In my forty-two years as an academic researcher in logistics I’ve always tried to study topics of relevance to industry. So much so that colleagues used to refer to me as the professor of lorries, a scholarly Eddie Stobart. No doubt a few of them considered the title a bit derogatory as they preferred their own research to be a bit more highbrow. A lot of academic research, after all, is motivated more by a desire to publish journal papers and impress one’s peers than to produce results of real value to the economy and society.
Recruitment and promotion, particularly in business schools, now depends heavily on your ability to publish in top-rated journals. This is problematic for a practical subject like logistics, partly because its journals get relatively low rankings in the league tables. I and other logistics profs tried for several years to get them uprated but with limited success. It is also problematic because the premier journals tend to more theoretical, more mathematical and less accessible to non-academic readers.
But then very few practitioners would ever contemplate reading a journal paper, despite the fact that many of them are now available online on an ‘open access’ basis. This means that the main outlets of academic research are very rarely consulted by managers. As a result, much innovative thinking in logistics is never disseminated to those who could implement and commercialise it. Clearly logistics researchers need to publicise their work through other channels, such as this one, to reach an industrial audience.
For the big funders of university research a lack of engagement with practitioners has been a long running concern. To incentivise academics to find practical applications for their work, the UK government’s 7-yearly assessment of universities’ research performance, known as the Research Excellence Framework (REF), includes an ‘impact’ criterion which carries a 25% weighting. Logistics managers who have been collaborating with universities over the past few years may recently have been asked to complete an impact statement for REF2021.
The EU’s Horizon 2020 programme has invested huge sums in logistics-related research since 2014. For a couple of years I chaired its Transport Advisory Group which gave the European Commission recommendations on priority areas for future research. This Group placed strong emphasis on the likely value of the research to industry and public policy. The EU obviously wanted to maximise the economic return on its huge investment in transport and logistics research.
Hence the recent launch of a new project called ‘Boostlog’ designed to boost the impact of EU-funded research on logistics. Among other things, it will review 150 EU research projects in freight transport and logistics conducted over the past 20 years to see what impact they had and what lessons can be learned for future research.
My bet is on so-called ‘action research’ coming out top. This is where researchers and managers work together during the course of the project, sharing ideas and testing and refining the results as they emerge. For a great UK logistics example of this convergence of academic and business expertise I, as a mere professor of lorries, would encourage you to check out the Centre for Sustainable Road Freight
Column in Logistics Manager May 2021