Best Working Paper Award

The goal of this Competition is to highlight the best working papers in the area of Behavioral Operations.

The awards will be given annually at the INFORMS Annual meeting and will recognize papers as follows:

• First prize (recognized with a certificate or plaque, and a $500 prize)
• Second prize (recognized with a certificate or plaque)
• Honorable mention (recognized with a certificate or plaque)

The award recipients will be invited to present their papers at a special session at the INFORMS Annual meeting.

Eligibility criteria:

• A submission must be in the domain of behavioral operations. To be considered, papers need to meet three primary criteria: (a) at least potentially allow human decision makers to deviate from hyper-rational behavior; (b) examine behavior within an operations context; (c) focus on a micro-level of analysis.
• As of the date of submission the paper must not be accepted for publication. Also, the paper must not have been submitted to a prior INFORMS BOM Best Working Paper Competition unless it has been substantially revised from prior submission(s). 
• The format should be consistent with the manuscript preparation guidelines ofManagement Science or a similar journal if applicable. 
• At least one of the authors of the paper must be a member of the INFORMS BOM Section. If unsure how to join, seehttp://www.informs.org/Community/BOM/Membership
• The authors of each submitted paper must agree to serve as “referees” for up to three other papers submitted for the Award.
• If in doubt on any of the eligibility criteria, please contact the Awards Committee Chair.

Award recipients’ selection procedure:

• Ultimately, the award recipients will be selected by a three-person Awards Committee, which consists of the Chair, Committee Member, and Honorary Committee Member.
• To inform its opinion, the Committee will seek up to three “referee” reports for each submission. The referees will be selected to minimize the conflict of interest with the authors, and will include other BOM section members and/or researchers in this domain. To the extent possible, anonymous referee comments will be returned for each submission.
• If a submission has a substantial conflict of interest with a member of the awards committee, the other committee members will primarily handle the entry, assign referees and evaluate the submission. Should the submission be recommended as a finalist by the remaining two committee members, the BOM Section President (or designee) will assist in evaluating and/or ranking the finalists.   
• The 2017 Awards Committee consists of:
  • Michael Becker-Peth (University of Cologne),Awards Committee Chair
  • Stephen Leider (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor), Committee Member and Previous Chair 
  • Karen Donohue (University of Minnesota, Minneapolis), Honorary Committee Member
• The new Awards Committee Chair will be elected at the INFORMS BOM Section business meeting, and the current Chair will serve as next year’s committee member.
• Contact the Awards Committee Chair at Michael.becker-peth@uni-koeln.de with any questions.