ESR Best Article of the Year Prize

The European Consortium for Sociological Research (ECSR) and the European Sociological Review (ESR) issue the Prize for the Best Article of the Year published in the ESR. The ESR is the flagship journal of the ECSR.

Criteria

The criteria on which articles will be evaluated are in line with the core aims of the ECSR, namely to stimulate rigorous empirical–theoretical sociological research in Europe.

More specifically, the papers will be assessed on the following criteria:

  • Substantively interesting and relevant research problem;
  • Good explanation of the contribution to the field;
  • Rigorous use—and possibly development—of social scientific theory;
  • Rigorous use of advanced research methods.

Regulations

  1. For each volume (calendar year), one prize will be awarded, starting with papers published in 2016.
  2. The jury for the prize consists of an ECSR board member (chair), an associate editor of ESR, and an external (non-Euro) member. The chair leads and organizes the work in the committee. Articles with (co-)authors in the committee are not eligible to win the prize, and standard conflict of interest rules apply.
  3. All jury members nominate two articles to the chair of the jury. The (maximum of) six articles are then ranked by all three jury members, from 1 to N (with N nominated articles, 1 is highest). The winner is the article with the fewest points. In the event of a tie, the Chair of the ECSR offers an additional ranking, resulting in one winner and two runners-up.
  4. The jury sends the list with the selected winner and runners-up to the ECSR secretary, who informs the ECSR Board.
  5. The prize winners will receive a certificate and a cash prize of Euro 500.
  6. The prize is handed out at the annual General ECSR Conference.
  7. The papers of the winner and the two runners-up are made freely available (open access) on the ESR site at Oxford University Press for one year.

Winner(s) of 2023

Irene Pañeda-Fernández for the 2022 article
Natural Disasters and Preferences for Redistribution: The Impact of Collective and Abrupt Disruptions

Former winners

YearName and article title
2022Dragana Stojmenovska and Paula England
Parenthood and the Gender Gap in Workplace Authority
2021Arun Frey, for the 2020 article
‘Cologne Changed Everything’—The Effect of Threatening Events on the Frequency and Distribution of Intergroup Conflict in Germany
2020 Zhang, Nan, Amelie Aidenberger, Heiko Rauhut, and Fabian Winter, for their 2019 article
Prosocial Behaviour in Interethnic Encounters: Evidence from a Field Experiment with High- and Low-Status Immigrants
2019Javier G. Polavieja Perera, Mariña Fernández-Reino and María Ramos, for their 2018 article
Are Migrants Selected on Motivational Orientations? Selectivity Patterns amongst International Migrants in Europe
2018Wojtek Przepiorka, Lukas Norbutas and Rense Corten, for their 2017 article
Order without law: reputation promotes cooperation in a cryptomarket for illegal drugs
2017Jörg Dollmann, for his 2016 article
Less choice, less inequality? A natural experiment on social and ethnic differences in educational decision-making