Editorial: The 12th Rothkopf Rankings

The author, Michael F. Gorman, presents the 12th ranking of universities according to their contributions to the operations research practice literature, thus continuing and expanding on the original work of Michael H. Rothkopf, Ronald Fricker, and Gorman’s 11th Rothkopf rankings. This 12th Rothkopf rankings of academic contribution to the operations research practice literature continue the series that Michael Rothkopf began in 1996 and that Ron Fricker continued. Preserving that tradition, I assess the activity of universities in the production of practice-centric operations research between 2012 and 2018, using the previously used ranking methods developed by Rothkopf in 1996, Fricker in 2009, and Gorman in 2016. In this ranking, I propose a blended ranking that allows a combination of all three previously used measures to summarize the overall contribution of each institution to practice in a single number. To do so, I present updated rankings of academic institutions and discuss patterns. Although other institutions have shown consistent contributions to the practice literature, Georgia Institute of Technology is recently the leading and most consistent contributor to practice in the United States; University of Chile has demonstrated similar superior performance among non-U.S. institutions.