The law permits some persons to avoid the lengthy labor certification process normally required for permanent residence applications through employment, if the person can show that he or she qualifies as an outstanding professor or researcher. 

To qualify, the person must have an advanced degree, must have three years or more of work experience in teaching or research in the academic area, and must be sponsored by a prospective employer who is either offering a tenure track teaching position, or is offering a comparable (permanent) research job at a university or a private research institution.  

In addition, the person must prove that he or she is recognized internationally as outstanding in an academic area.  In this regard, the INS regulations specify that the proof of such recognition should be established by submission of at least two of the following six categories of evidence: 

	Documentation of the alien's receipt of major prizes or awards for outstanding achievement in the academic field;
	Documentation of the alien's membership in associations in the academic field which require outstanding achievements of their members;
	Published material in professional publications written by others about the alien's work in the academic field. Such material shall include the title, date, and author of the material, and any necessary translation;
	Evidence of the alien's participation, either individually or on a panel, as the judge of the work of others in the same or an allied academic field;
	Evidence of the alien's original scientific or scholarly research contributions to the academic field; or
	Evidence of the alien's authorship of scholarly books or articles (in scholarly journals with international circulation) in the academic field.