Chaired by jury member Mai Har Sham, three award winners shared their impactful work advancing research integrity. Elisabeth Bik (Individual Award 2024) discussed detecting errors and misconduct in biomedical research images and strategies to strengthen the system. Brandon Stell, co-founder of PubPeer (Institutional Award 2024), highlighted how community-driven peer review exposes low-quality research and combats fraudulent practices. Tim Errington, Senior Director of Research at the Center for Open Science (Institutional Award 2021), shared insights on making research processes, content, and outcomes openly accessible – enhancing the transparency and trustworthiness of scientific work. 

Together, they demonstrated how the award's recipients are reshaping research integrity globally.

The plenary opened with remarks from Marcia McNutt (Award Jury President) and Veronique Kiermer (PLOS), the award's official partner, together with Melinda French Gates (Pivotal) who kindly lend her support of this initiative. Altogether they introduced the award's mission and significance to the conference audience.