To better encourage and recognize contributions to our profession, INCOSE recognizes one outstanding paper from Systems Engineering each year. In 2004, the Journal editorial board selected two papers published between 1998 and 2003 for recognition. The following papers have been recognized with the Outstanding Journal Paper Award.

Best Paper Awards Awarded 2009 Adam M. Ross, A., Donna H. Rhodes, and Daniel E. Hastings, "Defining Changeability: Reconciling Flexibility, Adaptability, Scalability, Modifiability, and Robustness for Maintaining Life Cycle Value," Systems Engineering, Vol. 11, No. 3, 2008, pp.246-262. Awarded 2008 Rudolf Smaling and Olivier de Weck, "Assessing Risks and Opportunities of Technology Infusion in System Design", Systems Engineering, Vol. 10, No. 1, 2007, pp. 1-25. Awarded 2007 William B. Rouse, “A Theory of Enterprise Transformation,” Systems Engineering, Vol. 8, No. 4, 2005, pp. 279-295. Awarded 2006 Barry Boehm, “Some Future Trends and implementations for Systems and Software Engineering Processes," Systems Engineering, Vol. 9, No. 1, 2006, pp. 1-19, Awarded 2005 Charles R. Weisbin, Guillermo Rodriguez, Alberto Elfes, and Jeffrey H. Smith, “Toward a Systematic Approach for Selection of NASA Technology Portfolios”, Systems Engineering, Vol. 7, No. 4, 2004, pp. 285-302. Awarded 2004 Armin P. Schulz, Don P. Clausing, Ernst Fricke, and Herbert Negele, “Development and Integration of Winning Technologies as Key to Competitive Advantage”, Systems Engineering, Vol. 3, No. 4, 2000, pp. 180-211. Awarded 2004 Lee W. Wagenhals, Sajjad Haider, and Alexander H. Levis, “Synthesizing Executable Models of Object Oriented Architectures,” Systems Engineering, Vol. 6, No. 4, 2003, pp 266-300.