This award recognizes the most outstanding paper and presentation at the annual FERA meeting. Only paper accepted into the FERA annual meeting are accepted and only current members of FERA are eligible to receive this award. Nominations are accepted from FERA members, through the peer-review process. A committee of at least five FERA members reviews the paper nominations. The committee chair or a delegated committee member then attends the presentation of each nominated paper and judges the quality of the presentation. The reviews from both of these processes are aggregated to select a winner. The award winner is announced at the business luncheon of the FERA annual meeting.
The winner of the Distinguished Paper Award is invited automatically to present their paper at the American Educational Research Association (AERA) annual conference held in the Spring of the following year. The winner is also provided a check for $500 to offset the travel costs associated with attending the AERA conference. Winners are also welcome to submit their manuscripts for consideration in the Florida Journal of Educational Research for an expeditious peer-review process.