestions that the process of nominations is itself too onerous, discouraging those who are unused to the process or ambivalent about its purposes, ICA has eased matters this year by making the entire process electronic, and by reducing the number of letters required from three to two.

Broadening out the range and kinds of work recognised by the awards is another means of making the process more open. In this context, I am delighted that this year has seen the introduction of four new awards: the James W. Carey Urban Communication Award, and three awards sponsored by the Social Science Research Council - Communication Research as Collaborative Practice, Communication Research as an Agent of Change, and Communication Research as an Open Field. I warmly thank all those who worked hard to secure the funding for these, and look forward to hearing about their first winners.

Regarding the consistency of the awards process, I know that Christina Slade has been working with this year's committees, as have previous Chairs, to ensure things run smoothly. Further, each year's committee will now be asked to provide a note to the Chair of the Awards Committees outlining the manner of their working and the criteria used, to permit lessons to be learned and to provide guidance as appropriate for the following year's committee.

Are these changes sufficient? Ensuring that the ICA awards process is as excellent as the work it celebrates is an incremental process and, arguably, things are not yet perfect. A new proposal by the Internationalisation Committee is on the agenda for the January meeting of the Board of Directors, namely that the five regional members-at-large be tasked with nominating two individuals for their regions for all ICA awards. While formal changes to committee composition and workings may be further considered, the most difficult change still needed is the informal one - namely that all ICA members, whether from an 'awards-driven' culture or otherwise, feel able and willing to make nominations, to debate and value the work put forward by others, to volunteer for the committees, and so to support the process. This piece is intended to advance that informal but vital process.