The Making of EORMS

By James J. Cochran

This is the story of how a broad and dynamic encyclopedic treatment of operations research was conceived, designed and created. While the story may not be as dramatic as Simon Winchester’s “The Surgeon of Crowthorne: A Tale of Murder, Madness and the Love of Words” (released in Canada and the United States under the title “The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary”), there were several interesting twists and turns in the process of creating this encyclopedia.

The Initial Approach

In November 2006, while attending the INFORMS conference in Pittsburgh, I was approached by Beth Golub of John Wiley and Sons with an interesting proposition: Would I be interested in working with Wiley to create a multivolume encyclopedic treatment of operations research and management science? Wiley had worked with academicians from dozens of disciplines to create a myriad of encyclopedias, and now Susanne Steitz-Filler, a colleague of Beth’s and an editor in Mathematics and Statistics at Wiley, was interested in pursuing an encyclopedia for the O.R. discipline.

The idea was simultaneously daunting and intriguing (a combination that decision analysts tell us will put you at either extreme of the risk-reward spectrum!). While this would obviously be a challenging and consuming initiative, I believed that if this were done well it would be an incredibly valuable contribution to our discipline. After discussing it with Beth for a few minutes, I agreed to meet with Susanne.

Susanne was very knowledgeable about ORMS and enthusiastic about the project. She assured me that Wiley would allow me a great deal of creative latitude in designing the structure of the encyclopedia and a great deal of flexibility in determining the breadth and depth of coverage of the discipline. Susanne also outlined the various ways that Wiley would support the development of the encyclopedia. After taking some time to review several Wiley encyclopedias (with a strong focus on the impressive 16 volume Encyclopedia of Statistical Sciences edited by Samuel Kotz, Campbell B. Read, Narayanaswamy Balakrishna and Brani Vidakovic, I was convinced that the proper pieces were in place. When Susanne assured me that I would have primary responsibility for content (i.e., the fun stuff) while Wiley would take care of all other aspects (i.e., the drudgery), I agreed to become the founding editor in chief of the Wiley Encyclopedia of Operations Research and Management Science (or what we would come to call EORMS).

The final step in the first stage of the process was to determine the objectives – what did we want to accomplish by establishing an encyclopedic treatment of ORMS? Through EORMS we wanted to provide:

• accessible introductions to basic ORMS concepts, principals, techniques and methodologies for potential readers with little or no background in ORMS;
• detailed reviews of key areas of ORMS research, at an appropriately rigorous level, for graduate students and researchers who wanted to properly use ORMS concepts, principals, techniques and methodologies;
• highly technical coverage of specific topics for graduate students and researchers who needed access to the cutting-edge of some ORMS concept, principal, technique or methodology;
• extensive and current citations of articles published by peer reviewed academic journals on ORMS concepts, principals, techniques and methodologies;
• presentations of successful and interesting examples of ORMS methodology in practice or in historical contexts; and
• information on activities undertaken by ORMS societies from around the world.

In addition, we wanted to:

• publish articles written by authors from all over the world who are regarded as experts in their respective areas of research and/or application;
• create an important resource that would have enduring value;
• establish an approachable reference for those who are unfamiliar with ORMS to learn more about the discipline and what it has to offer;
• ensure a consistently high level of exposition across EORMS content; and
• create the encyclopedia in a timely manner (ORMS is a dynamic discipline, and delays could render articles accepted early in the process obsolete).

These objectives would drive many of the ensuing decisions to be made about the structure and organization of the encyclopedia and its staff as well as the various procedures we would establish.

Developing a Structure

ORMS is at once both blessed and cursed by its interdisciplinary nature and broad range of potential applications. It is truly ironic that by virtue of the breadth of its potential usefulness, ORMS is extremely difficult to define and its scope difficult to delineate. Any attempt to create an encyclopedic treatment of ORMS had to start with a well-founded definition of the discipline, and we ultimately settled on the development, use and application of analytic approaches to improve processes, operations and decisions. This definition allowed for consideration of theory, methodology and application; quantitative and qualitative approaches; a broad interdisciplinary nature; and use across the entire spectrum of enterprises.

No single person could be expected to serve as an expert across the broad expanse of ORMS, so after the EORMS definition of ORMS had been established, it was imperative that we divide this broad discipline into smaller segments and find individuals who could work with me to manage these smaller segments. I consulted with several colleagues on this issue, and while identification of mutually exclusive segments proved to be unrealistic, I ultimately was able to find a strong general consensus – the discipline naturally would fall into three segments:

• optimization models, techniques and algorithms
• stochastic models
• decision and risk analysis and game theory

At this point I decided that, in order to spread the workload across more individuals, “applications and history” would constitute a fourth segment. These segments would be referred to as areas, and each of these areas would be led by an area editor.

The search for area editors commenced. I wanted to find an individual for each area who had great enthusiasm for his or her area and the encyclopedia; had a broad fundamental understanding of theoretical, methodological and applied research in his or her area; knew the important contributors to research in his or her area; and was reliable, affable and easy to work with. I found an individual in each area who without question met all of my criteria. Cole Smith of the University of Florida agreed to become the area editor for optimization models, techniques and algorithms; Jeff Kharoufeh of the University of Pittsburgh would become the area editor for stochastic models; Tony Cox of Cox Associates would be the area editor for decision and risk analysis and game theory; and Pinar Keskinocak of Georgia Tech would be the area editor for applications and history.

It was immediately obvious that not all articles included in EORMS would (or should) be written at the same technical level, so while working on dividing the discipline into areas, we also began developing categories for the types of articles to be included in the encyclopedia. We wanted to organize the encyclopedia in a hierarchical article structure designed to make its content as widely useful and accessible as possible. With this in mind, we wanted to include some introductory/overview articles on very basic topics (linear programming, queueing, simulation, etc.) that would be extremely accessible to all readers. Naturally, advanced articles that provided more technical detail (on topics such as interdiction models, parallel discrete-event simulation and guided local search) would be important, and technical articles that provided even more detail on very specific concepts (such as partially observable Markov decision processes, Bayesian aggregation of individual beliefs and Lovász-Schrijver reformulation) would be included. We also wanted to include articles that summarized applications in broad areas (such as supply chain management, medicine and health care, telecommunications and finance), articles that gave historical perspectives, and articles that provided information on ORMS societies from around the world. Eventually the four area editors and I arrived at the following designations:

• Introductory reviews that are intended to provide a broad and relatively non-technical treatment of core topics at a level suitable for advanced undergraduate students as well as scientists without a strong background in the field;
• Advanced articles aimed at graduate students and researchers, that provide reviews of key areas of research in a citation-rich format similar to that of leading review journals, with two key differences: 1) articles will be updated regularly by their authors so that they continue to represent the current state of knowledge in their respective fields, and 2) articles will be commissioned in all key areas to create an encyclopedic database of review-type information.
• Technical articles written as “breakouts” from the advanced articles that provide more rich and detailed discussions of key concepts or specific topics addressed in the reviews.
• Case studies/biographical sketches/historical interludes/society articles that present successful and/or interesting examples of ORMS methodology in practice or in historical contexts. These articles are less technical in nature and aimed primarily at graduate students and practicing researchers.

The next consideration was maintaining the encyclopedia’s currency; nobody involved was about to make the required investment of time, effort and capital only to watch the encyclopedia eventually become obsolete. This issue was a critical aspect of my initial discussions with Wiley. Susanne and I had been in agreement from the onset on the importance of establishing and maintaining an online version of the encyclopedia that could be updated quickly and regularly.

