The Ombudsman: Academic Research in MS/OR: Science or Trivial Pursuit?
Abstract
At the bottom of the masthead of this journal, in tiny print, a statement reveals that “Interfaces seeks to improve communication between managers and professionals in MS/OR …” The editor of this journal is at the junction of the academic and practitioner communities, where representatives of both communities frequently express concern about what academics work on and how that work is evaluated. The types of concerns young academics have expressed follow:
—To get tenure at my school I need eight hits [publications] in six years … and I can only get them by working on small problems.
—The really important problems in my field are too long-term and too risky for someone in my position [without tenure] to work on.
—If I work on a big problem, I will have to be part of a research team and may not get credit [recognition? points toward tenure?] for my work.
Our objective here is to explore the question: Do the rewards and incentive systems at our colleges and universities encourage academics in MS/OR to do research on important problems?
