From the Editor: Reflections on the Last Six Years

In the last six years the journal has gone through profound changes. Our focus has been on two objectives: broadening the journal’s content and improving authors’ experience (Simchi-Levi 2006). These objectives were achieved by introducing new areas to the journal, repositioning existing areas, introducing special issues, publishing invited papers, attracting authors from other disciplines to submit, shortening the review cycle times, and reducing the publication backlog. I am pleased to report that these changes have made significant impact: Submissions increased by more than 50% between 2005 and 2010, from 411 to 628. The review cycle time was reduced and is now under control; Figure 1 provides data on the first round of review for papers submitted between January 1, 2010 and June 30, 2011. This figure, which was prepared by INFORMS, includes information on five performance measures, each of which depicts three bars corresponding to a different six-month period. For example, the red bar represents the number of papers submitted in the first six months of 2010; the average number of days to complete the first round of review for these papers; the percentage of papers whose review was completed in less than 60 days; less than 120 days; and finally, the percentage of papers submitted in the first half of 2010 whose review was completed by the time the report was prepared (July 7, 2011). Thus, while there is ample work to be done to better serve authors, the data suggests that the average time to first review is about 80 days. Information about the tail of the distribution may be even more revealing: The first round of review of 70% to 90% (depending on the period) of the papers was completed in less than 120 days. More importantly, the journal’s impact factor, which had slipped considerably and was mentioned as a concern in a 2005 survey of subscribers conducted by INFORMS, has reversed its course in the last six years. Whereas it slipped from 1.27 in 1999 to 0.67 in 2003, it went from 0.80 in 2004 to almost 2.0 (more precisely, 1.995) in 2010. Clearly, the value of the impact factor as a single measure of quality is fairly limited. Nevertheless, it is used by libraries, funding agencies and deans of schools and university administrators as a factor in promotion and tenure decisions, and therefore it is important. It may be useful to understand what led to this increase in impact factor. My experience is that this is a result of reducing cycle times, both in the review process and from acceptance to publication. Indeed, in the last six years, we have not only emphasized shortening the review cycle time, but also reduced the time from acceptance to publication through the implementation of a number of steps. This includes: 1. Limiting the length of published papers and moving appendices to an online supplement, also referred to as ecompanion. 2. Posting the e-companion on HighWire where INFORMS archives papers published in the journal. This provides a close connection between the e-companion and the main paper and ensures that readers of the journal have access to supplemental material that accompanies a published paper. 3. Increasing the page count of the journal from 1,000 pages per year in 2005 to more than 1,600 pages per year starting in 2008. As a result, the average time from acceptance to publication is down from 14 months to 8 months. 4. Publishing Articles in Advance, the release of accepted, typeset, copyedited, and author-approved articles made available online in advance of their appearance in a printed issue of Operations Research. Finally, the special issues and invited papers have attracted attention to the journal from outside our community. For example, the special issue on computational economics published in 2010 received 127 submissions, half of which were from economists. This year, in celebration