Dr. Francis Wayne Quan Memorial Prize

The Mach-Gaensslen Foundation of Canada and JPN have launched an annual award for the best paper published in the journal, to honour the contributions of psychiatrist and former editor Dr. Francis Wayne Quan to the foundation and the journal.

The Dr. Francis Wayne Quan Memorial Prize has a value of $5000 and will be granted for the first time for a paper published in 2022.

The selection committee will choose the winning paper based on the following criteria:

Mechanistic Insight: Do the findings provide fundamental mechanistic insights into psychiatric disease?

Novelty of the findings: How novel are the findings? Are they truly a paradigm shift, or an incremental advance?

Innovation of the approach: Are the approaches, methods, or questions addressed novel?

Importance of the findings: What impact will the findings have on future research or clinical practice?

Clarity of the results and conclusions:  How clear are the data, and how clearly is the message of the paper communicated?

Dr. Quan, who died on August 9, 2021, after a brief battle with kidney cancer, was one of the founders and the first managing editor of the Psychiatric Journal of the University of Ottawa, the predecessor of the Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience, from 1976 to 1983. He was a director of the Mach-Gaensslen Foundation of Canada from 2016 to his death. The foundation supports research in cardiology, oncology and psychiatry. More than $7.5 million has been provided in grants since 2001.