Interorganisational - Supply Chain Management

Entries categorized as ‘Academic publications’

New book: Logistics and Supply Chain Management

April 29, 2008 · 1 Comment

After receiving it twice within a week, it’s time to have a look at Patrik Jonsson’s new textbook on, as it says, Logistics and Supply Chain Management. As a completely new book it has the advantage of working in SCM thoroughly through all of it - as opposed to 7th editions of other books… Patrik managed to avoid the logistics functions trap, i.e. has chapters on “the material flow” instead of treating each function separately. Well done. Most of the mini-cases in the book are European ones (including many Nordic ones, for all of those who talk about “going to Europe” when crossing the Baltic Sea or the North Sea ;-) ), not surprisingly, McGraw-Hill also positioned the book for the European market.

Gyöngyi

PS. A pity it’s written in English, though - I’m hunting for a good book in Swedish for our basic course…

Categories: Academic publications · Book review · Education & Management Development · Logistics · Supply Chain Management

SCM journal impact factors

April 22, 2008 · No Comments

Journal rankings are always sensitive questions; no wonder our posts on rankings are among the most viewed ones (here’s the last one). Rankings of SCM journals also exist in abundance, based on surveys among scholars in the field, or on citation indices. As for the latter, many universities have gone over to follow the Thomson ISI ratings to evaluate the publications of their faculty. But while several journals are now in fact in the process of getting an ISI rating, an awful lot of SCM journals have not received one yet. In the meantime, here are some (alternative) citation indices to look at. The “H-index” has been developed as an alternative, even Google Scholar has come out with it’s own calculations. The International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics Management, International Journal of Retail and Distribution Management, Journal of Business Logistics, and the Journal of Supply Chain Management get quite impressive ratings in Harzing and van der Wal’s (2007) report.

Another interesting ranking is the SCImago journal and country rank. While SCM journals figure just under the mixed “business” category, it’s fun to look at the country ranks.

All these rankings and ratings boil down to one question: is ISI really just the only one universities should look at? And which consequences does such a decision bear for SCM scholars? Yet, having discussed this at several conferences already, the answer from publishing houses is that it’s up to scholars to promote their journals to be included in the ISI. If enough people recommend a journal to be included in the evaluation, Thomson ISI will take it in. So, let’s start the process of getting our journals in and recommend them!

Gyöngyi

Categories: Academic journals · Academic publications · Journal ranking · Supply Chain Management

Dissertation awards

April 15, 2008 · 5 Comments

There are lots of awards for supply chain excellence for corporations - as well as for research. As for the latter, the University of Arkansas just announced its 2008 SCMRC doctoral dissertation award. Dissertation proposals of 15 pages (plus CVs of the applicant and her/his supervisor, and a letter of application) should be submitted by Aug 31 ( 2008 ) to Jim Crowell who also answers questions about the award.

However, there are other awards as well, practically every SCM-related professional organisation has its own award. Some are for dissertation proposals, but more commonly, awards are given for people who have recently finished their doctorate (PhD / DBA / DSc). Mind you, most awards have some regional restrictions; LOGY in Finland only giving awards for people who finished their PhD at a Finnish university etc. Still, here are some to watch out for or to inspire as to where one could find similar awards “at home”:

- One of the awards for young PhDs (anyone who defended their doctoral thesis in logistics / SCM since Jun 1, 2007) is CILT UK’s dissertation award for which applications are due on May 16.

- CSCMP’s dissertation award is usually open for applications by the end of February (past for 2008, but doctoral students should keep this in mind for 2009). Again, this is for young PhDs.

And, apart from these, there are always best paper awards at conferences (LRN, Nofoma, POMS… you name it). Nofoma even gives a special best paper award to doctoral students - BUT, only those qualify who wrote a paper alone and/or with other doctoral students. This is to ensure that it’s not the supervisor’s work ;-)

Gyöngyi

Categories: Academic publications · Education & Management Development · Research & Methodology · Supply Chain Management

Journal databases

March 28, 2008 · No Comments

Emerald has apparently renewed its user interface, as has Elsevier ScienceDirect - the latter adding a neat feature of showing “related articles” to any given one you’ve found. This really helps in finding articles in otherwise less obviously related journals that are anyway related. What a great idea!

Gyöngyi

… who has just found sthg really interesting in the Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics and in Management Accounting Research, which are honestly not the ones I’d usually look at…

Categories: Academic journals · Academic publications

Green logistics

March 28, 2008 · No Comments

Wow, the research group (and quite an impressive one) on green logistics has caught up! It’s not that long time ago it has been established, and now you can already find several reports and working papers on their website. Definitely worth while to check it out!

