Instructions for authors
Operations Research and Decisions presents original scientific papers, not published previously elsewhere, concerning the field of operations research and decision making. The articles published contain substantial theoretical discussions concerning the methodology of operations research and descriptions of quantitative methods and techniques applied in solving practical problems in the general area of decision making. We also accept review articles that discuss current topics in operations research.
Manuscripts submitted for publication should be complete, together with a title, the full name of all authors, affiliations and an e-mail address of the corresponding author. We recommend providing the ORCID ID of each author. Three to five key words should be provided, as well as an abstract of about 150 words describing the main problems, results and conclusions presented in the paper. The list of references should follow the main text and should contain no more than 35 closely related references for non-survey papers. Authors should note that the search for reviewers is greatly facilitated when the bibliography includes a number of recent articles relevant to the subject of the text, particularly when there is reference to themes that have appeared in ORD.
Initial versions of manuscripts should be submitted electronically in PDF format via the Editorial System. At the stage of submitting a revised version of the manuscript, only manuscripts prepared in LaTeX will be accepted that follow the journal’s template, as provided in the sample article:
At this stage, all LaTeX source files should be submitted including figures in Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) file format. All references should be complete and free of errors. Source files converted from Word to LaTeX or figures converted from other file types (e.g. BMP, JPEG, PNG) to EPS will not be accepted. Authors are responsible for submitting the correct source files and figures in EPS format. Submitting incorrect source files may lead to the rejection of the manuscript.
Manuscripts should be written in clear and understandable English. Manuscripts written in poor English will be rejected without initiating the review process. Papers may also be rejected by the Editors without undergoing review for the following reasons:
- being outside the scope of the journal,
- being badly presented or incomprehensible to such an extent that the paper’s merit cannot be assessed,
- not fulfilling the Instructions for Authors,
- possessing elements that are suspected to be plagiarized,
- being a small extension of a different paper, often from the same authors.
The manuscripts will be assessed using the single-blind review process. In a single-blind review process, the names of reviewers are hidden from the author(s) which allows for impartial opinions, not influenced by the author(s). However, first the editor assesses whether the manuscript is relevant to the journal’s profile. If so, the paper is sent to a minimum of two expert reviewers who evaluate its scientific quality. They must be from other institutions than the author(s) to avoid a potential conflict of interest. At this stage, the editor makes each decision (initial or final) on the basis of at least two opinions, including an unambiguous recommendation concerning acceptability for publication. A final decision may be made after one round of reviews, although most papers go through a second round of reviewing before acceptance.
After acceptance, The following copyright declaration should be signed by one of the authors and sent with the accepted version of the manuscript.
The Operations Research and Decisions journal do not impose Article Processing Charges (APCs) or submission charges. The publisher reserves the right to make any necessary changes following editorial revisions.