Outstanding professors and researchers are exempted for the labor certification requirement.

To be considered outstanding, a professor or researcher must be internationally recognized as outstanding in his or her specific academic area and must meet certain other requirements (such as three years teaching or researching experience in the field and arriving to take a tenure or tenure-track position). To qualify for this classification, the professor or researcher need only satisfy two of the following criteria:

1. Documentation of the alien's receipt of major prizes or awards for outstanding achievement in the academic field;
2. Documentation of the alien's membership in associations in the academic field which require outstanding achievements of their members;
3. 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;
4. 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;
5. Evidence of the alien's original scientific or scholarly research contributions to the academic field; or
6. Evidence of the alien's authorship of scholarly books or articles (in scholarly journals with international circulation) in the academic field.