MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
informs
Vol. 55, No. 1, January 2009, pp. 1–3
issn 0025-1909 eissn 1526-5501 09 5501 0001
®
doi 10.1287/mnsc.1080.0984
© 2009 INFORMS
From the Editor
A Vision for Management Science
Gérard P. Cachon
The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, cachon@wharton.upenn.edu
I
t is truly an honor to be named Editor of Management Science, and I eagerly look forward to
serving this distinguished journal. This letter outlines my strategy for further enhancing the journal’s
considerable stature. In particular, I highlight what
will remain the same and what will change. My
intended audience is the entire Management Science
community, which includes the authors who submit
manuscripts, the editors and reviewers who evaluate
manuscripts, and, of course, the readers who “consume” our manuscripts.
Before I continue, I would like to express my sincere thanks to Wallace Hopp, the previous Editor-inChief, for his substantial service to the journal and for
the gracious assistance he has shown me during the
transition. During his term, the journal experienced a
significant increase in submissions while at the same
time a dramatic improvement in editorial cycle times.
The journal expanded in terms of the number of
printed articles as well as the breadth of topics covered. Our 50th anniversary volume, designed by Professor Hopp, was highly successful. In sum, his dedication has led to a better Management Science and a
better science of management.
question, well answered.” It may be easy to perfectly answer a noninteresting question, but we are
not interested in those papers.
A paper with an interesting question, well answered, can generate broad interest in multiple ways.
It may be interdisciplinary, which is a comparative
advantage of Management Science. It may challenge the
collective wisdom derived from the existing literature
or our perceived understanding of the world around
us. It may change how managers make actual decisions or inform us on how they should make decisions. No matter the method for grabbing our attention (and my list is clearly not exhaustive), a paper
generates broad interest by creating implications for
thought in many domains (e.g., firm actions, market behavior, individual choices, public policy, etc.)
and on multiple levels (e.g., basic science to practical
implementation). Because there is no single vehicle for
creating broad interest, I have recruited world-class
scholars to serve as Department Editors to use their
judgment to identify the papers that that will make
long-lasting and significant contributions to scholarly
research on the practice of management.
Editorial Objectives
Department Structure
I have made adjustments to the titles of some of the
departments: “Operations and Supply Chain Management” is now “Operations Management,” “Optimization and Modeling” is now “Optimization,” and
“Organizations and Social Networks” is now “Organizations.” The motive is not to demote clearly
important fields (e.g., supply chain management and
social networks), but rather to emphasize the editorial
breadth of each department.
Two departments have been combined due to their
natural synergies: “Entrepreneurship and Innovation”
reunites the “Entrepreneurship” and “R&D and Product Development” departments.
One department has been retired: “Public Sector
Applications.” Management Science has indeed published important papers in the domain of public sectors, and we continue to have a strong interest in
public sector applications. However, submissions to
As has been established by previous editors, Management Science seeks to publish scholarly research on the
practice of management. That tradition will remain.
Furthermore, we will continue to apply three primary criteria to each manuscript: relevance, rigor, and
broad interest. “Relevance” means that the research
pertains to the management of organizations (which
can take many different forms). “Rigor” means that
the research is correct and the appropriate analytical methods are applied. “Broad interest” means the
paper studies a sufficiently important question and
provides a sufficiently compelling answer so that it
draws the attention of a large group of scholars.
Of the three criteria, broad interest is the most
important—relevance and rigor are merely necessary
but by no means sufficient. Put another way, to
quote my colleague and dissertation advisor, Marshall Fisher, good research provides “an interesting
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this department span such a wide array of topics and
methodologies that it is difficult to assemble an editorial team capable of handling this diversity. Furthermore, the necessary talent to evaluate these papers
generally resides within other departments on the
board. Therefore, I feel that the journal is better served
by handling these papers through one of the other
departments: a paper that considers congestion within
a health-care environment can be handled by either
Stochastic Models and Simulation or Operations Management; a paper on risk forecasting and the appropriate governmental response can be handled in the Decision Analysis department; a paper on governmental
regulation and its impact on new ventures can be handled by Entrepreneurship and Innovation; etc.
Reasonable Review Cycle Times
I believe the attainment of reasonable cycle times is
critical for the health of a journal. When authors expect
timely and thoughtful reviews, they are more likely to
submit their work. With more submissions to choose
from, the journal is more likely to receive truly influential research. Better papers lead to a stronger reputation, which leads to more submissions and submissions from better authors. The key is to define
what is reasonable while at the same time maintaining review quality as the first priority. Achieving this
balance requires a multifaceted approach, which I next
describe.
I have established a set of norms for each stage
of the review process. For example, all reviewers
will be given five weeks to complete their review—
conditional that a reviewer agrees to review a paper.
It is reasonable to expect a thoughtful review within
five weeks. Associate Editors (AEs) are given ten
days to complete their evaluation once all reviews are
received, and Department Editors (DEs) are expected
to complete their decision within five days. All Associate Editors and Department Editors have agreed to
these norms. In total, if we review a paper, the process should be completed within 65 days. Therefore,
it is surely reasonable to expect that at least 90% of
reviews will be completed within 90 days. Table 1
summarizes our norms.
DEs and AEs will triage papers to ensure that
reviewer capacity is best utilized—reviewers should
Table 1
Norms for Completing Editorial Tasks
Days
Task
1
4
10
35
10
5
Paper is assigned to a Department Editor
The DE recruits an Associate Editor
The AE recruits reviewers
Reviewers evaluate the manuscript
The AE makes a recommendation to the DE
The DE makes a decision on the manuscript
65
Total
only be asked to commit their time when their efforts
are indeed valuable. To do otherwise is disrespectful to reviewers and does not foster good will. At
the same time, to be respectful to authors, DEs and
AEs must ensure that they always provide sufficient
explanations for their decisions.
