And the winner is…

Posted on August 12, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Not sure yet. But you can apply to become one :-)

The 2011 Emerald/EMFD doctoral disseration awards are once again up for grabs, deadline Oct 1, 2011. Two of them should be of interest to SCM researchers, with
- IJPDLM sponsoring one in “logistics and supply chain management”, and
- IJOPM another in “operations and production management”.
Other awards in this category include
- IIE’s Pritsker doctoral dissertation award (DL Dec 1, 2011)
- CILT UK’s James Cooper Memorial Cup (DL usually in May but for UK&Ireland students only),
- CSCMP’s doctoral dissertation award (DL also in May)
- and other organisations give similar awards, e.g. DSI,

There are also awards for (doctoral) dissertation proposals, e.g. SMRC’s dissertation proposal award (deadline usually in August), and even some of POMS’s subgroups have similar awards.

There are also scholarships and awards for logistics students on bachelors and masters levels, e.g. through SOLE’s logistics scholarship competition (next deadline should be May 15, 2012). CILT UK gives awards to undergraduate (bachelor or masters) dissertations as well but then again only to students of member universities. Similar awards are given in many other countries, check out your own associations.

Gyöngyi

PS. Again, this is not an exhaustive list, feel free to post other links to awards and their application deadlines in the comments.

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Posted in Logistics, Operations management, Supply Chain Management

Recent ISI ratings of logistics / SCM journals – including new ones for JBL, IJPDLM, IJLRA

Posted on August 3, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Quite a few logistics and SCM journals got their first ever ISI rating* recently, including JBL, IJPDLM, IJLRA etc. Others are still in the queue and will probably get their first rate next year. But here is a list of some that already have a rating:

Let’s start with the “newbies” on the list – NB! the ratings are quite impressive and compare rather well to the “oldies”:

JBL: 3.905
IJPDLM: 2.617
IJLRA (IJoL): 0.558

And here are some others (in alphabetical order), with the 5-year rates in brackets if available:

Dec.Sci (DSJ): 2.233 (3.937)
EJOR: 2.158 (2.512)
IJOPM: 1.812 (2.792)
IJPE: 1.988 (2.411)
IJPR: 1.033 (1.469)
Interfaces: 0.826 (1.115)
JOM: 5.093 (6.029)
MS (ManSci): 2.221 (3.966)
Omega: 3.467 (3.733)
POM: 1.851 (3.147)
SCMIJ (SCM): 2.473 (3.427)
TJ: 2.348 (2.853)
TRE: 1.954 (2.516)

Ok, some disclaimers: This doesn’t include all MS/OR journals but the highest rate I found among those (so far) was MIS Quarterly with 5.041 (9.821). I may also just have missed some journals. So feel free to add them and their rates in the comments section!

Also, rates depend on whether journals that actually cite a journal are captured by the ranking system, how many numbers (and articles) a year a journal publishes etc.  Anyhow, this is it for now.

Gyöngyi

*abbreviations as follows: ISI rate = Thomson Reuters ISI Web of Knowledge rate from their Journal Citation Report; JBL = Journal of Business Logistics, IJPDLM = International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics Management, IJLRA (IJoL) = International Journal of Logistics Research and Applications. The rest can be found through the links.

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Posted in Academic journals, Journal ranking, Logistics, Operations management, Supply Chain Management

A fresh approach to journal rankings

Posted on June 14, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Just when all these SCM journals are about to get their first ISI ratings, the Australian Research Council (ARC) took a fresh, different approach to journal rankings – the one of abolishing overall rankings. As they argue, their excellence in research exercise will be able to capture multidisciplinary research better, will leave room for applied research, enable the possibility for (only?) regional impact etc. The importance of regional impact has also been discovered in the Nordic countries now calling for Nordic journals. Journal quality is still of essence but no more as a stand-alone factor. But here is the press release of the ARC decision.

Gyöngyi

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Posted in Academic journals, Journal ranking

At last: the (public) dissertation defence

Posted on June 13, 2011 by | Leave a comment

We had so many dissertation defences lately that it is time to take up this classic topic. Surely the format of the defence varies from a closed PhD viva to a public defence with family and friends, but what varies much less are the questions the PhD candidate is supposed to answer. Here’s a list for starters.

But what would be an academic event without academic research on the topic? For example Trafford & Leshem have researched the topic and come up with a list of typical (groups of) questions. Apart from going through these, what certainly helps is a mock defence. And a bit of luck :-)

On the DON’T side of things:

Gyöngyi

PS. Thanks to Maja for the hint with the Trafford & Leshem articles, to Michael for the Times article and a random blog for the cartoon.

