2022 Prize Winners
2022 Carney Institute Brain Science Reproducible Paper Prize: Undergraduate student Janet L. Chang for the thesis “An Online Behavioral Research Paradigm Using Amazon Mechanical Turk, JSPsych & PsiTurk: A Pilot Study Assessing Hierarchical Abstract Sequential Processing” (Advisor: Theresa Desrochers)
2022 Library Innovation Prize for Rigor, Transparency & Reproducibility (STEM): Undergraduate student Alexander Koh-Bell (Mechanical Engineering) for the thesis “The Aerodynamic Effect of an Active Gurney Flap: Giving a Wind Turbine Blade its Wings” (Advisor: Kenny Breuer)
2022 Library Innovation Prize for Rigor, Transparency & Reproducibility (STEM): Graduate student Benjamin Boatwright (DEEPS) for the dissertation “CTX Stereo Digital Elevation Models of Noachian Proglacial Paleolakes and Pit-Floored Craters” (Advisor: J.W. Head)
2022 Library Innovation Prize for Rigor, Transparency & Reproducibility (Behavioral & Social Sciences): Undergraduate student Janet L. Chang (CLPS) for the thesis “An Online Behavioral Research Paradigm Using Amazon Mechanical Turk, JSPsych & PsiTurk: A Pilot Study Assessing Hierarchical Abstract Sequential Processing” (Advisor: Theresa Desrochers)
We thank the 2022 judges for their generous contributions of time dedicated to reading and evaluating the submissions:
Carney Institute Brain Science Reproducible Paper Prize Judges: Dr. Matt Nassar, Assistant Professor of Neuroscience and Dr. David Sheinberg, Professor of Neuroscience, Graduate Program Director for the Neuroscience Graduate Program
Library Innovation Prize Judges: Dr. Oludurotimi O. Adetunji, Associate Dean for Undergraduate Research and Inclusive Science and Emily Ferrier, Librarian for STEM, Social Sciences & Entrepreneurship
About the Prizes
Drawing on the rising importance of rigor and reproducibility of research, the Brown University Library announces up to $750 in prizes for a graduate student or undergraduate student publication, capstone paper, and/or thesis/dissertation or digital project incorporating innovation in rigor and transparency, in any field of research. $250 will be awarded for one project each from humanities, behavioral and social sciences, and STEM fields. The Carney Institute for Brain Science announces parallel but independent prizes, up to $750 total, for an undergraduate or graduate student thesis, capstone paper, and/or digital project (see below for eligibility restrictions) incorporating innovation in reproducibility within the general area of brain science.
Examples of projects with enhanced rigor and transparency may include 1) curating and publicly sharing a data set, 2) pre-registration and sharing of a developed methods protocol or 3) sharing and containerization (e.g., Docker or Singularity) of analysis code and other computing environment related technologies, or 4) incorporating an “Annotation for Transparent Inquiry (ATI) Data Supplement” for transparency in qualitative data analysis.
Projects with strong reproducibility generally incorporate versioning of code (e.g. git), data (e.g. DataLad, or archives with persistent DOIs), and/or computational environments (e.g. Singularity, Docker, virtual environments), using open standards with “evergreen” potential. Examples of innovation in reproducibility include publication formats that combine narrative description with embedded code and data, so that readers can check algorithmic details and perform reanalysis, or systems for tracking data provenance and workflow that allow reconstruction of data pipelines and results across project history.
More Information:
Watch Information Session Video
Hinsen, Konrad (2011). “A data and code model for reproducible research and executable papers”. Procedia Computer Science, 4, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2011.04.061
Whitaker, Kirstie (2017): Publishing a reproducible paper. figshare. Presentation: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.4720996.v1
Qualitative Data Repository (2019). Instructions for preparing and depositing an “Annotation for Transparent Inquiry (ATI) Data Supplement” accompanying a digital manuscript. Qualitative Data Repository. https://qdr.syr.edu/ati/ati-instructions
Piccolo, Stephen R, Zachary E Ence, Elizabeth C Anderson, Jeffrey T Chang, and Andrea H Bild. “Simplifying the Development of Portable, Scalable, and Reproducible Workflows.” ELife 10: e71069. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.71069
Timeline
Register here for participation: https://forms.gle/WbUrzdZD6XHJAsWz9. Registered participants will be sent directions for proposal submission.
Submissions due Mon May 9th by midnight
Rules
- For both Library and Carney prizes, contestants must be currently enrolled Brown undergraduate or graduate students.
- Projects may be created by individuals or teams. For a team award, prizes will be split evenly among all registered team members.
- Projects should be new to this academic year (May 2021- April 2022).
- For the Carney prize, submissions may not be effectively identical to work that is accepted or published as of January 26th by a peer reviewed journal. Works that are submitted to a peer reviewed journal, and/or appear on preprint servers (e.g. arXiv, bioRxiv) or personal websites (e.g. github.io) are allowed.
- There are no limits on coding languages or tools to create the reproducible paper.
- The research must be the contestants’ original work. You may submit original work that you complete for a capstone paper for a course or an honors thesis or thesis at Brown.
- Winning projects remain the intellectual property of the contestant(s), but the winning contestant will grant a nonexclusive perpetual license to Brown University for its internal, non-commercial use.
- A panel of judges selected from faculty and Library staff will determine the winners.
Past Winners
2020 Carney Institute Undergraduate Brain Science Reproducible Paper Prize: Logan Cho (Neuroscience) for the paper “Automating Clinical Chart Review: An Open-Source Natural Language Processing Pipeline Developed on Free-Text Radiology Reports From Patients With Glioblastoma”
2020 Library Innovation Prize for Rigor, Transparency and Reproducibility (Humanities & DH): Graduate student Sara Mohr (Egyptology and Assyriology) and Shane M. Thompson for their digital humanities project “The Advanced Digitization and Archival Analysis for Preservation and Accessibility (ADAAPA) Project”
2020 Library Innovation Prize for Rigor, Transparency & Reproducibility (STEM): Graduate student Adam Spierer (Ecological and Evolutionary Biology) for the development of the FreeClimber research software and its use in the publication “The Genetic Architecture of Flight and Climbing Performance in Drosophila melanogaster” (Advisor: David Rand)
2020 Library Innovation Prize for Rigor, Transparency & Reproducibility(Behavioral & Social Sciences): Graduate student Joseph Heffner for the project and publication “Emotional responses to prosocial messages increase willingness to self-isolate during the COVID-19 pandemic” (Advisor: Oriel FeldmanHall)
Contact
For additional information, please contact Andrew Creamer (andrew_creamer@brown.edu). For questions on reproducible documents and their implementation, registered participants may contact Dr. Jason Ritt, Scientific Director of Quantitative Neuroscience in Brown’s Carney Institute for Brain Science (jason_ritt@brown.edu), who will provide general advising up to schedule availability. Advice will be provided as is, with no implication for contest judging or award outcomes.