Paper Competition -- Application Process

2022 INFORMS JFIG Paper Competition - Call for Papers

The INFORMS 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 (ORMS). The JFIG award committee will judge the submissions and select up to six finalists. 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. The first, second, and third place winners will be invited to submit their papers (if not already under review or published) to Operations Research for an expedited review that extends the review process undertaken during the competition. For the 2022 competition, $500 will be awarded for first place, $250 for second place, and $150 for third place, with the remaining finalists receiving $100 each.

The prizes awarded by the competition are intended to be a recognition for outstanding research developments. Every author listed in a paper submitted to the competition—independent of their role or involvement—is considered a contributor to the paper. Therefore, as the goal of the competition is to encourage the research conducted/directed by junior faculty, there are strict limitations regarding the eligibility of submitted papers based on the list of authors. In particular, the competition forbids the direct involvement of senior researchers on submitted papers.

 

Eligibility Requirements

All authors listed in the paper, including the corresponding author who submits the paper, must comply with the following requirements:

(A) The corresponding author must be a member of JFIG and should be available to present their research, in case the paper is selected among the finalists.

(B) No author listed in the paper may have received his or her Ph.D. prior to January 1, 2016, with the exception of “industry collaborators” with a supporting role in the study. Industry collaborators are defined as domain experts (e.g., medical and health practitioners) whose primary affiliation is non-ORMS-related. For industry collaborators with doctoral degrees conferred prior to January 1, 2016, signed statements by the collaborators are required to express the nature and scope of their involvement in the study.

(C) If an author listed in the paper currently holds or at some point in the past held the academic position of assistant professor or equivalent, his/her first appointment as such may not have started before January 1, 2016, with the exception of industry collaborators.

(D) No author may have earned tenure (or an appointment without limitation of term) by the date of the 2022 INFORMS Annual Meeting, with the exception of industry collaborators. Authors may be industry professionals, students, post-docs, etc.

(E) There is no limit on the number of junior faculty that can be listed as authors in a paper.

(F)  No individual can be listed as author or co-author on more than one paper submitted to the competition.

(G) The lead author of the paper must be a junior faculty member, or a junior faculty member's graduate or undergraduate student.

(H) All individuals contributing to a submitted paper must be listed as authors.

(I)  Past winners of the JFIG paper competition, i.e., previous first, second, or third place recipients, are not eligible to enter the competition again.

Paper Criteria

  1. The submitted paper must present original research results. It may be a working paper or under review, but it must not have been accepted for publication prior to submission to this competition.
  2. The paper must not have been a finalist in a previous JFIG paper competition.

 

Application Process: The submission deadline for the 2022 JFIG Paper Competition is July 15, 2022, 11:59PM (Pacific Daylight Time). All submissions should be sent via email with the title “2022 INFORMS JFIG Paper Competition Submission” to [email protected] containing the following information:

1. A main document (as PDF attachment) that complies with the following formatting:

  1. The competition uses a double-blind review process. Therefore, the list of authors must not appear in the main document. Similarly, the main document must not have affiliations, acknowledgements, grant/sponsor information, or any other element that can be used to identify any of the authors.
  2. The document must:
    1. be written in a 12-point font,
    2. be 32 lines per page at most,
    3. have one inch margins,
    4. comprise 34 pages or fewer including the title page, tables, figures, and appendices, but excluding references.
  3. The document must be self-contained. No references to external sources in an attempt to circumvent the page limitation are allowed—e.g., having portions of the paper, such as proofs, tables, and figures linked in external URLs. Reviewers are under no obligation to view any web pages.
  4. The paper should be prepared either in MS Word or preferably in LaTeX. In the case of using LaTeX, the authors must use the following template: https://github.com/INFORMS-JFIG/PaperCompetition
  5. The filename of the submitted paper should be ShortTitleOfThePaper.pdf.

Length and format guidelines will be strictly enforced.

 

2. In addition, in the main body of the email, please provide the following information:

  1. Title of the paper.
  2. Names and affiliation of all authors on the paper.
  3. For each author having earned a Ph.D. or an equivalent degree, the date that the degree was conferred.
  4. A confirmation statement that all eligibility requirements have been met is required: “I have reviewed eligibility requirements (A)—(I) and acknowledge that all co-authors meet the listed criteria.”
  5. To help better match the submission to the judges, please specify in your email the tools and application areas:

Tools (Choose all that apply)

  1. Optimization
  2. Stochastics/Applied Probability
  3. Game theory/Mechanism Design
  4. Empirical (Natural/Field Experiment)
  5. Behavioral/Experimental
  6. Machine Learning/Data Analytics

vii. Inventory Theory

  1. Statistics
  2. Simulation
  3. Finance Interface
  4. Other (please specify)

Application Area (Choose all that apply)

  1. Retail Operations
  2. Revenue Management and Innovative Marketplace
  3. Service Systems
  4. Healthcare
  5. Supply Chains (Transportation and Logistics)
  6. Military

vii. Sustainability

  1. Humanitarian Logistics
  2. Other (please specify)

For questions regarding submissions, please contact: [email protected]

 

 

 

 

Chairs of the Paper Competition Committee:

Frank E. Curtis, Professor

Industrial and Systems Engineering

Lehigh University

 

Daniel Kuhn, Professor

College of Management of Technology

École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne