Editorial Mission

M&SOM is the INFORMS journal for operations management. The purpose of the journal is to publish high-impact manuscripts that report relevant research on important problems in operations management (OM). The field of OM is the study of the processes for the design, procurement, production, delivery, and recovery of goods and services. OM research entails the control, planning, design, and improvement of these processes. This research can be prescriptive or descriptive; but in either case, the intent of the research is ultimately to develop some form of enduring knowledge that can lead to more efficient or effective processes for the creation and delivery of goods and services.

M&SOM encourages a variety of methodological approaches to OM research; papers may be theoretical or empirical, analytical or computational, and may be based on a range of established research disciplines. M&SOM encourages contributions in OM across the full spectrum of decision making: strategic, tactical, and operational. Furthermore, the journal supports research that examines pertinent issues at the interfaces between OM and other functional areas.

The criteria for publication are:

Importance of the problem or issue: What is the focal problem, issue, or phenomenon for the research? Is this focal point of sufficient importance to OM to warrant consideration by the journal? Why? What evidence is provided that the paper addresses a significant issue for operations managers in some context? What is the potential impact from addressing the problem or issue?

Relevance of the research: Is the research relevant to the problem or issue? Do the research results provide an applicable solution to the problem, or a potential pathway to solve the problem? Does the research provide meaningful, actionable insights into an issue or phenomenon? Are there lessons from the research that can be applied to practice or taught to operations managers? What evidence is provided for the relevance of the research?

Rigor of the research: Are the research approach, methods, and execution sound, as judged by the scholars from the relevant research community? Are the results correct? Are the results convincing? Does the paper position its contribution relative to the relevant literature?

Innovation: What is innovative or original about this research? Is there novelty in the framing of the research question, or the research methodology and analysis? Is this a creative use of existing methods or models? What are the implications from these innovations for subsequent research?

Clarity: Is the paper clearly written? Is it reasonably concise? Is its length consistent with its contribution? Would the typical reader of the journal be able to understand and appreciate the contributions from the paper?

Authors with questions about the appropriateness of their work are welcome to contact the Editor regarding the suitability of sending a paper to the journal.

Special-Category Papers

In addition to regular research papers, the journal considers selected submissions in three special categories to augment its core editorial mission. To differentiate from regular research papers, a special-category paper is published with a banner that identifies its category.

- OM Forum
An OM Forum manuscript offers responsible views on the history, status and future prospects of OM research and managerial practice. Contributions may be short or long, and may comment on earlier material appearing in the journal. In contrast to survey papers, OM Forum offers general opinions and perspectives on the field, rather than detailed coverage of specific research results. The goal of the OM Forum category - in short - is to provide an outlet for thought leadership and critical discourse within the OM research community.

OM Forum contributions are by invitation of the Editor. However, proposals for topics or nominations of potential authors may be submitted directly to the Editor. Papers are selected based on the interest and importance of the topic to the OM research community, the authoritativeness of the author(s), and the quality of exposition. Submissions are reviewed as appropriate to provide constructive feedback to authors.

- Data Set
To facilitate data-driven research, the journal publishes short papers (1-4 pages) that merely describe a potentially useful data set. A Data Set paper describes how a data set was collected, provides a description of the variables in the data set, explains the construction of the data set, and offers potential uses for the data. These papers do not provide analysis of the data. Data Set papers are critically reviewed by an Associate Editor and at least two reviewers to ensure that the data set could be of potential use to OM research. A data set could provide a standard set of problems for algorithmic testing and comparison, or a data set could provide use in an econometric analysis, among other potential uses. The actual data are stored on the M&SOM website. Research papers that utilize data are also strongly encouraged to post their data on the M&SOM website. However, because the data set in such a paper should be described in the regular research paper, there is no need for the authors to create an additional Data Set paper. In other words, this category provides researchers with an opportunity to share their data with the community even if they do not provide research results.

- Survey
The journal publishes authoritative research surveys of interest to its readership. Such surveys must meet the criteria of relevance and importance of regular research submissions.

Authors interested in submitting a survey paper must first contact the Editor with a short proposal. The Editor will then consult with an Associate Editor on the proposal. If the survey topic is deemed of sufficient potential interest to the OM community, a submission is encouraged and the paper undergoes the same peer review process as a regular research paper.

The journal remains very interested in "OM Practice" papers, namely, papers that report on innovative implementations of OM research to real problems or that rigorously document existing practice and demonstrate how current modeling approaches succeed or fail in practice. The expectation is that for publication these papers should make contributions of archival quality. As a consequence, the review process for such papers is the same as for a regular manuscript. The criteria for publication are: importance of the problem, issue or phenomenon to the OM research community; relevance of the research to addressing the problem or understanding the phenomenon; rigor and novelty of the work; and quality of exposition. Hence, there is no need to designate such submissions as a "Special Category" paper.