The Junior Faculty Interest Group (JFIG) Forum invites submissions to the JFIG paper competition. JFIG was created in 2001 to promote the career development of tenure-track faculty in INFORMS. The goals of the paper competition are to encourage research among junior faculty and to increase the visibility of research conducted by junior faculty within the fields of operations research and management science. The entries will be judged and up to six finalists will be selected by the award committee. The papers submitted for the competition will be evaluated based on the importance of the topic, appropriateness of the research approach, and the significance of research contribution.
Winners will be announced at the INFORMS Annual meeting, where all finalists will present their research at a JFIG sponsored session.

Award

• First place: Cash award of $500
• Second place: $250
• Remaining finalists: $100 each

Eligibility

The conditions for eligibility are:

1. Each qualifying entrant must be in a tenure-track position at a university on or after January 1 of the year of the award. The entrant must have been awarded his or her PhD not more than six years prior to January 1 of the year of the award, and must not have tenure, i.e., hold an appointment without limitation of time. For faculty members at institutions that do not follow the standard US tenure system, the entrant must have been awarded his or her PhD not more than six years prior to January 1 of the year of the award.
2. The paper may be co-authored with students, other qualifying entrants, or people from industry, but not with tenured faculty. If the industry co-author(s) has a Ph.D. degree, he or she must have been awarded the PhD degree not more than six years prior to January 1 of the year of the award. In case of multiple qualifying entrants as co-authors, the paper may be submitted jointly. Only the qualifying entrant(s) will be eligible to win a prize.
3. The lead author of the paper must be a junior faculty or junior faculty’s grad student.
4. The lead or the secondary author with a junior faculty status must be a JFIG member.
5. Each entrant may submit no more than one paper, even if multiple papers have different co-authors. Each entrant can appear as an author/co-author on at most one paper in the competition.
6. The submitted paper must present original research results obtained and written by the entrant(s). It may be a working paper or in the publication process (e.g., submitted, accepted, etc.).
7. The research must have been completed while the entrant(s) was in a tenure track position at a university.
8. The paper must not have won another prize (first or second) in a previous competition or been a finalist in a previous JFIG paper competition.
9. The entrant must not have been awarded first or second place in the previous year’s competition.

Application process

A complete entry includes

1. A cover document with:
   1. The entrant and all co-authors’ names, current affiliations, email addresses and phone numbers. This information must not appear on the main document.
   2. The title of the submitted paper.
   3. A statement that all eligibility requirements have been met, signed by all JFIG entrants.
2. A main document containing:
   1. Separate title page with an abstract.
   2. The paper (12 point font, 1.5 spaced, one inch margins, 30 pages or less including tables and figures but excluding references). No appendices are allowed. Authors’ names and other identifying information should not be included in the main document. Length and format guidelines will be strictly enforced.

All submissions should be made electronically (PDF files) and emailed to the JFIG Paper Competition Chair.

Deadline

The deadline for the 2011 JFIG paper competition is July 15, 2011, at midnight (Pacific Daylight Time).

Contact information

 Committee chair: Jayashankar M. Swaminathan
Glaxo Distinguished Professor of Global Business
Kenan-Flagler Business School
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Previous recipients