In 2009, CIAC launched its "Best Scientific Paper Award" as a way of recognising important advances in cephalopod research. In total, 18 papers were nominated for the best "cephalopod" paper published since the last CIAC conference (in early 2006) and evaluated by a panel of judges. The winner was:

Jan M. Strugnell, Alex D. Rogers, Paulo A. Prodöhl, Martin A. Collins and A. Louise Allcock, 2008. The thermohaline expressway: the Southern Ocean as a centre of origin for deep-sea octopuses. Cladistics 24: 853-860.

A new competition will be held in 2012. Nominations of papers published since September 2009 should be sent to the CIAC secretary, Warwick Sauer.