The four areas were still extremely broad, so another consideration was the further division of each of the four primary areas into more specific and manageable topical areas. This step was key as it would allow us to identify individuals with even more specific expertise who could serve as topical editors; these topical editors would help the area editors and I deal with content issues at the micro level. Here we were again fortunate to recruit the following highly regarded group of scholars to fill these roles:

Ali Abbas (University of Illinois), Shabbir Ahmed (Georgia Institute of Technology), Gad Allon (Northwestern University), Vicki Bier (University of Wisconsin-Madison), W. Art Chaovalitwongse (Rutgers University), Alan Erera (Georgia Institute of Technology), Joseph Hartman (University of Florida), John Hasenbein (University of Texas), Phil Kaminsky (University of California-Berkeley), Marc Kilgour, (Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada), Michael Kuhl (Rochester Institute of Technology), Vidyadhar Kulkarni (University of North Carolina), Jeffrey Linderoth (University of Wisconsin-Madison), Arne Lokketangen (Molde College, Norway), Lisa Maillart (University of Pittsburgh), Jason Merrick (Virginia Commonwealth University), Tava Olsen (Washington University in St. Louis), Georgia Perakis (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Anne Robinson (Cisco), Fabrizio Ruggeri (CNR IMATI, Italy), Andrew Schaefer (University of Pittsburgh), James Spall (Johns Hopkins University) and Julie Swann (Georgia Institute of Technology).

The last step in establishing the structure was for the area editors and me to work with the topical editors to build the article list and distinguish between the critical topics (topics that could not be omitted from a credible encyclopedia) and the noncritical topics (topics that, while certainly desirable, could be omitted from an encyclopedia without damaging its credibility). While the initial article list was completed in June 2008, this list was dynamic (as we had planned); we anticipated that as we progressed we would learn a great deal about what should and should not be included in an encyclopedia of ORMS. As a result we would revise the EORMS article list frequently to reflect our greater understanding.

Developing the Processes

In the latter stages of developing the structure of the encyclopedia and the structure of the EORMS Editorial Board, we set our sights on the various processes that would have to be in place to facilitate the timely creation of EORMS. We would need processes for identifying prospective authors, inviting prospective authors and reviewers, receiving submissions and reviews, making recommendations and final decisions, copy editing, production, distribution and marketing.

Since it was: 1) vital to the credibility of EORMS content, 2) inextricably linked to most of the other processes, and 3) a potential bottleneck, we first focused on the review process. We elected to use a review process that mirrored the processes used by top peer reviewed academic journals. Each submission to EORMS would be subject to review by two individuals who were familiar with the topic covered by the submission; these reviewers would submit their reports to the corresponding topical editor, who based on the reviewers’ reports and his or her own thoughts would then submit a recommendation to the corresponding area editor. The area editor would then make a decision. If a potential conflict of interest arose with the area or topical editor, I would fill in. If the reviewers, the topical editor and the area editor could not reach a consensus on a submission, I would make the final decision. Since articles about O.R. societies did not include scientific content, they were reviewed by a single reviewer.

At each step of the review process the focus was on the contribution of the article; the quality of exposition; and the article’s accuracy, completeness conciseness.

Most submissions were accepted after the second round of reviews, several required more than two rounds of reviews, a few were accepted after the first round of reviews, and some were unfortunately rejected.

Since we wanted to facilitate participation by authors worldwide and rapid turnarounds of reviews, it was imperative that we establish an online submission and management system. Wiley had used Manuscript Central (now ScholarOne) systems for other encyclopedias with good success, and most members of the ORMS community were familiar with these systems, so we elected to implement a similar system. Through this system we could invite prospective authors and reviewers; receive and access submissions, reviews, recommendations and decisions; notify authors of decisions; and track EORMS’ progress at all levels.

We still had to grapple with identifying prospective authors who could write articles on the topics on the article list and with finding reviewers who were qualified to provide thoughtful, constructive and thorough evaluations of the submissions. The area editors and I worked with each topical editor (taking advantage of his or her unique expertise) to identify one or more prospective authors for each potential. When a prospective author accepted an invitation to write for EORMS, her or she would suggest two or three potential reviewers for the article. The topical editor, who was responsible for inviting the reviewers for all papers in his or her topical area, could use these suggestions or invite other reviewers that he or she selected.

While the area editors, topical editors and I were establishing processes for identifying prospective authors, inviting prospective authors and reviewers, receiving submissions and reviews, and making recommendations and final decisions, Wiley was instituting the processes for copy editing, production, distribution and marketing.