Gyöngyi

Categories: Academic publications · Sustainability

The gift of travel time

February 13, 2008 · 1 Comment

This is certainly a different kind of journal article in a transportation journal: Jain and Lyon’s (200 8) “The gift of travel time“, going through whether you see travelling (esp. to work) as a burden or a “time out”… Time geography meets transportation research in a truly unique (and entertaining) way.

If you get into it and want to analyse your travels even further, try McDonald’s (forthcoming) article that explains adults’ transportation behaviour by their children’s routes and choices.

So who affects your daily routes, modal choices, and perceptions of transportation?

Gyöngyi

Categories: Academic publications · Socks and sandals

Academic productivity

February 12, 2008 · No Comments

For anyone in performance measurement, it is not a surprise that KPI drive actual behaviour. This is apparently (again, not surprisingly) also the case in academia, as this Times Higher Education article suggests: the REF in the UK measuring academic productivity by citation indices lead to an increase in self-citations. There are two reasons this might be worrying for logisticians - (a) if institutions look at citation databases but logistics journals are not even listed (though this is being worked on), and (b) as it contradicts anything we’ve been preaching about performance measurement for a long time. Not to mention research ethics…

Gyöngyi

Categories: Academic publications · Supply Chain Management

A matter of style

January 24, 2008 · No Comments

Paul put it nicely the other day, one of the “deadly sins” of manuscript submission would be non-compliance, i.e. if authors do not comply with the formatting requirements of a journal. Admittedly, instructions can be vague or underdeveloped, but if a journal or conference e.g. asks for a structured abstract, how difficult can it be to fill in the blanks in each category? ISL as well as Nofoma introduced structured abstracts as to help younger researchers in selling their ideas in just 200 words, i.e. to be able to write an abstract in the first place. Templates and style sheet are surely developed to help authors to get accepted, so why aren’t they ever followed?

Gyöngyi

Categories: Academic publications

Why manuscripts are rejected

December 7, 2007 · 1 Comment

1. What’s the point? A manuscript without a point is like a dog without a bone. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of hitting readers over the head with the point of the manuscript, as in the standard “purpose statement” in the introduction section. As a reader, I prefer to have to read and reflect and infer the point. Still, whether it’s blatant or subtle, the manuscript must have a point to make.

Categories: Academic journals · Academic publications

NOFOMA 2008 - Jun 4-6 in Helsinki

November 22, 2007 · No Comments

The abstract deadline for NOFOMA 2008 is approaching soon - note Jan 15 in your calendars! Uniquely, the conference is co-organised by four different universities, actually, ALL of those that have logistics education in the Helsinki region (and yes, I say Helsinki region, because oddly enough, the Helsinki University of Technology is actually located in Espoo, not in Helsinki). The big four are Hanken, the Helsinki School of Economics, Helsinki University of Technology, and the National Defence University. Just in time that they’ve started to co-operate, after all this is nothing smaller than the 20th anniversary conference! So you can be sure of a great celebration in Helsinki during Jun 4-6.

While the website is migrating (we are still waiting for access rights), here are the crucial dates to note. And a link to the call for papers. UPDATE: you’ll find the CFP on the Nofoma 2008 page of this blog!

First to the dates:
- Deadline for structured abstracts (for Nofoma and Educators Day): Jan 15, 2008
- Full paper deadline (for Nofoma and Educators Day): Mar 28, 2008
- Revisions, WIP papers, poster sessions, and papers for the NORDLOG doctoral workshop: May 2, 2008
- Early bird registration: May 2, 2008
- NORDLOG Doctoral Workshop: Jun 4, 2008 (at the Helsinki University of Technology)
- NOFOMA Educators Day: Jun 4, 2008 (at the Helsinki School of Economics)
- NOFOMA main conference: Jun 5-6, 2008 (at HANKEN)

As you’ll note from the CFP, there are a couple of new features coming up with the conference.
- First of all, the educators day has a call for papers! I.e. please submit your teaching-relevant publications to the conference! They’ll be reviewed, and the ones that make it as a full paper will be included in the conference proceedings.
- Secondly, there is a poster session with a special deadline.
- And… lots of surprise elements to come. But they wouldn’t be surprises if I were to post them here, would they? ;-)

So, note the dates and have a look at the CFP. You’ll find all traditional logistics/SCM themes on it (from theoretical developments, modelling and simulation tracks, to TPL-related issues, ICT in logistics etc.). And a couple of new ones: humanitarian logistics, security & safety in traffic and transport (greetings to the EU’s 7FP), and healthcare supply chains.

Most importantly, this is a conference with a full paper review. And, best papers will be selected for the International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics Management.

Welcome to Helsinki in June!

Gyöngyi

Categories: Academic publications · Call for papers · Conferences · Humanitarian supply chains · PhD · Research & Methodology · Supply Chain Management · Theory