Remember the times when academics met at conferences to discuss the newest results of their research, find collaboration partners, or even just to mingle? It seems these times are over. The latest trend at universities (blame it on the credit crunch, if you like) is to not support conference attendance any more. There is just one catch: presenting a paper at a conference is a first step towards a journal publication, especially if you get good feedback at the conference. And another: you won’t really know much about potential collaboration partners without ever meeting them. It’s not as if “upcoming” projects would ever be found on a website or in journal publications…
There is another problem with the “first step towards a publication” notion: some conference explicitly see their proceedings as publications and do not allow you to send them further to a journal (not even if you really worked on them later).
Will this be the end to academics going to conferences?
Gyöngyi
Categories: Conferences · Socks and sandals
Finally, it’s out, the Menachof/Gibson/Hanna/Whiteing update on SCM journal rankings. Some of their findings will be interesting to read to the researchers who just sent out a survey on the ranking of transportation journals 
Other findings confirm previous studies, with the trio of JBL, IJPDLM and IJLM being on top for research, and with a number of reviews (i.e. more practitioner-oriented journals) leading the teaching bit. A convergence of the three amigos is also to be seen, with OM journals “entering” the list. Does it mean we agree on SCM even though we come from different backgrounds?
Gyöngyi
Categories: Academic journals · Journal ranking · Supply Chain Management
Ring a ring o’ roses… This is actually the title of a fascinating article on how to play the game of getting published, getting cited, publishing in “quality” journals etc. It is enlightening how little the quality of an article actually matters, and how we prefer where an article has been published over what it actually contains.
As for journal rankings, it’s a vicious circle of them being based on “quality” people publishing in a journal who submit their paper to the journal only because its a “quality” journal. And another vicious circle of journal ranking being based on (self?)-citations and on the inclusion of both the cited and citing journal article in the SSCI (otherwise your citation is just not counted). Then there is also the self-fulfilling prophecy of higher journal rankings leading to more submissions leading to higher rejection rates and an even higher journal ranking…
Just when is this academic bubble going to burst? The authors (Stuart Macdonald and Jacqueline Kam) suggest a game of tinkerbell to deal with it… and have been quite successful in the gamesmanship they criticise – this very article got them high publication points.
Gyöngyi
Categories: Academic journals · Journal ranking · Research & Methodology
Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow. Christmas carrolls are full of wishes for snow – alas, anyone living in the UK now doesn’t think of a white Christmas. (Nor did anyone in China a year ago.) Why is it that snow comes such a surprise that all(!) transportation modes come to a halt? It’s the same thing at Milan airport, the first snowfall of the year leads to a complete shutdown, and to infinite disruptions in any supply chain that involves companies from Milan. Hope it doesn’t affect fashion week 
What I do not understand is the “surprise” effect of snow; it snows there every year at least once! Or have we got used too much to the effects of global warming that we have forgotten about snow?
What is more, what ever happened to dynamic vehicle routing models that could be used to avoid such disruptions? Or maybe we should ask Emmett Lodree for advice how to incorporate weather forecasts in supply chain modelling? (see his latest article in Computers and Operations Research)
Well, I certainly hope that the supply chains of “snow chains” don’t suffer from snow!
Gyöngyi
BTW, according to IBM, “SNOW” will make your supply chain greener
Categories: Socks and sandals · Supply Chain Management · Sustainability
Not sure whether it was Cooper, Lambert and Pagh’s first article on the supply chain management framework that debated the problem of “functional silos” first, but at least ever since, SCM researchers have been criticising companies for their organisation in these functional silos. Having said so, we researchers excel at maintaining these when it comes to teaching and even to doing research. It’s the good old “don’t step on my toes” mentality.
At the same time, we are reminded – not the least by funds – that we should break down our own functional silos and conduct interdisciplinary research. Easier said than done. First of all, what counts as “interdisciplinary“? Does marketing + SCM constitute interdisciplinary research? Or finance + SCM? Or, say, industrial management and SCM? Probably the funniest way of conducting “interdisciplinary” SCM research is to get a researcher from a technical university and one from a business school; both from their SCM faculty, of course
Crossing the boundaries of other disciplines / research areas is not at all straightforward. Where does your theoretical frame then come from, and which literature do you include/exclude, on what basis? It is nice to have the tradition in SCM research to “borrow” theories from other disciplines, but the question can be disputed whether sthg then still qualifies at SCM research at all. So where are the boundaries of our “discipline”? (This is in fact a question we need to debate in conference committees over and over again.)
Yet another question arises from interdisciplinary research: does your study have to contribute to both disciplines, or is it enough to have a contribution to one? Or, as Magnus Lindskog once asked me, where do you want to leave your mark?
Gyöngyi
Categories: Research & Methodology · Supply Chain Management
