学术奖励是对学术人员研究成果及其创造能力的承认。完善、公平的学术奖励制度将对学术人员形成一种激励作用，促进其学术创新与学术产出。我国的学术奖励制度正在发展中不断完善，但仍存在一些问题，影响了学术奖励制度积极效应的发挥。本文试图通过对美国学术奖励制度运作的分析和研究，为进一步改进和完善我国的学术奖励制度提供参考和借鉴。本研究共分为四章，第一章为绪论部分，主要是提出问题，阐述研究的意义，并对相关问题的文献进行综述，在此基础上进行了概念界定，最后说明研究方法和论文结构。第二章阐述了学术活动与学术奖励的本质和功能的问题。学术活动的特点决定了学术人员的主体需求，以及学术奖励与其他奖励的不同之处。所以，本章将从学术活动谈起，在此基础上对学术人员的主体需求进行分析。学术奖励的本质是什么，能否满足学术人员的主体需求，它的功能又是什么，对学术人员有什么样的作用，本章将对这些问题进行阐述。第三章主要是对美国学术奖励制度的概况进行描述，以便对其有宏观上的认识和理解。本章首先回顾了学术奖励的制度化历程，再对美国现在的政府级奖励、民间奖励和大学的奖励进行了简要的介绍，最后对美国学术奖励制度的总体特征进行了分析。第四章从政府、民间学术机构、大学这三个层面的奖励中分别选取美国国家科学奖、美国化学会奖，以及哈佛大学的奖励为个案，对美国学术奖励制度的具体运作程序进行了详尽的阐述与分析。从分析中可知，美国的学术奖励制度在运作中尽管也产生了一些负面效应，但从总体上来说，基本保证了公正性，为学术人员营造了一个公平竞争的制度环境，有利于促进学术人员的学术产出。在结语部分对全文做了小结，并简要分析了目前我国学术奖励制度存在的一些问题，希望对美国学术奖励制度的探讨对改进我国的学术奖励制度有一定的启发意义。

The academic reward is to recognize the academics’ research achievements and their creative abilities. A perfect and fair academic reward system will impel the academics and promote their academic innovation and academic output. Our country’s academic reward system has been improved a lot recently, but there are still some problems preventing it from performing well. This study will focus on the operation of American academic reward system. I expect that the study will provide some reference for improving our country’s academic reward system.There are four chapters in the study. The first chapter is introduction, which is mainly on the theme and the significance of the study. After summarizing relative studies on the question, the concept of academic reward system in this study is given. Finally the study method and the structure of the dissertation will be described.The second chapter discusses the academic work and the essence and the function of the academic reward system. The characteristics of academic work decide the academics’ special demands and differences between academic reward and other kinds of reward. So this chapter will first talk about the academic work, on which basis we will analyze the academics’ demands. Then we will discuss the essence of academic reward and analyze whether it will meet the academics’ demands. Finally we will discuss the function of the academic reward system.The third chapter mainly describes the general situation of American academic reward system. In order to have an overview on the system, this chapter will take up the following three questions: the historical course of the system’ development, the current situation of the American academic reward system and its characteristics.In the fourth chapter, the National Medal of Science, the awards of American Chemical Society and the Harvard university awards will be selected as three cases for discussion representing the government awards, the private academic institution awards and the university awards respectively. From the three respects, we will have a detailed exploration and analysis on the concrete operation procedures of American academic reward system. From the analysis we can make the conclusion that though there are some negative effects, the system is basically fair and have a positive effect on the academics’ output. In the conclusion part, I also analyze some problems in our country’s academic reward system and hope the exploration on the American academic reward system will help to improve our country’s.