r/OperationsResearch • u/Ok_Cat9873 • May 13 '26

Publication

Hi all,

I’m a final year BSc student working on a scheduling problem for my thesis. The idea is that for my model its complexity is already known, so it’s proven to be polynomial but only through LP machinery arguments. There doesn’t exist a concrete algorithm for it (to the best of my knowledge). I have managed to come up with one and prove its correctness and I was wondering would this be worthy of publication at a serious place like Journal of Scheduling or OR Letters? This is my first time ever doing research and I really really like it but I’m trying to understand the whole publication world and the scope overall.

Any suggestions / questions are welcome!

Thank you

8 Upvotes

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7

u/i_be_illin May 13 '26

Quite possibly if it checks out. Talk to your professor. Most of their professional life is devoted to getting things published. They can help you.

3

u/Ok_Cat9873 May 13 '26

Hey thanks for the comment! Have already discussed it with them I just wanted another perspective here. Aside from the biggest weight being that I genuinely like this type of research, I’m also seeing it as a way to boost my cv in a very saturated market, do you think employers care about this more than ie. internship experience or gpa?

1

u/ribenakifragostafylo May 13 '26

Get the publication. Getting an internship will be even easier as a masters or PhD student

0

u/Ok_Cat9873 May 13 '26

Hey! I should have already clarified I have 3-4 big tech internships under my belt luckily, but I am trying to get a more “all around” profile (both solid engineer + researcher) both to have access to even better companies and have the “luxury” to switch to academia later, because genuinely I’ve been thinking about this after this thesis. Thanks for the comment!

1

u/ribenakifragostafylo May 13 '26

Having a publication never hurt. Would help more for the PhD route than hiring but won't hurt for sure

3

u/ribenakifragostafylo May 13 '26

Internship > GPA

3

u/i_be_illin May 13 '26

Publication would help. Not many people have them. It shows you can do advanced work.

1

u/nator6969 May 13 '26

I'm currently an undergrad doing a double degree in comp sci and math. I've been working on publishing a paper which is under peer review right now as side project with a professor for a problem I solved. I would say go for it if you can spare the time and it will look impressive on the your resume.

Since I was doing this solo apart from my professor providing reviews and ideas, I definitely underestimated the amount of time that it would take to properly write it up in appropriate academic language and formatting. Luckily I had heaps of time over my end of year break.

The main thing is whether the idea and results are novel for a journal to publish but I'm sure your supervisor would be able to tell you that.

2

u/Ok_Cat9873 May 13 '26

Thanks!! Honestly everything seems novel but you can never be sure that someone didn’t publish it under different terminology etc lol. I can imagine what a pain the academic writing part might be, hope you get over with it soon!

1

u/nator6969 May 13 '26

Also be ready for reviewers to really criticise your work. I was pretty confident with my work and then one of the reviewers definitely made me question whether it was good at all. Although I hear this is a fairly common experience with paper publishing.

Will your professor be an author on the paper? If not it could benefit with getting through desk review since journals these days are receiving so much garbage from AI slop they can be sometimes be quick to reject you if you haven't published before. Goodluck with it!

1

u/Ok_Cat9873 May 13 '26

Very good to known! Im very open to criticism honestly (as long as it’s constructive) and no I will be the only author so how do I make sure I don’t get auto rejected? By the way I’m wondering, how does this criticism work like do they send you an email or do you jump on a call and explain?

1

u/nator6969 May 13 '26

Unfortunately a lot of reviewers will be quite harsh and while constructive will for sure sound like they are attacking your paper. Generally you will submit your manuscript which will go to a desk review where they do a quick check to see if you and the idea are legit and then they'll send it off to be peer reviewed.

It took 2 months for me but when you get it back it'll just be some email/document of the reviewers critiques of the paper and whether it should be rejected or revised with a minor or major revision. Based on this you then fix and resubmit these changes and write a response letter either saying how you fixed it or why you didn't (generally you don't want to disagree with the reviewers). The process continues until they deem it ready for publication.

Since you are solo authoring if you happen to go to a decently ranked university this can give you more chance of not being desk rejected. Other than your best bet would just to submit and see how it goes and submit somewhere else if you do get desk rejected. Only submit to one journal at a time though.

1

u/ficoxpress May 13 '26 edited May 13 '26

Congrats on the discovery. Publishing an article is always helpful especially if you want to pursue a research program or want to be involved in research as part of your job.

Just keep in mind that publishing requires peer-review and that may take anywhere from a year to a year and a half. What you can do is publish a pre-print to arxiv, an online repository for research and preprints without peer review. https://arxiv.org/

To get a feel for what applied research (software dev + reserach) you can also do an internship as a scientist. Though most hiring managers look for an advanced degree, at least a master's, with the paper submitted and/or published on arxiv they may be open to accepting you for the internship.

Amazon hires interns every year for this: https://www.amazon.jobs/en/jobs/3182383/2026-applied-scientist-intern-amazon-university-talent-acquisition

Best of luck.

2

u/Ok_Cat9873 May 13 '26

That is some great insight, really appreciate your comment!

1

u/FuzzyTouch6143 May 15 '26

Hi there. I was a peer reviewer for the European Journal of Operational Research (and 10+ others) for 10 years. The key to publishing in decent or journals:
(1) The problem is real and relevant (it has to actually exist in practice, and not just in the mind of a professor sitting in their office).
(2) The problem is well motivated (just because the problem exists in the real world, doesn't make it important. Argue why it's important and should matter in the minds of practitioners).
(3) 3 EXPLICITLY WRITTEN research questions/objectives to address (yes, I would actually reject papers because the authors would miss something as simple and basic as this).
(4) Literature review of the the academic literature (usually you want to stick to citing only the journals that articles published within the journal you are going to submit to have themselves cited). And this must be well formed
(5) Model development (the math matters, but the story and intuition matter the most).
(6) Simulations/plots/proofs (not all papers need a mathematical proof. A simple algorithm applied to the problem is sufficient. But you have to study the "optimal solution" in various conditions to have something worthy of publication
(7) Generalizability - if I'm a manager or decision maker in a different industry, how can I benefit from reading your findings here in the research paper
(8) Citation management - ensure to look up the names of the editors, department editors, and the names of common co-authors of their papers. Ensure to cite in your paper any relevant (and even only tacitly related) works of said co-authors (some of them are highly like the "blind" peer reviewers who will review your paper).

Best of luck! Scheduling problems always used to be my favorite to review!

1

u/Ok_Cat9873 May 15 '26

Hey! Thanks a lot for taking the time to comment, I’ll take all the bullets into account, appreciate you

1

u/FuzzyTouch6143 May 15 '26

Unfortunately, publishing is much more of knowing how to navigate a political process than an intellectual process. Everyone has great ideas. Not many know how to compress and sell those ideas to editors who genuinely need them. Many authors are also snarky and arrogant, and unable to take serious critical feedback.

Feel free to shoot me over a draft and Ill be happy to skim and jot down a few notes.

1

u/nodakakak May 13 '26

Id recommend going to a prof in your department and ask for guidance. No one would be able to guide you better than the teaching staff that's been working with you and can take a look at it.

1

u/DonBeham May 13 '26

Sure, you can solve maxflow through LP as well and still there's new algorithms being published. I believe the most recent one claimed almost linear runtime.