Submission Guidelines

Manuscript Preparation: Operations Research publishes quality operations research and management science works of interest to the OR practitioner and researcher in three substantive categories: methods, data based operational science, and the practice of OR. The journal seeks papers reporting underlying data-based principles of operational science, observations and modeling of operating systems, contributions to the methods and models of OR, case histories of applications, review articles, and discussions of the administrative environment, history, policy, practice, future, and arenas of application of operations research.

Complete studies that contain data, computer experiments, and model validation, and that integrate theory, methods, and applications are of particular interest. Thus, we encourage case studies of lasting value.

The Technical Notes section of the journal contains brief articles on all of the topics covered by the journal. For more information on subject coverage and editorial policy, see the Area Editor Statements.

Manuscript Submission: All papers are submitted online to Operations Research through ScholarOne Manuscripts. The online system requires authors to use the following forms:

Style Files and Samples
Subject Classification Keywords OR: Subject Classification Keywords
Sample Title Page OR: Titlepage

If you are submitting your manuscript for the first time, please proceed to http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/opre and follow the instructions for creating an account and submitting your manuscript.

NIH Public Access Policy: The author is responsible for complying with the NIH Public Access Policy. INFORMS follows Method C of NIH's submission methods guidelines (http://publicaccess.nih.gov/submit_process.htm) and has no obligation to notify an NIH-funded author about the requirement.

Policy: Submission of a manuscript is a representation that the paper has been neither published nor submitted for publication elsewhere, and that if the work is officially sponsored, it has been released for open publication.See INFORMS' Guidelines for Copyright & Plagiarism.

If a major part of the submitted paper has already been published — even in a proceedings — the paper cannot be accepted for publication in OR. Hence, authors must disclose at the time of submission whether parts of their paper have been submitted or published elsewhere. In some cases, authors will be asked to provide a copy of the previous publication so the editorial board will be able to determine whether the new paper can be published in OR.

Rights and Permissions: Information on INFORMS policies on rights and permissions can be found here.

Text: The text should be arranged as follows:

title page,
abstract,
introduction,
main sections,
appendix,
acknowledgments, and
references.

Appendices and acknowledgments are optional.

Although there is no formal page limit, authors should strive to keep their papers to no longer than 32 pages. Area editors and associate editors will suggest edits to shorten papers. In addition, some proofs, lemmas, supporting tables, etc., may be included in an online companion to the published paper. The editors will rarely accept papers that are longer than 32 pages. Authors should consider this either during the initial submission phase or during the final revisions of the paper and may wish to design their papers accordingly.

Details: Authors should observe the following points in preparing manuscripts. Papers not conforming closely to these instructions may be returned to their authors for appropriate revisions or may be delayed in the review process.

Readability
Title page
Abstract
Introduction
Main sections
Style
Length
Spacing and formatting
Footnotes
Acknowledgments
References
Mathematical expressions
Tables
Figures
Subject classification scheme for the OR/MS index
Reprints

Click here for information about each bullet »

See the INFORMS website for style files and templates by clicking the following link: http://templates.pubs.informs.org.

Personal Websites: As a condition of final acceptance of a paper for publication in Operations Research, the author(s) must indicate whether their paper is posted on a working paper website other than their own. Authors are responsible for assuring that if any part of the paper has been copyrighted for prepublication as a working paper, the copyright can and will be transferred to INFORMS when the paper has been accepted. This includes both print and electronic forms of the paper. Authors may post their working papers on websites after acceptance and prior to publication, as long as the sites are not copyrighted or do not serve as formal repositories.

Upon publication, INFORMS will provide authors with a complimentary PDF file of the published paper to be posted on the author's personal website. The PDF reflects the paper as it was published by INFORMS. INFORMS does not allow authors to post the PDF in formal repositories that many universities are setting up to aggregate their faculty's published papers, or in subject-based repositories.