Editorial: My Experience as a Book Review Editor

My experience as a Book Review editor started in 1987 when Fred Murphy, then editor in chief of Interfaces, approached me and asked if I would serve as the Interfaces Book Review editor. It was during the Monday night reception of the ORSA/TIMS (now INFORMS) meeting, with the party going full swing; so, I agreed. When I accepted his invitation, I never imagined that my journey with Interfaces would last more than 22 years. Over the years, many faithful writers, reviewers, and I have diligently, sometimes wearily, spent hours ensuring that Interfaces continues to publish the high-quality and relevant book reviews upon which so many of us have come to rely. Alas, 2010 is this editor’s final year. I have typed my last comment, shared my last review, and am now closing the curtain. But before I leave, I want to leave you with a synopsis of my incredible experience. The book review process is relatively simple: find a new book, contact the publisher for a copy, locate a reviewer, send the book to the reviewer, receive the completed book review, and publish it. But, as anybody involved in the process will tell you, it is not always so simple. Every step presents twists and roadblocks. Recruiting able book reviewers, keeping the reviewers on schedule, and obtaining new book titles can be challenging. Yet, despite these obstacles, every seventh day of every odd month, rain or shine, the Interfaces managing editor would receive a batch of book reviews and a list of new books ready for review. During my first 20 years, I worked with Mary Haight, the Interfaces managing editor. [The job title is now manuscript editor.] Mary was a wonderful editor who diligently read every word sent to her—if a sentence did not make sense, she would send it back for correction. No error could sneak by her! Mary’s perseverance, dedication, and work ethic resulted in a standardization of the book review format and grammatically correct publications. Since Mary’s retirement, I have been working with Alice Barrett Mack, who despite having big shoes to fill, is proving that she is an excellent editor and is as highly capable and qualified as her predecessor. The world has changed significantly over these three decades. We have moved from sending hard copies via “snail mail” to e-mailing electronic documents. More recently, our move to Manuscript Central has made our correspondence life even easier. Perhaps the greatest change, though, is evident in the ever-growing global nature of academic knowledge. Today, our reviewers hail from nearly every continent, and English is often not their first language. Although this sometimes presents challenges for us as editors, we would not have made it this far without such an amazing international reach. With today’s Internet capabilities, one can search for a book and find a detailed publisher-author description of it within minutes. However, we feel that these book evaluations are biased; we strive to provide both unbiased evaluations and a place where readers can learn about the books that are new in our profession. So, what are good books to review? It is easier to answer this question by addressing what books we feel are not as good to review. First, we look for new and relevant books. Books in their third or later editions are often already known and established; so,