Purpose:

These awards are to recognize, appreciate, encourage, and honour the academic staff members in the Rajarata University of Sri Lanka who are excelling in research, innovation, and scholarly works. Through these awards, the university expects to motivate the staff members to actively engage in teaching and research activities. Furthermore, these recognitions will create junior staff members to follow, be encouraged, and get involved in research activities that will uplift the university’s ranking nationally and internationally. Moreover, these recognitions will increase and encourage collaborative research activities within and outside the institute. Sixteen (16) awards will be presented to the eligible applicants at the university and faculty levels, as elaborated below. 

Lifetime Award: 

1. RUSL Research Excellence Gold Award 

Annual Awards 

RUSL Excellence Awards

1. Most Outstanding Senior Researcher
2. Most Outstanding Young Researcher
3. Top Ten Researchers with the highest number of indexed journal articles
4. Top Ten Researchers with the highest H-index
5. Top Ten Researchers with the highest number of citations
6. Best Inventor

Vice Chancellor’s Awards at each faculty and Library:

1. Most Outstanding Senior researcher
2. Most Outstanding Young researcher
3. Most Outstanding Researcher in Library Academic Staff
4. Top Three Researchers with the highest number of indexed journal articles
5. Top Three Researchers with the highest H-index
6. Top Three Researchers having the highest number of citations
7. Recognitions for the indexed articles published in the preceding year
8. Recognitions for the patented invention within the preceding year
9. Department having the highest number of indexed journal articles published

• All these awards are subjected to the senate and the council approval. The awards will be presented at the annual awards ceremony organized by the Rajarata University of Sri Lanka (RUSL).
• The RUSL Excellence awards (Gold, Senior, Young researcher, and Best Inventor) and the Vice Chancellor’s awards for faculty level (Senior, Young researcher, and Outstanding Researcher in Library Academic Staff) will comprise a plaque and a certificate. Only a certificate will be given for other RUSL Excellence awards and faculty-level awards. 

Eligibility Criteria

1. All the candidates should be in a permanent position to be eligible for awards except the Vice Chancellor’s awards 7 and 8, for which, students (undergraduate or postgraduate) are also eligible for the award.
2. The affiliations for all components considered for awards should represent RUSL as an affiliation. 

Descriptions and minimum eligibility criteria for individual awards 

1. RUSL Research Excellence Gold Award:

The RUSL Research Excellence Gold Award is the most prestigious research award offered by the Rajarata University of Sri Lanka. The awardee will be able to receive this award only once in his academic carrier at the Rajarata University of Sri Lanka. The applicant’s lifetime research/scholarly work with RUSL affiliations is considered for this award.

To be eligible for this award, the applicant should have at least twenty (20) original research articles published in indexed^[1] journals. The applicant should be the first author of at least five of those articles.  

2. RUSL Excellence Awards for Most Outstanding Senior Researcher:

Eligibility criteria: Six (06) original research articles published in indexed¹ journals within the preceding three years. The applicant should be the first/senior/corresponding author of at least one of those articles.

3. RUSL Excellence Awards for Most Outstanding Young Researcher:

Eligibility criteria: Four (04) original research articles published (or accepted) in indexed¹ journals within the preceding three years. The applicant should be the first/corresponding author of at least one of those articles.

4. RUSL Excellence Awards for the Top Ten Researchers with the highest number of indexed journal articles:

Eligibility criteria: Two (02) original research articles published (or accepted) in indexed¹ journals within the preceding year.

5. RUSL Excellence Awards for the Top Ten Researchers with the highest H-index:

Eligibility criteria: Google scholar h-index of two (02) for the articles published in the preceding three (03) years.

6. RUSL Excellence Awards for the Top Ten Researchers with the highest citations:

Eligibility criteria: 20 citations for the articles published in the preceding three (03) years.

7. RUSL Excellence Awards for Best Inventor:

Eligibility criteria: Two (02) national/international patents for inventions within the preceding year.

8. Vice Chancellor’s Award for Most Outstanding Senior Researcher:

Eligibility criteria: Four (04) original research articles published (or accepted) in indexed¹ journals within the preceding three years. The applicant should be the first/senior/corresponding author of at least one of those articles.

9. Vice Chancellor’s Award for Most Outstanding Young Researcher:

Eligibility criteria: Three (03) original research articles published (or accepted) in indexed1 journals within the preceding three years. The applicant should be the first/senior/corresponding author of at least one of those articles.

