The objective of this new Management Science's blog site is to facilitate a two-way communication between the journal's editorial board and the management science community.
Specifically, I would like the community to join in a dialogue with the Management Science Editorial Board regarding the journal and the profession. The depth of thinking will help us shape the journal so it better serves authors and readers and has the potential to influence the profession.
To initiate the discussion, I will summarize in this blog the initiatives the journal is taking under the new editorial board. All of these initiatives imply a change in direction so that the journal better serves and promotes research conducted by the entire management science community and is true to its name, a journal dedicated to the science of management, with the ability to impact practice and the ability to serve as the top outlet for new big-idea, high-impact papers.
As INFORMS' flagship journal focusing on the practice and science of management, papers published in Management Science should adhere to the following guidelines: papers published in Management Science should deal with issues and problems important to managers and executives; they must be interesting to a wide range of people in the management science community; and they should have the potential to impact management practice.
From my perspective as the editor, these publication guidelines, together with the responsibility associated with being a flagship journal of INFORMS, call for reengineering of the journal. This includes both revamping the major departments, topics and methodologies considered by the journal as well as introducing a new submission format that enables the most innovative and impactful papers to be disseminated in a timely manner.
Specifically, revamping departments, topics and methodologies includes the introduction of three new departments (Big Data Analytics; Revenue Management and Market Analytics; and Healthcare Management); the repositioning of some existing departments (Finance and Entrepreneurship & Innovation); the integration of three departments (Decision Analysis, Behavioral Economics, and Judgment and Decision Making); and the embracement of diverse methodologies (from social science to computer science, operations research and statistics) and cross-functional, multidisciplinary research that reflect the management science profession.
Finally, in addition to publishing papers that follow the traditional journal process, Management Science will also consider shorter papers with high-quality, original and high-impact research that is of broader interest, analogous to what may appear in Science, Nature, or PNAS, and to what appeared more frequently in Management Science in its first decades. Such papers will undergo faster review, with initial decisions being returned to the authors within no more than four weeks.
Taken together, the reengineering of Management Science is designed to provide a sharper focus that is relevant to the management science community and emphasizes the science and practice of management.
I welcome your thoughts on the current state of Management Science and look forward to working together so that the journal better serves the community.
Please see blog at https://www.informs.org/Blogs/ManSci-Blogs/From-the-Editor
Please e-mail me suggestions at mseic <mseic@mit.edu>
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David Simchi-Levi
Professor of Engineering Systems
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge MA
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