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Posted in PhD, Popular science

Gerontology meets transportation research

Posted on June 1, 2011 by | Leave a comment

…at a conference on “aging, mobility and quality of life“. Couldn’t be more timely with all the discussion about ageing populations in quite some parts of the Northern hemisphere. Here in Finland the debate goes as far as to question our standard of living in the future due to population ageing. Somewhat related to such population trends (and the mainstream cluster discourse), Nikodemus Solitander just questioned why Finland would want to attract more knowledge workers given its overeducated population where one cannot find enough plumbers, construction workers, bus drivers and cashiers…

But back to transportation research, the conference reminds of some of the gender projects in transportation, e.g. of the World Bank, the European Commission, UNEP, ADB, IFRTD and alls sorts of other lovely acronym organisations. There is even a community of practice for people working in this field. Not as if these problems would have been resolved – far from it! – but it is time to take on also age discrimination as well as different mobility patterns on the research agenda.

Gyöngyi

 

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Posted in Call for papers, Logistics, Transport geography

At your service

Posted on June 1, 2011 by | Leave a comment

There are so many service management-related conferences, workshops, even PhD positions nowadays that it even led to alliances. Here is a newsletter with all sorts of news, links and calls for papers.

Gyöngyi at your service

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Posted in Call for papers, Conferences, Service management

First issue of JHLSCM now online

Posted on May 31, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Following up on its announcement, the first number of the brand new Journal of Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Management is finally out – follow this link!

And the next one’s already in the publication process :-)

Gyöngyi

PS edited 3.6. – the journal has a free access period right now, check it out!

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Posted in Academic journals, Academic publications, Call for papers, Disaster management, humanitarian, Humanitarian supply chains, Supply chain disruption, Supply Chain Management

The ash cloud – a déjà vu

Posted on May 24, 2011 by | 2 Comments

Once again an (Icelandic) volcano eruption is disturbing air transportation. This time industry is reacting in a different way, though:

- The Brits have left it up to individual airlines to decide upon cancellations – a bit like the old “truck or snake” dilemma, I reckon, i.e. do you prefer to be hit by technical failures (in mid air when the air plane collapses) or economic ones (back on earth when the airline goes bankrupt).
- Travel agencies want to introduce an insurance against natural disasters (a bit like the home insurances that already exist in this field).
- A movie is been made through facebook on things that happened to people stranded due to the ash cloud a year ago, with people asked to write their own characters. I reckon some more may be added now :-)

Yet the situation of light cancellations, potential impacts on various industries that depend on air transportation, the impact rolling out up- and downstream in the supply chain is quite a déjà vu of April 2010… Or a “bon voyage” moment, as Matti Nykänen would say.

Gyöngyi

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Posted in Socks and sandals, Supply chain disruption

Corporate responsibility through poetry

Posted on May 13, 2011 by | 1 Comment

After SC poetry, here’s corporate responsibility poetry – thanks to Cécile, Maria, Pasi and Veronika from the PhD course on Corporate Responsibility (Apr 2011)!

Flower power

Thank you for bringing us
to this place of dust.
Plastic, chemicals, e-waste
in your backyard, hard.

GMO, conservatives, additives on our plate,
is this now our fate?

Giant industrial production causing erosion,
where were the human emotions
and devotions?
No more bees and honey,
just pure money.

We, as new leaders
have changed the ways of you cheaters.

Shell, Exxon, BP and Chevron
now run with earth, wind, water and flower:
the power of love replaced the love of power.

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Posted in Corporate Social Responsibility, Socks and sandals

Now: CR3

Posted on April 8, 2011 by | Leave a comment

aka corporate responsibility to the cube. The conference started well with a keynote that focused on supply chain management when problematising the multinational corporation as a political actor. The SCM stream then assembled an interesting combination of very diverse types of sustainable SCM research, tackling anything from the organic banana supply chain to joint intra-sectoral approaches in auditing suppliers to corruption in development supply chains. Quite in accord with the theme of the conference (the power of responsibility) a common conclusion of the SCM stream can be summarised as “documents and standards are nice, but control of actions is needed instead”. Or, as the insight of a paper on forest certification exemplified, no forestry company has yet lost any customer because of not having ratified the certificate…

Gyöngyi

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Posted in Conferences, Corporate Social Responsibility, Supply Chain Management, Sustainability