What is the Overleaf Campus Challenge?

How do I participate in the Campus Challenge?

1. Visit the Campus Challenge 2017 homepage
2. Sign in to your Overleaf account (if you’re not signed in already), or create an Overleaf account if you don’t yet have one.
3. Add an email address from a university, college, or other higher education institution, and confirm your role and department.
4. Check your email for a message from Overleaf to verify and complete signup.

Please note that you may need to check your email spam folder for the confirmation message.

Once you’ve joined, simply head to the Challenge page to keep track of your progress collecting ducks!

What are ‘ducks’, and how do I earn them?

Ducks are both a great way to debug your code, and a fun way of tracking your contributions to your university in the Campus Challenge :)

There are many ways to earn ducks on Overleaf during the challenge, including:

• Inviting your friends
• Adding your role and department to your profile
• Creating a project from a template on Overleaf
• Linking your Overleaf account to your Figshare and ORCID accounts
• Opening a project each day
• Tagging a project on your dashboard

Plus many more, including several 'secret achievements'! See your progress on the Challenge page when you've joined.

How long does the Campus Challenge run for?

The Campus Challenge 2017 started on the 9th January 2017, and ends at midnight UTC on the 31st March 2017.

Am I eligible for the Campus Challenge?

In order to take part in the Campus Challenge 2017, you’ll need to have a valid email from a university, college, or other higher education institution. During the sign up process you’ll need to be able to receive an email at this address in order to confirm your affiliation.

You’ll also need to create a free account on Overleaf, if you don’t already have one.

What if my institution doesn’t provide me with an email address?

If your school does not provide you with an email address specific to their domain, then unfortunately your school will not be able to participate in this year’s Campus Challenge.

You can still earn the regular referral space bonus for inviting people to Overleaf.

What if my university already has an Overleaf institutional account subscription?

We have special prizes if your university already has an existing institutional subscription! Instead of the free Pro accounts (which you already have!), we'll offer your institution their choice of one of the following special prizes if you win:

• Free upgrades to Overleaf Pro+ for all members of the university for one year.
• A two-day on-site visit and workshop series from one of the Overleaf founders.
• Sponsorship for an event (e.g. on open scholarship) your university would like to organize on campus.
• Invitation for a university member to participate at the next FuturePub as a guest speaker.
• Template development for a custom LaTeX template for the university (e.g. for thesis/dissertation submissions).

If you're the administrator for an Overleaf institutional license and would like any further information about this, please get in touch.

I completed a certain action before I joined the Campus Challenge. Do I still earn those ducks?

You’ll automatically be credited with ducks for certain actions that you’ve already completed – you’ll be able to see this in your activity log which will be available as soon as you’ve joined the challenge. These include:

• Ducks for any friends who've already signed up with your referral code;
• Ducks if you've already created a project from from a template;
• Ducks for already signed up for an Overleaf account before the Challenge started.

Other actions, such as having a document open, only count from the point at which you join the Challenge.

Do I earn the regular Overleaf referral space bonus for inviting people to the Campus Challenge?

Yes. If you successfully invite people to participate in Campus Challenge using your referral code, and they are also new to Overleaf, you’ll earn the appropriate referral bonus space.

I’m affiliated with more than one university. Can I add them both?

Yes, you can earn ducks for more than one university if you can verify a separate email address for each.

Help! I’m having problems signing up for the Campus Challenge.

If you’re having problems signing up for the Challenge, please check if any of the following apply to you:

• Are you using a valid email address to sign up? In order to take part in the Challenge you’ll need to have a valid email from a university, college, or other higher education institution. If your school does not provide you with an email address specific to their domain, then unfortunately your school will not be able to participate in this year’s Campus Challenge.
  
  You can still earn the regular referral space bonus for inviting people to Overleaf.
  
  
• Are you trying to verify the same email address more than once? If you have already verified your university email address you won’t need to verify it again. To take part in the Challenge, you’ll simply need to confirm your role and department, and you can do this from the Challenge page.
  
  
• Are you logged in with the same email address you verified for the Campus Challenge? If you already have an existing Overleaf account, you should sign up for the Campus Challenge whilst logged into that account. If you sign up for the Challenge using a separate Overleaf account, we won’t be able to associate this with your existing account.
  
  
• Is your university eligible? Only those students, faculty, and staff from eligible higher education institutions can participate. If you receive an error when you attempt to sign up with an email address from your institution, it may be that we haven’t yet verified your institution’s eligibility. We review these cases, and if we discover that you are using a valid email address from an eligible institution, we’ll resolve the error and add your affiliation.
  
  

If you don’t think any of the above apply, or if you’d like to double check with us, please get in touch via our contact page.

Do all university email domains count for that university?

Yes, in general this will be the case – all domains related to a university (including departmental sub-domains) will count for that university. For example, Caltech’s main email domain is caltech.edu, but sub domains such as math.caltech.edu and cs.caltech.edu will also be recognized as part of that same institution.

However, there are a few cases where a university has multiple email domains and our system will not categorize these as belonging to the same institution. In these cases, the domains are treated as separate entries in the Campus Challenge.

If you are a university administrator and you believe that domains are being treated separately by mistake, please let us know via our contact page.

I’ve accidentally linked my university email address to someone else’s Overleaf account, or to an account I can no longer access!

If you’ve accidentally linked your email to the wrong Overleaf account, or if you no longer have access to your Overleaf account, please let us know and we’ll try to resolve this for you.

Can more than one person receive ducks for a Campus Challenge referral?

No, only the sender of a referral link can earn ducks for that referral (provided the recipient uses that person’s referral link to sign up). But everyone at the same institution – regardless of who referred them – can work together to earn ducks via the other actions, as described on the Challenge page.

Who can see my personal information when I take part in the Challenge?

Your institutional affiliation data (including your role and department) is aggregated together with other users to provide publicly visible metrics such as the Challenge leaderboard. This generalized data may also be used in promotional campaigns related to the Challenge.

All of your personal profile and project data remains private to you, as per our standard Terms of Use.

What happens at the end of the Challenge?

The Campus Challenge ends at midnight UTC on the 31st March 2017. At this time, the totals will be finalized and checked before the winners are announced in April.

What happens if my university email address expires during the Challenge?

Even if your university email address expires, your ducks will still count towards your institution’s total for the Challenge.

However, if this is the only email address you have associated with your Overleaf account, you’ll no longer receive important notifications and we would recommend you add an active email address to your account via your settings page.

Ok this all sounds good – how do I get started?

1. Visit the Campus Challenge 2017 homepage
2. Sign in to your Overleaf account (if you’re not signed in already), or create an Overleaf account if you don’t yet have one.
3. Add an email address from a university, college, or other higher education institution, and confirm your role and department.
4. Check your email for a message from Overleaf to verify and complete signup.

Please note that you may need to check your email spam folder for the confirmation message.

Once you’ve joined, simply head to the Challenge page to keep track of your progress collecting ducks!