Public Programs, Services and Needs Best Paper Competition Application Process

Submission Process and Requirements:

The submission process consists of the following:

• A nomination letter, not to exceed two pages, explaining the relevance of the paper to SPPSN’s mission and the paper’s significance to research and/or practice, as well as a paper abstract, not to exceed 250 words. The nomination letter and abstract are typically due by July 6, 2012.
• Eligible participants will be invited to present a full paper to the judging committee by July 20, 2012.
• Final drafts of papers are due on September 7, 2012.

Paper submission requirements:

• Papers must be a maximum of 32 pages long, including title, abstract, all text, references, figures and tables.
• Papers must be formatted to one-inch margins on all sides, a font size of at least 10 point, and at least 1.5 line spacing.
• The paper under consideration for this prize shall not have not been published elsewhere

An announcement of this award will be made via the INFORMS e-newsletter and SPPSN listserv by April of each year. By-laws for this award, detailing judging committee membership requirements and procedures, detailed guidelines for submissions and judging criteria will be posted on the SPPSN website.

Competition Committee:

The judging committee for the Section on Public Programs, Services and Needs Best Paper Competition will consist of five members. Two of these members will be drawn from the SPPSN board of directors; the remainder of the committee will be drawn from the membership of SPPSN. The current committee chair will supervise the search for new members. Members will serve two- or three-year terms, determined mutually by the members and the committee chair.

With the exception of the first two years of the competition, the previous year’s first-prize winner will be invited to join the committee; if the previous year’s first-prize winner is unable to serve on the committee, the second-prize winner will be invited to join the committee. To ensure continuity and variety, committee members will be ‘staggered’ by having two members rotate off and two new members added each year, from the third year onwards. The chair of the competition committee will be designated by consensus of the current members by February of each year. Each chair will serve a one-year term. The committee chair is encouraged to ensure that the committee reflects the disciplinary, application-area, gender and race/ethnic diversity of SPPSN.

Judging Process:

The competition committee will evaluate all submissions over the course of approximately two weeks, and communicate their choices for finalists according to a set of criteria, detailed below. There is no fixed number of finalists. Any committee member who collaborates with, or who has supervised the work of an author or co-author of a competition submission must recuse himself/herself from judging that submission.

Criteria for judging submissions consist of:

1. Relevance to the mission of the Section on Public Programs, Services and Needs. SPPSN’s mission is to “further the use of operations research and management science in the following areas:

• Public Policy – improving governmental decision-making at the legislative and strategic levels.
• Public Programs – improving the management of government programs, services and operations.
• Public Safety – improving decision-making in support of homeland security, law enforcement, emergency preparedness, and disaster response.
• Public Service – supporting community development and public service organizations, and encouraging members of the ORMS professions to volunteer their know-how in public service causes.
• Public Needs – Improving logistics and other national and international programs to address humanitarian needs.”

1. Relevance to demonstrated current needs in the areas listed in (1)
2. Innovation, with respect to theory, models and/or analytic methods
3. Applicability of results to current practice
4. Social significance of results

The committee chair will distribute to committee members a form by which each submission’s performance along the five dimensions above may be recorded, and aggregate quality assessments computed. The criteria listed above will apply to initial submissions and finalist papers equally.

All inquiries about this award should be made to:

Michael P. Johnson
SPPSN Past President and chair, Best Paper committee
University of Massachusetts Boston
michael.johnson@umb.edu
617-287-6967

Julie L. Swann
SPPSN President
Georgia Institute of Technology
julie.swann@isye.gatech.edu
404-385-3054