Volume 6 Number 1 March 2012 International Federation of Operational Research Societies NEWS ISSN 2223-4373 WHATS INSIDE From the Editor 2 Editorial . 2011 Accomplishments - IFORS and OR publishing and A Taste of 2012 3 Publications . Elise del Rosario <[email protected]> - ITOR Features Tutorials We used to dedicate one issue of IFORS News to the - Tutorial: The importance of pricing decisions Annual Report. This year, we have a full issue that com- plements the 2011 Annual Report. The year had been 5 Developing Countries . a most productive one for the Administrative Commit- tee, as can be gleaned from the President Dominique de Werra’s summary of - A Star for ORiON the activities undertaken for the year. - Locals Support First OR Meeting in Nepal - From the DC Section Editor: On the Activities continued on into 2012, as you can see from the OR Schools con- ORSN Conference ducted in Africa and Brazil and those being planned for in Ukraine and Por- - OR tools have huge potential tugal. It is always very refreshing to see these young people, all enthusiastic about OR and benefiting from the various programs made available to them 8 Conferences . by IFORS and other sponsors. - Portugal Hosts the First ICORES - OR Luminaries Grace Peruvian Conference Conferences that were held within ALIO, EURO and APORS are covered. IFORS was well represented in the conferences that happened in Peru, Por- 10 OR Schools . tugal and Nepal. I met the Developing Countries Section editor Arabinda Tripathy at the Nepal conference, and his perspectives on that conference - IFORS Sponsors OR School in Africa are here printed. He also forwarded a very interesting experience of the - IFORS Selects Scholar for the ESI South African society which faced the multilingual aspect of publishing a - ALIO Summer School Scores Sixteenth Success journal. - A Different Kind of A Summer School Speaking of journals, we cover a milestone issue of ITOR – its first as an ISI 13 OR Practice Survey . indexed journal, and its first issue to cover tutorials. To give you a flavor of one of these tutorials, we print a piece on revenue management by IFORS 14 IFORS 2011 Annual Report . Treasurer Peter Bell. He also writes the editorial, which raises some very im- portant and timely issues in publishing, gathered from his years of being up 22 OR Society in Focus . close and personal with this area. - Croatian Operational Research Society We always take the opportunity to give our readers who are operations re- search professionals something that they do not encounter everyday. In this 23 Book Review . issue are articles in the realms of art, psychology and politics. Do read them and see how OR plays a role in these fields that may be seemingly distant - The Mathematics Behind A Public Policy from OR. 24 Features . The first quarter of 2012 has seen a lot happening in the OR world. I do hope - Psychophysics in Operations Research you’ll let IFORS News in on what’s up in your corner of this world - Operations Research in Abstract Art? Yes! Reproduction of materials printed here is welcome. We do request that the source, IFORS News, be acknowledged. P. 1 • IFORS NEWS • March 2012 Editorial IFORS and OR publishing Peter C. Bell <[email protected]> IFORS is an OR publisher. We own two prompt reviews. The slightly worrying news is that ITOR (in addition journals: International Abstracts in to most other journals) is detecting more examples of borderline or Operations Research (IAOR) and Inter- unprofessional author behaviours, including evidence of multiple national Transactions in Operational submissions and plagiarism, including self-plagiarism. Valuable ref- Research (ITOR). These two journals ereeing and editorial time is now being spent checking submissions contribute the lion’s share of IFORS in- for these. come and so maintaining and nurturing these journals is a priority. IAOR is a unique OR abstracting journal under the leadership of Editor Preston White Jr. and his editorial team. As the number of new jour- Over the last few years, OR publishing has changed markedly. Two nals expands, IAOR’s objective of abstracting all published OR articles trends dominate these changes. The first is the rise in the number becomes increasingly difficult to achieve. Many of the new journals of articles being submitted for publication and the second is the in- appear to publish just about anything and so IAOR has somehow to crease in the number of ‘journals’ which publish OR work, particularly assess ‘quality’ but IAOR has no history and is not set up to review the growth of open access on-line journals. articles or journals. Abstracting all the new journals will stretch IAOR editorial resources, but at the same time provides a lot of new mate- The number of articles circulating the journals rial and adds to the value proposition of IAOR as a looking for a publication outlet has exploded “one-stop shop” providing an indexed, searchable and will continue to do so: major journals now database of the OR literature. receive well over 1,000 submissions annually and “...while the inflow this number is increasing. The educational job of new articles is Scientific journals were once published for read- market is a powerful submission motivator with ers who bought the journals to read the articles. the result that some articles are submitted several growing fast, the Increasingly, scientific journals are now published times, starting with an “A” journal and, if rejected, stock of rejected for authors who benefit from their publications moving to an “A-“ journal, and then a “B” and trick- through employment and promotions. As an ex- ling on down. This kind of submission ‘strategy’ is articles circulating ample, the motivation for the new open-access rewarded by university promotion policies that around looking for on-line journals is coming from authors looking tend to assign reward ‘points’ based on the high- a publication for a place to publish since there is no ‘fee’ for a est level of journal achieved. While some authors reader to access the journals. In mathematics use the review process to improve their work and outlet is growing and the sciences, it is common for authors to pay revise their articles, others appear to resubmit the even faster.” for publication through “page charges”, but the same article repeatedly: it is quite common to value that the journal provides does not come receive an article for review that is seriously out- from publication, but rather from the reviewing of-date. The result of all this is that while the in- process; the author reaps the benefits as soon as flow of new articles is growing fast, the stock of the article is “accepted” not when it is eventually rejected articles circulating around looking for a published (many major journals now list or pre- publication outlet is growing even faster. At the publish accepted articles.) Charging a fee to sub- same time, the resources available to review all mit an article to a journal is a more attractive idea these articles have pretty much stayed the same (perhaps the fee would be refundable if the article and we are now consuming ever-increasing quan- was published), since this “reviewing” fee would tities of reviewing resources that the beneficiary reconnect the recipient of the value of publication (the author or university) does not pay for. with the cost of reviewing and publishing. Such a reviewing fee might at the same time motivate The second major trend is the explosion of new more thoughtful behaviour from authors consid- open access ‘journals’ looking for OR work to pub- ering whether to submit a rejected article to one lish. Hardly a week goes by without an announce- more journal. ment of a new journal. The unknown here is the quality of the ac- cepted articles. Perhaps over time, reputations will be built and some For the moment IFORS publishing is healthy and we are not planning high quality open-access on-line journals will be recognized. major changes. We invite you to send your best articles to ITOR and to make use of IAOR as you search the ever expanding list of OR jour- These trends effect both IFORS publications, but in different ways. nals to find relevant published work. The growing number of sub- ITOR is thriving under the capable leadership of Editor Celso Carnei- missions to OR journals and the expanding list of journals for IAOR ro Ribeiro. ISI indexing has been achieved and submissions are on to abstract presents opportunities and challenges for IFORS. We wel- the increase: Celso is looking for articles to publish and his editorial come your ideas and suggestions on how IFORS might continue to and reviewing team have successfully focussed on offering authors move forward as a leading OR publisher. P. 2 • IFORS NEWS • March 2012 Publications ITOR Features Tutorials Celso Ribeiro <[email protected]> Celso Ribeiro, editor of the International Transactions in Operational » Fragile networks: identifying vulner- Research (ITOR) announced the publication of the Volume 19, Nos. abilities and synergies in an uncertain 1-2 special double issue that celebrates ITOR indexation by Thomson age by Anna Nagurney and Qiang Reuters ISI (formerly known as the Institute for Scientific Informa- Qiang discusses some of the recent tion). Thomson Reuters ISI accepted ITOR into the Social Sciences developments in the assessment of Citation Index (SSCI) and the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE), network vulnerability and robust- with coverage from the 2009 volume. The journal should therefore ness through appropriate tools that assist in the quantification receive its first impact factor in the 2011 Journal Citation Reports, to of network efficiency/performance and the identification of the be released next year.