"Too often editors rely on the Union Heuristic, which requires authors to perform all requested tests and extensions suggested by referees and editors, with results confirming the paper's message. The Union Heuristic is easy, but has dysfunctional consequences- wasteful efforts on excessive empirical and theoretical robustness checks and extensions, slow publication times, bloated papers, and heavy use of referee time" (Harvey and Hirshleifer in Social Science Research, December 2020).
Symptoms of the union heuristic have been visible in MS: long referee reports, extremely long response letters by authors (I have seen 50-page letters and have heard of even longer ones), as well as rejections after the 4th round (Tang, OR/MS Today 2022). Management Science should not only be a selective hight quality journal but also have a review process with reasonable experiences for all sides.
After extensive consultation with all DEs and some AEs, we have therefore slimmed down the review process somewhat. This includes more desk rejects if a paper really has poor chances (If the DE sees potential in a paper, s/he requests a review), a reminder of the essential judgment by the DE, an identification of "the path to a published paper", and focusing down referee comments – the path to acceptance should NOT ask the authors to fulfil all demands by all reviewers.
Referees, who are typically younger and have less experience (some are PhD students) should focus on checking correctness and completeness. This consists of answering 5 focused questions (which are similar to those that MSOM also has introduced). If a reviewer has a strong opinion on acceptance or rejection, s/he can still express it, but this judgment is no longer required by the review process – the judgment lies with the DE helped by the AE.
The hope is that this process will reduce the work reviewers have to put in without reducing review quality, while improving the experience of authors. There have been a few hick-ups, but the preliminary feedback is that the slimmed-down process is overall being received positively.
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Christoph Loch
EIC, Management Science
Professor, IESE Business School
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