Information for Submitting to a Journal Special Issue (Optional)
The organizers have arranged for special sections of two different journals to allow authors a choice of publication venue. This submission is open to all teams that participated in the Implementation Challenge and submitted both results and an associated Challenge paper describing their method.
All papers submitted for journal publication should be of substantially new content and not published elsewhere. We expect that submitted papers will contain results and descriptions beyond those included in the Challenge paper. All submissions will be subject to the journal's review process and must meet its standards for publication through its normal review process.
We ask that participants do not submit to both special sections. Rather, they should select the one that they believe is best-suited for their particular contribution.
A special section of Transportation Science will be devoted to state-of-the art methodological contributions to solving one or more of the VRP variants considered in the Challenge. The major acceptance criterion will be the quality and originality of the contribution, as well as the advancement in the study of vehicle routing problems and corresponding solution approaches.
Manuscript Preparation and Submission: Submitted manuscripts will need to conform to the usual high standard requirements of Transportation science and will be peer reviewed with the same procedure as any other submission. Papers will be reviewed on a rolling horizon as received. Authors are asked to follow the journal’s guidelines for authors and submit their full papers through Scholarone (https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/transci), choosing "Special section: DIMACS Implementation Challenge: Vehicle Routing” as the “Article type”.
Submission deadline: July 31, 2022.
Guest Editors: Claudia Archetti, Eduardo Uchoa, and Thibaut Vidal.
A special section of INFORMS Journal on Computing (IJOC) will be devoted to software and data contributions of value to the vehicle routing community. We welcome submissions from both Challenge participants and the broader community. Such contributions should target the journal’s Software Tools Area and adhere to its guidelines for submission. Contributions in this Area should be novel with respect to software, but need not necessarily be so with respect to the underlying mathematics or algorithms. Submissions to this special section should include both a paper and a related software or data archive. Please note that the Software Tools area invites both short submissions (centered mainly on software or data) and regular submissions that would include both software and surrounding methodological contributions.
Submission Deadline: Because the format of the Journal’s Software Tools Area will be unfamiliar to many, we require authors to prepare a short proposal (letter of interest) before submitting a full manuscript. This is described in the following submission timeline:
- December 1, 2022: Letter of interest due to the editors via email. This should be 1-page or less and roughly describe the intended content, type of submission (short or long paper), and expected length of the manuscript.
- March 1, 2023: Submission of manuscripts due (via ScholarOne Manuscripts).
- August 31, 2023: Special Section ready for publication.
Guest Editors: Nicholas Kullman, Jorge Mendoza, and Ted Ralphs.
Information for Submitting a Challenge Paper (Required)
Implementation Challenges are about sharing ideas among researchers all working on a common problem. For this reason, we ask all teams competing in algorithm evaluation to submit an extended abstract that describes their algorithm and its performance. (Such submission is required to be considered for any "award" or recognition in the Challenge, including an invitation to present at the workshop.)
The submitted paper should be in article format and should describe the methods used as well as the results obtained. The document is limited to 6 pages, including references. Detailed tables of results may be included in appendices that are not counted in the six pages. Solvers competing in more than one variant should submit only one paper.
Participants are welcome to submit papers based on work they have previously published elsewhere, as long as they are clearly marked as such.
Teams will be invited to present at the concluding workshop based on the performance of their algorithm and the discussion provided in the associated paper. Selection criteria include algorithm performance (to include solution quality, speed, and breadth of solver capability), originality, presentation, and overall assessment.
Final versions of papers will be posted on the VRP Challenge webpage as a resource to all participants and the broader community.
Challenge papers should adhere to the rules and formatting suggested in this template: [Word template] [Latex template].
Challenge papers must be submitted by February 1, 2022.