SORTEE awards

2022 Awards

Nominations for the 2022 SORTEE awards closed on 15 May 2022 (via email to kelly.clint@uqam.ca).

   

Open Science in Promotion

Award Description

This award aims to recognize and reward researchers who have made consistent and long term contributions to open science in various forms including publications, data sharing, and outreach (e.g. the presentation of seminars and workshops).

Two separate awards were available in 2022: one for early career (5 or fewer years post-PhD) and one for established (>5 years post-PhD) researchers.

Application materials:  
(i) A letter (maximum 500 words) describing why you are deserving of this award, and referring to evidence and examples (accessible to adjudicators through URLs / DOIs) of how your publication and the work that went into it exemplifies Open Science best practices and the promotion of Open Science.
(ii) An up-to-date resumé (maximum 2 pages as a .pdf)
(iii) A list with explanations of open science contributions

 

Open Science in Practice

Past winners

2021

 

Award Description

This award aims to recognize and reward researchers who have endeavoured to implement best practices in Open Science (OS) within their research workflow, thereby increasing the transparency and reproducibility of their research activities.

Three separate awards are available each year: one for Masters students (current, or <12 months since degree conferred), one for PhD students (current, or <12 months since degree conferred), and one for postdoctoral research associates (< three years since doctoral degree conferred).

All steps that are taken to improve the transparency and reproducibility of research are valuable and appreciated, and achieving the “ideal” workflow in practice will, for many of us, be a life-long endeavour and learning experience! We therefore encourage all eligible researchers to apply, regardless of how far along this path they are. For example, a graduate student or postdoc may not have implemented many or any OS best practices from the outset of their research career because they initially did not have access to the training and support necessary. Thus, their earlier work may be less transparent and reproducible than their later work. This is entirely expected, and should not discourage you from applying for this award.

Application materials:
  (i) A letter (maximum 500 words) describing why you are deserving of this award, and referring to evidence and examples (accessible to adjudicators through URLs / DOIs) of how you have integrated OS best practices into your research workflow as a graduate student or postdoc.
  (ii) An up-to-date resumé (maximum 2 pages).
  (iii) A brief document (maximum 300 words) describing other elements of reproducibility or open science that you wish to have applied to your research, but were limited by financial constraints, access to certain resources, bureaucratic restrictions, or any other barrier.

Criteria:
  The criteria for judging submissions are based on TOP journal guidelines modified for application to individual publications. We emphasize that making publications Open Access is NOT a criterion for the awards, as this typically requires access to substantial funds. However, making a penultimate version of an officially accepted manuscript publicly available (e.g. on a preprint server, institutional repository, or personal webpage) is good practice, and is now permitted by almost all publishing outlets.

TOP Rubric for Publication Assessment

(1 point for each checkbox)

  1. Data, Analytical Methods, Code, and Research Materials Transparency
  • Did the author (hereafter applicant) indicate that the data, methods used in the analysis, and materials used to conduct the research are publicly available.
  • Did the applicant make the data available at a trusted digital repository? (Note: If all data required to reproduce the reported analyses appears in the article text, tables, and figures then it does not also need to be posted to a repository.)
  • Did the applicant include all variables, treatment conditions, and observations described in the manuscript?
  • Did the applicant provide a full account of the procedures used to collect, preprocess, clean, or generate the data?
  • Did the applicant provide program code, scripts, codebooks, and other documentation sufficient to precisely reproduce all published results?
  • Did the applicant provide research materials and description of procedures necessary to conduct an independent replication of the research?
  1. Design and Analysis Transparency
  • Did the applicant report on the process by which they followed standards for disclosing key aspects of the research design and data analysis. For example, did the applicant review the standards available for many research applications from http://www.equator-network.org/ and use those that are relevant for the reported research applications?
  1. Preregistration of Study
  • Did the applicant, in acknowledgments or the first footnote, indicate if they did or did not pre-register the research in an independent, institutional registry?
  • If an applicant did preregister the research, the applicant must confirm that the study was registered prior to conducting the research with links to the time-stamped pre-registrations at the institutional registry, and that the preregistration adheres to the disclosure requirements of the institutional registry or those required for the preregistered badge maintained by the Center for Open Science.
  • Did the applicant report all pre-registered analyses in the text, or, if there were changes in the analysis plan following preregistration, those changes must be disclosed with explanation for the changes?
  • Did the applicant clearly distinguish in text analyses that were preregistered from those that were not, such as having separate sections in the results for confirmatory and exploratory analyses?