Best Paper awards lack transparency and do not increase equitability

Research awards are an integral part of the universal “prestige economy” in science, but do they incentivize greater transparency, inclusivity, and openness? This study uses cross-disciplinary data to explore the level of transparency of publicly available award descriptions and assessment criteria, asking whether such awards contribute to or propagate existing reproducibility crises and inequities in science.

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In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available paper in PLOS Biology:   http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3002715

Article Title: “Best Paper” awards lack transparency, inclusivity, and support for Open Science

Author Countries: Australia, Japan, Poland, Brazil, Taiwan, Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands, China, Cameroon, Canada

Funding: Australian Research Council grant DP230101248 awarded to M.L. and S.N., Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (RGPIN-2019-05520) awarded to A.R.M., and John Templeton Foundation (grant ID: 62631) awarded to R.M.R. Funders had no role in designing, conducting or reporting this research.