Publishing a scientific study is often the highlight of a researcher’s project. When mistakes are identified afterward, though, scientists may feel conflicted about retracting the publication. Although it is the right action to take for science integrity, the scientific community continues to view retractions as black marks on one’s record.
To combat this, the Center for Scientific Integrity, a nonprofit organization that promotes research ethics through several projects, launched the Ctrl-Z Award in March of 2026. The award, which references the shortcut key on Windows computers for the undo action, recognizes individuals or research teams who retracted studies that they learned contained significant problems.
“We always think it's important to celebrate and reward, if possible, good behavior in science, self-correction, particularly when it's a challenging situation for one reason or another,” said Ivan Oransky, the executive director of the Center for Scientific Integrity.
The idea for the Ctrl-Z Award came from longtime supporters of the Center for Scientific Integrity, science entrepreneurs Harvey Motulsky and Earl Beutler. “We thought this was a terrific idea,” Oransky said. He added that many scientific awards recognize aspects like publications and citations, which contribute to the pressure of “publish or perish.” “This is trying to tack the other way. It's trying to create an incentive for the behavior rather than the output,” Oransky said.
Individual researchers or teams are nominated by colleagues who must submit a letter from someone who can attest to the person or group’s retraction story. The award has a category for junior researchers as well as senior researchers. The submissions and their stories were reviewed this year by science integrity researchers Dorothy Bishop at the University of Oxford and Jennifer Byrne at the University of Sydney. They considered the difficulty of the retraction situations and to what extent the individual or teams took responsibility for the mistake or other ethical issue. Motulsky and Beutler funded the development of the award and provided feedback on the project concept but were not involved in judging the submissions.
When they announced the award in spring, Oransky said, “The reception was very positive.” The Center for Scientific Integrity team honored the first Ctrl-Z recipients in August of 2026. Alyssa Smith, a graduate researcher at the College of the Holy Cross, found an error in her data code that led to extensive changes to the original manuscript. Kate Laskowski, a behavioral ecologist at the University of California, Davis, publicly announced her decision to retract her study in 2020 after finding out that a collaborator had shared fabricated data for one of her publications. She won the award in the senior researcher category.
In addition to the recognition for their actions, the recipients also received a monetary award. The Center for Scientific Integrity will release webinars where the award winners share their retraction stories.
Currently, the project has support for multiple years of annual awards, but Oransky said that he and his team would love to be able to expand the program to recognize more people. He added that, longer term, he hopes that academic departments will consider inviting Ctrl-Z awardees to speak about the process of retraction to correct the scientific literature. Oransky said, “If we ever saw this show up in…a tenure committee dossier like that, that would be really exciting.”
Deciding to retract one’s study carries career risks from the stigma retraction has, and because of that, takes courage to do. Oransky hopes that the award can help normalize the process of retraction. He said that the direct incentive is the potential to win an award, “But then there's the, I think, much larger indirect, aspirational goal here, which is to make people realize this is really valuable behavior, and that we should, in however we can, be promoting it.”