Finally, we documented the structures and processes we had established in the “Wiley EORMS Author’s Guide.” This 46-page document, which was distributed to all authors, reviewers, and topical and area editors, provided a good deal of guidance and greatly reduced the number of questions I received from those involved with creating EORMS content.

Pushing Forward

On the whole, we hit our marks with incredible consistency. At the onset I suspected that meeting periodic interim deadlines on a project of this magnitude would be unlikely, but our structure and processes generally worked as planned. Occasional issues arose (for example, a few authors had difficulty submitting LaTeX versions of their articles), but the EORMS staff generally resolved these minor issues rapidly. The top level of the EORMS Editorial Board (the area editors, Susanne and I) met via monthly conference calls to discuss ways to resolve issues that had arisen and review ways that issues had been resolved, update each other on the status of the tasks for which we were responsible, identify where bottlenecks were developing, and devise strategies for alleviating these bottlenecks before they became problematic and threatened to delay the production of the encyclopedia.

As one would expect, submission of articles was far from uniformly distributed. We initially experienced a high submission rate that reflected early enthusiasm over this new initiative, and then the submission (and resubmission) rate fell to what we considered to be an acceptable equilibrium rate for several months. The submission/resubmission rate picked up again as the July 15, 2010 deadline for accepting articles for the print edition of EORMS approached, and by July 10 only a few articles that we had expected to include in the print edition of the encyclopedia were still outstanding (several area editors, topical editors and I continued to work on the encyclopedia from Portugal during this period while we attended the EURO XXIV Conference in Lisbon).

On July 14, I flew from Portugal to Slovenia for the 8th International Conference on Teaching Statistics (ICOTS). When I arrived at my hotel in Ljubljana and logged onto the EORMS ScholarOne system I found that only six articles still required action, and by July 15 we had received and accepted approximately 600 articles. Even more noteworthy was that we had accepted articles covering every topic that we had originally designated to be critical! We had accumulated more than 6,000 well-written pages on a wide variety of topics, several of which (such as interdiction, approximate dynamic programming algorithms, Benders decomposition and M/G/s/s queues) were fundamental, and some (such as music and O.R., ice hockey and O.R. and art and O.R.) which were more esoteric. The eight volumes we produced included contributions from more than a thousand authors representing more than 45 nations. In addition, the online version would be made available at a reduced cost through eligible libraries in developing nations through Research4Life (the collective name for three initiatives – HINARI, AGORA and OARE – that provides developing countries with free or low cost access to academic and professional peer-reviewed content online). Through EORMS’ involvement in Research4Life, we hope to reduce the scientific knowledge gap between industrialized countries and the developing world, encourage O.R. education and application in developing nations, and assist in the attainment of six of the United Nation’s eight Millennium Development Goals (http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/) by 2015. Readers can find more information on Research4Life at www.Research4Life.org.

Publication

Now that the content for the print version of EORMS had been assembled, Wiley and I had to complete several tasks to support the publication of the encyclopedia by our target date. All articles had to be professionally copy edited; we had started this process several months earlier, but many papers still needed to be reviewed by professional copy editors. I had to write a preface. The print versions of the papers had to be produced (for both the eight-volume set and the dowloadable pdfs to be made available through the on-line version of EORMS). HTML versions of all papers had to be created for the online version of the encyclopedia, and the special functionalities of the online version (the following features that make EORMS particularly useful) had to be tested:

• downloading pdf versions of articles;
• accessing HTML versions of articles;
• searching the encyclopedia by keyword, topic or author;
• accessing the abstract or bibliography of an article directly;
• hyperlinking citations available online to the cited sources;
• pulling figures and tables from HTML versions of articles into highlighted displays;
• displaying the full citation of all articles (so one can cut and paste the reference information into a paper that cites an EORMS article);
• displaying author information and the history (i.e, hyperlinks to previous versions of an article) for each article; and
• hyperlinks within EORMS

The hyperlinking of material cited in EORMS articles to the original source material through the user’s library is particularly exciting. For example, when an article in the online version of EORMS is accessed through a university system, each citation in the article that is available through that university’s library is automatically hyperlinked to its source and can immediately be viewed by clicking on the hyperlink. Another key feature from the above list is the maintenance of the history of various versions of the article. This will allow researchers to cite EORMS articles with confidence – even though the encyclopedia is dynamic and will be revised regularly, one will always be able to find the version of the article that he or she has cited.

