Ranking Operations Management conferences

Several publications have appeared in the field of Operations Management which rank Operations Management related journals. Several ranking systems exist for journals based on , for example, perceived relevance and quality, citation, and author affiliation. Many academics also publish at conferences but we have not come across publications that rank conferences. Conference rankings are generally more complicated than journal rankings. Journal rankings are primarily for publishing purposes. Conferences on the other hand are attended by people for different reasons. In this paper the first attempt is made in developing an operations management conference ranking based upon author affiliation. Ranking based on an analysis of author affiliation assumes that one important motive for participants is to attend a high quality research conference. With that assumption it is reasonable to use the author affiliation approach. Based upon an existing ranking of institutes that offer operations management programs a ranking list of affiliations is developed. Subsequently, we compare several operations management related conferences such as POMS, EurOMA, OSCM and the Operations Management Division of the Academy of Management based on that ranked list of institutes. The results provide information for authors that help in deciding which operations management oriented conferences to attend.