The National Research Council is empowered to develop a system to recognize and grant awards for national research and innovation relating to science and technology. As awards are given only to the highest achieving scientists, the NRC is required to regularly review and revise the selection criteria with a view of retaining their relevance and prestigious nature.
Each award will be given for a published work rather than to an individual scientist, and all Sri Lankan co-authors with a Sri Lankan institutional affiliation of the publication will be recognized as recipients of the award. The journal ranking system (on the basis of which the best published scientific work will be selected) will be source normalized based on weighted citations to avoid bias towards any scientific disciplines, and will be available in the public domain. To encourage research that is conceptualized and performed mainly in Sri Lanka, recognition will be given to research with a significant contribution by Sri Lankan scientists working in Sri Lanka.
Awards will be also given for patents based on innovations in Science.
To allow sufficient time for completeness of indexing and documentation (including retraction), the awards will be given two years after the year of publication of a paper or obtaining a patent (e.g., achievements in 2017 will be given awards in 2019). NRC obtains the SCOPUS database from Elsevier BV.
1. The awards will be named “President’s Award for Scientific Research” and “NRC Merit Award for Scientific Research.” Both publications and patents are eligible to receive awards.
2. President’s Award for Scientific Research
Each year, an award will be given to each of the top 100 papers published in journals with the highest SCImago Journal Ranking (SJR), in which 20% or more of the authors of the publication are Sri Lankan scientists with a Sri Lankan institutional affiliation.
OR
to each International Patent (published/granted) based on an innovation in science awarded in a given year, to a Sri Lankan Scientist(s) with a Sri Lankan affiliation.
3. NRC Merit Award for Scientific Research
Each year, an award will be also given for each of the second 100 papers published in journals with the highest SCImago Journal Ranking (SJR), in which 20% or more of the authors of the publication are Sri Lankan scientists with a Sri Lankan institutional affiliation.
OR
to each National Patent (published/granted) based on an innovation in science awarded in a given year, to a Sri Lankan Scientist(s) with a Sri Lankan affiliation.