A researcher in Ho Chi Minh City has received the hitherto highest amount of reward for international scientific publication after her paper appeared in one of the world’s most prestigious peer-reviewed medical journals.

Vuong Thi Ngoc Lan, who holds a Ph.D, has been given VND289,624,000 (US$12,740) by the school where she works – the Ho Chi Minh Medicine and Pharmacy University, a leading higher-education institution in Vietnam.

This is the largest sum that a Vietnamese college ever provided for a researcher with an internationally published article in science.

Lan is the first author of a paper entitled ‘IVF transfer of Fresh or Frozen embryos in women without polycystic Ovaries’ published on January 11 in the New England Journal of Medicine, whose impact factor was 72,406 in 2017.

The 11-page article is coauthored by domestic researchers and professors Ben W. Mol and Robert J. Normal from Australia’s University of Adelaide.

In 2017, the authors sent to the journal their report over two hundred pages long which involved a study they started two years earlier on success rates of in vitro fertilization methods. 

They passed three rounds of peer review with multiple revisions before the research was eventually accepted for publication.

Lan’s renumeration follows the university’s scientific study encouragement policy which says the money given for a paper equals VND2 million ($88) multiplied by the impact factor of the journal where it is printed, according to a representative from the school told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper on Thursday.

The sum doubled as Lan is the first author and answered all peer review questions.

Lan said she would use all the money to support students in her university who have excellent scientific research or produce internationally published papers or presented reports.