Note: PLOS issued the following press release on Tuesday, December 10. PLOS has been awarded a $3.3million grant from the Bill &…
Call for Entries: Einstein Foundation Award for Promoting Quality in Research

Note: PLOS is pleased to once again partner with the Einstein Foundation Berlin for this awards program. Watch this space in the coming weeks for profiles of last year’s finalists prior to the award ceremony of the 2024 winners in March. Below is the Einstein Foundation’s announcement calling for entries.
The annual €350,000 Einstein Foundation Award for Promoting Quality in Research in cooperation with the QUEST Center for Responsible Research at the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité (BIH) is inviting applications and nominations again.
The international award is open to any researcher, or group of researchers, institution, organization, and early career researcher around the globe whose work helps to fundamentally advance the quality, transparency, and reproducibility of science and research.
The deadline for entries is April 30, 2025 (10:00 pm UTC). The awardees will be announced by the end of 2025.
The award recognizes successful candidates in the following three categories:
Individual Award (€150,000): Individuals or small teams who have outstandingly contributed to fostering research quality can be nominated. Nominators are strongly encouraged to consider a diverse set of criteria, including gender, race/ethnicity, geography, and career stage.
Institutional Award (€100,000): Governmental and non-governmental organizations, institutions, or other entities that have notably enhanced research quality can apply or be nominated. Successful governmental organizations or institutions will not receive any funds in addition to the award itself.
Early Career Award (€100,000): Individuals or teams can submit a project proposal that seeks to foster research quality and value. Eligible candidates must hold a doctorate or have equivalent research experience and should have been an independent researcher for no longer than five years. In the case of a team entry, the majority must be Early Career Researchers.
In 2024, Dutch microbiologist and science whistleblower Elisabeth Bik won the Individual Award. Bik has uncovered the use of fraudulent or erroneous data for more than 7,600 scientific papers and has shed light on the practice of selling authorship for fabricated studies. The Institutional Award went to PubPeer, a platform for rapid post-publication review and discussion of published scientific data which helped identify flaws in the work of eminent scientists, combatted fraud, and fostered the emergence of an international, multidisciplinary community of research integrity experts. The Early Career Award was won by PixelQuality the project led by Christopher Schmied and Helena Jambor. The team aims to improve scientific image reproducibility.
Learn more about all past winners and finalists here.
Selection
An international, interdisciplinary, and diverse panel of researchers and research quality activists will evaluate submissions and select awardees. Meet the jury here.
For questions, please contact Einstein Foundation Award Coordinator Dr. Ulrike Pannasch: award@einsteinfoundation.de
The Individual and Institutional Awards are funded by Wübben Stiftung Wissenschaft, while the BIH QUEST Center for Responsible Research supports the Early Career Award. Additional resources are made available by the State of Berlin. The publisher Nature Portfolio, the Public Library of Science (PLOS), the National Academy of Sciences, the Berlin University Alliance, the Max Planck Society and the Max Planck Foundation support the Einstein Foundation Berlin and the BIH QUEST Center for Responsible Research in promoting and implementing the award.
PLOS Note: our Publication Ethics team interacts with Elisabeth Bik and Pubpeer in the context of addressing concerns about PLOS articles.
About:
The Einstein Foundation Berlin is an independent, not-for-profit, science-led funding organization established as a foundation under civil law in 2009. Since then, its task has been to promote cutting-edge international science and research across disciplines and institutions in and for Berlin. To date, it has funded eight Einstein Centers, over 70 projects, and more than 240 researchers, including three Nobel laureates.
The BIH QUEST Center for Responsible Research was founded in 2017. It conducts research on research (meta research) and derives from it offers for the scientific community. With this mission, the QUEST Center is unique in Europe. Through its projects and services, the QUEST Center also examines the role of an academic institution in enhancing the trustworthiness, usefulness, and ethical accountability of biomedical research.
The Wübben Stiftung Wissenschaft is a private grant-making foundation based in Berlin. It aims to help strengthen Germany as an excellent, internationally visible, and competitive science and research hub. Outstanding international academics at various career stages are at the heart of its funding activities. In addition to the Einstein Foundation Award, Wübben Stiftung Wissenschaft supports the Einstein Foundation’s “Einstein Strategic Professorships” funding program.