Submission Deadline: June 1, 2026
The TSL Best Paper Award is given once a year to an outstanding paper in the field of transportation science and logistics. The paper must have been published in a refereed journal and must present innovative approaches for solving complex problems in transportation and/or logistics, with an emphasis on operations research and quantitative methods.
Eligibility Criteria
Any author may submit only one of his/her eligible papers. In addition, no individual may be a coauthor on more than two papers submitted to the competition. A paper is eligible for the competition if
- its main topic is related to the field of transportation science and logistics;
- it is written in English;
- it has been published, or appears in pre-print form online through the publishing agency (e.g., Article in Advance at INFORMS journals or online published first at other journals), between June 1, 2023, and May 31, 2026. In the case of papers that are only available in pre-print form online at the time of consideration, the online publication date must be easily verifiable; and
- it was not submitted to this award competition in 2025.
All topics related to the field of transportation science and logistics will be considered, including, but not limited to, airline operations, facility logistics, freight, intelligent transportation systems, transit, urban transportation planning methods, and vehicle routing.
2026 TSL Best Paper Award Committee
Bilge Atasoy, Delft University of Technology
Sadan Kulturel-Konak, Penn State Berks
Changhyun Kwon, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology
Sheng Liu, University of Toronto
Kai Pan, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (Chair)
Submission Instructions
To submit a paper for the 2026 competition, one of the authors must send the paper along with a short letter (maximum 2 pages) describing the merits of the paper to the Chair of the TSL Best Paper Award Committee at kai.pan@polyu.edu.hk before June 1, 2026. Use the subject line: TSL Best Paper Award Submission – [submitting author last name]. In the letter, the submitting author must state that the paper satisfies the eligibility requirements for the competition, indicating specifically the journal and date of publication (or online publication in the case of a pre-print). The letter should also indicate which TSL Special Interest Group (SIG) best fits the paper’s topic (see list of SIGs at: https://connect.informs.org/tsl/tslresources/sigs).
The winning paper will be announced at the TSL business meeting to be held during the 2026 INFORMS Annual Meeting in San Fransico. The authors of the winning paper will share a prize of $800, and each will receive a certificate. The Best Paper Award committee will also select and recommend submissions for the Special Interest Group (SIG) outstanding paper awards.