Wiley had stepped up its marketing campaign (which the company had initiated 15 months earlier), was coordinating the production of both the print and online versions and was preparing to distribute the print version. College and university librarians had learned of EORMS and were very excited about the project (two asked us to try to accelerate the production process so they could make EORMS available to its faculty and staff at an earlier date).

Once the copy editors had completed their task, I had to give the entire encyclopedia a final once over. As I had been throughout this entire process, I again was taken by the quality of contributions to EORMS, the breadth and depth of coverage the encyclopedia had achieved, the magnitude of the task we had nearly completed, the large number of members of the ORMS community who had been involved (by my estimation, approximately 2,000 individuals had written, reviewed and/or edited for EORMS), and the good grace and professionalism all involved had displayed.

On Nov. 8, 2010, Wiley threw a wine and cheese reception at the Wiley booth in the exhibitor hall during the INFORMS Conference in Austin, Texas. More than 100 authors, reviewers, topical editors, area editors, potential users and innocent or curious bystanders joined together to enjoy each other’s company and celebrate the impending publication of this encyclopedic treatment of ORMS.

Final Stages

Both the print and online versions of EORMS are in production and due to be published in February 2011 (the encyclopedia may be available by the time you read this article). We have received several new articles and will continue to add articles as we identify topics that warrant inclusion but are not yet covered by the encyclopedia. We will also continue to revise existing articles to reflect new developments and areas of applications in our dynamic discipline; occasionally we may determine that an article has grown too long and elect to divide the article into two slightly overlapping shorter articles. I look forward to receiving suggestions from you; please send them to jcochran@latech.edu.

During the process, I had the happy experience of congratulating several contributors for additions to their families. I also had the sad experience of expressing my condolences to several contributors whose families lost members. One author, my friend and colleague Valery Gordon of the United Institute of Informatics Problems at the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, passed away before he could complete his article on the Byelorussian Operational Research Society. It was very important to Valery that he inform the worldwide O.R. community about the efforts of the O.R. community in Belarus, and after his death his friend, colleague and coauthor Nikolai N. Guschinsky completed and submitted the article.

During the four years from the first time I was approached about this initiative to now, I dealt with many issues that I never imagined I would have to consider, such as logo design, commercial Web site development, dividing an encyclopedia into logical alphabetic break points that segment the reference alphabetically into reasonable volumes of approximately equal size and several other non-ORMS issues. The process, while often grueling and occasionally frustrating, has been an exhilarating experience for me. I had an opportunity to work with many terrific individuals at Wiley and hundreds of tremendous colleagues who served as authors, reviewers, topical editors and area editors. Each of these individuals made a valuable contribution to EORMS, and the topical editors and area editors in particular devoted a great deal of time and effort. This encyclopedia was a monstrously large collaborative effort, and I look forward to working with everyone in the O.R. community to continue revising, upgrading, expanding and improving EORMS. I hope you will agree that this is a valuable and important resource.

James J. Cochran (jcochran@latech.edu) is the Ruston Building & Loan Endowed Research Professor at Louisiana Tech University and the editor in chief of the Wiley Encyclopedia of Operations Research and Management Science.

EORMS: By the numbers

Number of volumes: Eight
Number of pages: More than 6,400
Number of articles: More than 600
Purchase information: Order by phone at 1-800-245-6217; online at www.wiley.com/go/eorms; or via e-mail at mkrenz@wiley.com.
Eight-volume print ISBN: 978-0-0470-40063-0
Print price: The print version of EORMS is available at an introductory price of $2,380.00, which is valid until April 30. After this date, the list price of $2,800.00 will go into effect.
Online ISBN: 978-0-0470-40053-1
Online price: Contact Wiley via the above phone number or e-mail address to inquire about pricing for the online version of EORMS.