Editorial

As the new editors of JORS, we feel greatly honoured to lead the journal into its eighth decade, which makes JORS the OR journal with the longest history. Thanks to the excellent leadership from Tom Archibald and Jonathan Crook, we are taking over a journal that is in very good health with a positive trend. We also thank Tom for his advice and support during the handover period and managing the legacy of papers from his tenure. Since the volume of submissions has grown substantially in recent years, and reaching about 1300 submissions for 2020, the number of editors-in-chief grew from two to four as well as the number of associate editors. In 2019, JORS published 159 articles and it is going to expand its size to publish 180 papers in 2021. This growth has created a truly global journal with a good balance across regions in terms of authors and citations, as Table 1 shows.

Table 1. Location of authors publishing and citing JORS.

Location of author	2009	Location of author	2019
Location of authors of JORS papers
Europe	48%	Europe	37%
North America	23%	Asia	31%
Asia	18%	North America	17%
Latin America	5%	Middle East	9%
Middle East	3%	Latin America	4%
Australasia	3%	Australasia	2%
Africa	1%	Africa	1%
Location of authors of articles citing JORS papers
Europe	36%	Asia	33%
Asia	26%	Europe	32%
North America	23%	North America	14%
Middle East	9%	Middle East	10%
Latin America	3%	Latin America	5%
Australasia	3%	Australasia	3%
Africa	1%	Africa	2%

The increasing flow of papers requires reviewers and editors to make difficult decisions but it will ultimately lead to the continuous growth in terms of quality and positioning of the journal as Figure 1 shows. JORS is the only OR journal with rankings in six categories by Scimago Journal Rank. This is a good indication of the multiple disciplines that we cover in JORS and the strong support for multi- and inter-disciplinary research. JORS covers both Soft OR in categories such as Management Information Systems, Marketing, and Strategy and Management, and Hard OR in categories such as Management Science and Operations Research, Modelling and Simulation, and Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty. In terms of the Journal’s impact factor, it also shows an upward trajectory, as Figure 2 indicates.

Figure 1. Scimago Journal Rank.

Figure 2. Journal impact factor 2019 journal impact factor, Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate Analytics, 2020).

As new editors, we found areas for refinement and improvement to sustain the recent success and build up for future growth. We renewed the International Advisory Board to cover the global spread of the international OR community. We appointed further Associate Editors from the international operational research community with a diverse set of disciplines, e.g. you can see an increase in the number of keywords for the journal. This will also help to manage the high volume of submissions in a timely manner, e.g. the days to the first decision have reduced in 2020 to 84 which is our target, together with a procedure to tackle tardy papers (4+ months). Moreover, we implemented a new policy on special issues to keep the publications of regular papers also in a timely manner. Please, check the website about the policy and author guidelines.

We will continue without the classification of papers as case studies, theoretical papers and technical notes. We believe the criteria for publication are similar for good scholarship: relevance, impact, originality, rigour and clarity. Since OR is the science of better, we believe all papers published in the Journal should have a strong practical focus with rigour and provide thoughtful reflection on any aspect of the application of the multiple OR methodologies, as Figure 3 shows.

Figure 3. Word cloud associated with JORS papers.

One important aspect for prospective authors is to have a clear understanding of how their papers contribute to the recent debates published in JORS. We want to build up a community of scholars where everyone enriches the debates in the journal as well as in other journals. Based on Clarivate Analytics data, we observe papers published in JORS are mainly cited in European Journal of Operational Research, Computers and Industrial Engineering, IEEE Access, Annals of Operational Research, Sustainability, International Journal of Production Economics and International Journal of Production Research, as well as JORS. While the papers published in JORS cite papers from journals such as European Journal of Operational Research, Management Science, Omega and Expert Systems with Applications in addition to papers from JORS.

We greatly appreciate the large number of people who contribute in many different ways to help make the Journal a success. We thank our Editorial Assistant, Mandy Blackett, who liaises with authors and reviewers and Carol McLaughlin, Research and Publications Officer, for her support coordinating our activities. Our special thanks to the staff at our publisher, Taylor & Francis, particularly Richard Goodman, who provides insightful information and promotes the journal, and copy editors for the speed on having the accepted papers available on line. Taylor & Francis has been a great digital platform for the dissemination of papers as Figure 4 shows.

Figure 4. Article downloads – Taylor & Francis Online (TFO) usage.

Finally, we thank the pillars of the Journal: authors, reviewers and readers. The success of JORS will not be possible without them. Please, keep making JORS a great journal!!

John Boylan  [email protected]
Martin H. Kunc
 [email protected]
Said Salhi  [email protected]
Zhe George Zhang  [email protected]