Albert Einstein was awarded an honorary doctorate in science by the University of Oxford. | Photo: Keystone/Sueddeutsche Zeitung Photo/Scherl

The Einstein Foundation in Berlin has launched a new prize: the Einstein Foundation Award for Promoting Quality in Research. In a press release, the Foundation explained its reasons as follows: “Evidence-based research, reliable standards to ensure quality of research, and open access to new findings are more important than ever” – especially, it added, in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic. “Which hypotheses, methods, and data are selected, how they are used, and whether a study can lead to subsequent research – these are factors that need to be made transparent and corroborated by evidence, not only in order to enhance scientific rigor, but also because the public is developing a growing interest in understanding how research is conducted”. This new prize aims to honour this. It can be given in three categories: to individuals or small teams, to institutions, and to young researchers. It is worth a total of EUR 500,000 and international applicants may come from any scientific discipline. It will be awarded for the first time in November 2021. Nominations may be made until 31 March.

The Damp Foundation has donated the prize money for the next ten years, and the publisher Nature Research is helping to make the Award known all over the world. The editor-in-chief of Nature, Magdalena Skipper, explains why: “Reproducibility is paramount in research, so that results can be trusted and built upon. This fundamental principle lies at the very heart of the research process”. The jury has 13 members, and its chairperson is the Swiss Dieter Imboden, a professor emeritus in environmental physics at ETH Zurich, and a former president of the National Research Council of the Swiss National Science Foundation.