10. Vice chancellor’s Award for the Most Outstanding Researcher in Library Academic Staff:

Eligibility criteria: One (01) original research article published (or accepted) in indexed¹ journal within the preceding year.

11. Vice Chancellor’s Awards for the top three Researchers with the highest number of indexed journal articles:

Eligibility criteria: Two (02) original research articles published in indexed¹ journals within the preceding year.

12. Vice Chancellor’s Awards for the Top three Researchers with the highest H-index:

Eligibility criteria: Google scholar h-index of two (02) for the articles published in the preceding three (03) years.

13. Vice Chancellor’s Awards for the Top three Researchers with the highest citations:

Eligibility criteria: 10 citations for the articles published in the preceding three (03) years.

14. RUSL Excellence Awards for Best Inventor:

Eligibility criteria: One (01) national/international patent for inventions within the preceding year.

15. Vice Chancellor’s Awards for the department having the highest number of indexed journal articles published within the preceding year:

Eligibility criteria: Two (02) indexed Journal articles with the department member as the lead (first), corresponding or senior author.

16. Applicant(s) are required to get minimum marks for each awards category as below to be eligible for the proposed awards;

17. To be eligible for the awards, all the staff members should create Google Scholar, Scopus, and Web of Science (Previously Publons) accounts to track the evidence for their scholarly works.
18. Award winners of the “most outstanding” categories will not be eligible for the awards in the same category for the next three consecutive years.

General Application Procedure and Selection Procedure

• The awarding criteria will consider the proceeding three years except for award numbers 3 and 6 under RUSL Excellence awards, and award numbers 4,7,8, and 9 under the Vice Chancellor’s awards. When awarded annually. e.g., the awarding criteria for 2022 will consider only the work done in research, innovation, scholarly and creative categories, from 01^st January 2019 to 31^st December 2021. The citations also can be claimed only for the papers published in the three years mentioned above.
• All the applicants should submit a self-prepared application for which the template is provided herewith, a self-evaluation report (Annexure 1 for the relevant category), and all the supporting materials to the committee appointed by the Senate, in PDF format (Digital copy). Any marks claimed without evidence will not be counted.
• The senate-appointed committee should include one senior staff with experience in research (by considering the staff members who have published in indexed peer-reviewed journal articles, have experience in scholarly works, community contribution, and received grants, etc.) among staff members from each faculty.
• To avoid conflict of interest, the relevant faculty nominee in the committee appointed by the senate will not participate during the evaluation process of applications submitted from the faculty he/she represents.
• Call for applications will be published in the university and on the faculty websites at the beginning of each year.
• For the RUSL award numbers 3,4,5 and VC awards 4,5 and 6: Index articles with at least 10% contribution of the applicants with a Sri Lankan institutional affiliation can only be considered, and when the committee requests more evidence such as review evidence, the contribution of the author, facilitating lab space or instruments and other relevant information must be provided with evidence including reviewer comments and communications. This request shall be made by the committee, or the committee must consider concerns forwarded by another applicant citing the suspicious contribution of the particular authors. If the applicant has been found to have contributed less than 10% or if the evidence is inconclusive, he/she will not be considered for any awards where the suspicious claims have been made.  
• Publication(s) with predatory publishers, standalone predatory journals and vanity press listed in “Beall’s List (https://beallslist.net/)” will not be considered for any award, and marks will not be allocated for such work at any category.
• Any researcher who has been found guilty of research misconduct, unethical research/ publication or involved in fraudulent research within the period considered for the award will not be eligible to apply.
• The applicants eligible for both RUSL Excellence Awards and the Vice Chancellor’s Awards can submit their applications and get selected if they have enough marks for both types of awards. Suitable Applicants can apply for multiple awards with separate self-evaluation reports with the applications.
• By chance, if two applicants get equal marks, both applicants will receive the awards in the same year.
• Whenever relevant, the preceding three years will include the three years immediately before the award year. e.g., the awarding criteria for 2022 will consider papers published from 01st January 2019 to 31st December 2021.

Self-Assessment and Marks Allocation for RUSL Excellence Gold Award, Awards for Most Outstanding Senior and Young researcher; Most Outstanding Researcher in Library Academic Staff.

* Science Citation Index (SCI), Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE), Elsevier publishers/Scopus, PubMed, MEDLINE, Emerging Source Citation Index (ESCI), Social Science Citation Index®, Arts and Humanities Citation Index®, Library and Information Science Abstracts (LISA), Library, Information Science and Technology Abstracts (LISTA), Education Resource Information Centre (ERIC), Engineering Index.