IISE Transactions

Practice-Driven Research Challenges (PDRC)

1. Motivation
Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISE) has long been dedicated to addressing complex, real-world problems. Today, with the rapid transformation brought by the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), digitalization, automation, and AI-assisted data-driven decision-making, industrial systems are evolving faster than ever before. These advancements, while enabling unprecedented opportunities, also create new and urgent research challenges that traditional research cycles often struggle to address in a timely manner.

To meet this growing need, IISE Transactions announces the launch of a Special Series on Practice-Driven Research Challenges (PDRC)—a new initiative designed to strengthen the connection between industrial practice and academic research. This series seeks to spotlight real-world, data-rich, and analytically complex problems that call for innovative methodologies, advanced analytical tools, and integrative, datadriven solutions. By fostering collaboration between researchers and practitioners, the PDRC series aims to accelerate the development of impactful, practice-inspired innovations that advance both theory and application in the ISE community.

2. Manuscript Types and Requirements
We welcome “short papers” featuring real-world, data-rich, and analytically meaningful challenges across diverse ISE applications, particularly those requiring interdisciplinary approaches. Submissions will undergo an expedited review process by a dedicated editorial board.
• Type I: Problem Statement Papers: Describe practical ISE challenges and provide relevant datasets, focusing on problems that can inspire new research directions or generate significant real-world impact. Manuscripts should: (1) explain the practical context and importance of the problem; (2) describe dataset access and provide details on data characteristics and collection conditions essential for modeling and data analysis; (3) identify technical challenges that make the problem nontrivial in methodological approaches, computational solutions, or both; and (4) discuss potential new research opportunities for advancing ISE methods. Submissions are welcome from, but not limited to, public challenge competitions organized by relevant conferences, professional societies, and industrial partners.
• Type II: Solution Papers: Present methodologies, algorithms, code, and/or implementation solutions that specifically address a problem described in “Type I: Problem Statement Papers”. Manuscripts should: (1) demonstrate innovative and/or integrative approaches that outperform traditional methods; (2) provide comprehensive performance comparisons to validate the contribution and solution quality; and (3) offer suggestions for practical implementation and further improvement. We encourage submissions that have participated in the relevant public challenge competitions, provided there are no copyright restrictions.

3. Manuscript format and page Limits
All submissions must follow the journal’s standard manuscript format, subject to the following page limits.
• Type I: No more than 10 pages
• Type II: No more than 15 pages

4. Review and Publication Process
All papers will undergo rapid review by the editorial board, assessing both research relevance and practical significance.
• Type I: Evaluated based on clarity, challenge level, and potential research impact.
• Type II: Evaluated based on solution innovation, performance, and implementation potential.
Accepted papers will appear in IISE Transactions under the following special categories:
• Practice-Driven Research Challenges - Problem Statements
• Practice-Driven Research Challenges - Solutions

Note:
In addition to Type II short papers that provide solutions to the problems raised in Type I papers, we also welcome full-length regular papers addressing these challenging problems. Such submissions will follow the standard IISE Transactions peer review process and must meet all the requirements for regular papers. Accepted full-length papers will be published in one of the journal’s four Focused Issues and should include an acknowledgment of the use of information from the corresponding Type I paper.