Call for submissions to the IFORS Prize in OR for Development 2026
IFORS is pleased to announce that the long-standing IFORS Prize in OR for Development will be awarded again during its 24th triennial conference to be held in Vienna, Austria, on 12-17 July 2026. The competition aims at promoting the practice of OR for development in developing economy countries and economies in transitions. Past winners and finalists include works that have improved health, wellness, education, public investments and other issues in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The submission process will consist of two stages, where the first requires a short summary. For the selected entries after the first stage, the second stage requires an extended paper. More details given below
Important Dates
| Submission deadline summary (first stage) | October 31, 2025 |
| Submission deadline full paper (second stage) | December 31, 2025 |
| Finalists will be notified by | January 31, 2026 |
| Date of oral presentation | July 12-17, 2026 |
First stage
Entries should be submitted by email to the Chair of Judges by 31th October 2025.
Each entry should comprise a maximum 5 page summary of the work specifying title, authors and affiliations, and including the following sections:
- (i) Context/Problem description;
- (ii) Methodology/Solution approach;
- (iii) Results/Impact;
- (iv) Timeline (when the project started, when the solution was implemented, how long it has been used, eventual future plans);
- (v) Involvement of local researchers (specifying the geographical region of the application if it has not been specified in previous sections); (vi) Others, if the authors would like to highlight something else, and a list of References if citations have been used through the text.
Verification/ Support Letter
A verification/support letter from the client (i.e. the organization(s) benefitting from the work) is strongly appreciated and may be required, as well as other means of verification, during the evaluation process if not included in the submission. It is expected that, to a large extent, the work must have been conducted after end of October 2022 (deadline of the previous competition).
Submission format:
- pdf file,
- 11-point font text
- A4 paper size
- standard margins
- Title, authors and affiliations can be specified in a cover page, so the 5 page limit applies only to the content of the following sections. 9-point font can be used for references and captions.
Initial Evaluation
The evaluation of the entries will be carried out by an international panel of jury members, and entrants are expected to be notified of the outcome by middle/late November 2025. The evaluation will be based on the following criteria: problem definition, creativity and appropriateness of approach, MS/OR/Analytics content, stress on developmental issues, extent of involvement of local researchers, and impact.
Second stage
Entrants selected by the jury in the Initial evaluation will be invited to submit, by 31st December 2025, a full-length manuscript of up to 25 pages describing their work in more detail.
This may be based upon other reports or articles previously submitted or published but must include, at least, content about topics (i)-(vi) specified in the summary submitted for the first stage.
Where appropriate, the relevance of the country’s state of development to the study should be addressed.
Manuscripts will be evaluated based on the criteria used in the Initial evaluation, as well as the manuscript organization and structure and quality of writing.
A stress on developmental issues will be an important factor in the judging.
Manuscripts of a purely technical nature, or those which have no relevance in the developmental context, will not be of interest.
Submission format
- pdf file
- 11-point font text
- A4 paper size
- standard margins
- 9-point font can be used for references and captions
Selection of finalists
- The panel is expected to complete the evaluation of manuscripts and select the finalists by late January 2025.
Final stage
Finalists will present their work in a special session of the competition at the next IFORS Triennial conference (Vienna, Austria, July 12-17, 2026).
The winner and runner-up will be selected based on the previous stages and their oral presentation.
At least one author of each finalist team is expected to attend the IFORS conference banquet to receive their prizes.
Dissemination
Abstracts of all finalist works, and a note about the winning work, will be published in the IFORS Newsletter. Material about the finalist works might also be uploaded to the IFORS’ website.
The presentations at the IFORS Triennial conference might be recorded and promoted in the IFORS website or other dissemination channels.
At any point of the competition, entries describing novel contributions will be encouraged to submit a full-length manuscript to the IFORS’ journals International Transactions in Operational Research (ITOR) or Sustainability Analytics and Modeling, although this will not be a requirement to participate in the competition.
Inquiries and submissions should be sent by email to the Prize Chair:
- Margaretha Gansterer (margaretha gansterer@aau.at)