Manuscript Central, our online manuscript submission and tracking software, is a vital tool for enabling
fast cycle times. Due date reminders are sent through
the system to ensure that people schedule their work
in a prudent manner. Through its tracking abilities,
contact can be maintained with the editorial team to
ensure accountability and to avoid situations in which
papers are ignored as they “float in an editorial ether.”
It is much easier to contribute when you know that
all others are contributing as well. As a result, Management Science will post on its website updated processing information for each paper. If you want to
check if we are meeting our objectives, I invite you to
analyze the data.
While you want everyone to make good-faith efforts, some individuals contribute a remarkable effort
in support of the journal. Those individuals should
be publicly recognized for their work and Management Science will do so. Each year Management Science
will designate the set of individuals who distinguish
themselves by consistently providing high quality and
timely reviews.
To conclude, it is my firm belief that reasonable
cycle times are not achieved by yelling at reviewers,
begging for faster turnarounds, or threats. Instead,
the better approach is to establish consistent norms,
to provide the information everyone needs to complete their tasks effectively and on time, and to work
respectfully with the entire editorial team to achieve
our collective objective.
Author Contribution to the
Review Process
Authors possess valuable information as to who are
the appropriate individuals to assess the merits of
their work. Therefore, authors submit their paper to a
Department Editor and suggest three appropriate Associate Editors and six reviewers. From time to time,
we will use guest Associate Editors, and so authors
are not limited to the current set of regular Associate
Editors when making their recommendation. If the DE
and AE deem that a paper should be reviewed, then
they are free to use the author’s recommended reviewers or to select others that are not included on that list.
The common goal is to ensure that each manuscript is
reviewed by qualified and impartial individuals while
maintaining reviewer anonymity.
Double Blind
Management Science will transition to a double blind
review process. The authors’ identities will be known
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Management Science 55(1), pp. 1–3, © 2009 INFORMS
to the Department Editor and the Associate Editor
but will not be revealed to the reviewers. I admit that
a double blind process is not an opaque screen—in
our connected world reviewers can sometimes independently discover the identity of the authors. Nevertheless, a reviewer does not require the identity of
an author to properly evaluate the intellectual content
of a manuscript, and so there is no reason to freely
provide such information.
Electronic Companions
I believe it is important that a journal verify all that
it prints and it prints all that it verifies as important enough to make a contribution to the literature.
This principle is inconsistent with the policy of placing part of a paper in the printed journal and the
other part in an Electronic Companion (EC) posted on
the journal’s website. As an editor I fear that important material may be relegated to an EC or worse,
it may not be properly and carefully reviewed. Consequently, we will sharply curtail the use of ECs at
Management Science. Analytical proofs and derivations
should not be placed in an EC. Analytical results from
an empirical study should not be placed in an EC.
Those are important materials and should be printed
in the journal, possibly in an appendix. We will continue to use ECs for auxiliary materials such as data
sets, copies of survey instruments, or instructions for
laboratory experiments.
Page Limit
Management Science will no longer impose an explicit
page limit. Nevertheless, papers should be written as
succinctly as possible and a paper’s contribution will
be measured relative to its length. Short papers (less
than 20 pages) are encouraged and long papers (more
than 40 pages) require a substantial contribution to
justify their length.
Short Papers and Research Notes
To reiterate, Management Science strongly encourages
short, well-crafted manuscripts. To emphasize that a
short paper can make as significant a contribution
as a long paper, Management Science will not designate papers as “Research Notes”—each accepted
manuscript will be treated equally no matter its
length.
Conflict-of-Interest Policy
The appearance of a conflict of interest (COI) can be
as problematic as an actual conflict of interest, and
so I intend to work hard to ensure that Management
Science complies with its own conflict-of-interest policy. To begin, all Department Editors and Associate
Editors have been made aware of this policy and have
agreed to comply with it. In particular, an editor or
reviewer has a COI if one of the authors is a former
student or advisor, a member of the same institution,
or a co-author. When an editor, reviewer, or author
is aware of a COI, then that person should inform
the relevant parties. In addition, authors should not
recommend reviewers when they know there exists a
COI, and Department Editors should not make decisions on papers for which there exists a COI.
Management Insight Paragraphs
Management Science is written by scholars primarily
for scholars. Nevertheless, our work is relevant to the
practice of management only if it has some appeal
to a broader audience. Therefore, I will continue to
publish Management Insight paragraphs with each
issue to facilitate the communication of our research
beyond our primary market of scholars. However,
because these paragraphs are not used in the evaluation of the manuscript, authors will now need to
provide a paragraph only upon acceptance.
Distribution of Data
Independent verification of discoveries is a fundamental tenet of the scientific process, and this
should apply at Management Science as well. Thus,
I would like to move Management Science toward
greater disclosure of the data used in our published
manuscripts. However, I recognize that a considerable
amount of work is conducted with proprietary data.
Therefore, I will work with the Department Editors to
formulate an appropriate policy for the journal, which
I hope to implement in the near future. I welcome all
feedback on this issue.
Conclusion
I very much look forward to further strengthening
the reputation and stature of Management Science. I
want to attract more submissions and higher-quality
submissions. I want the journal to be a more attractive place for authors to submit their work, where
(a) they will receive high quality and timely feedback
and (b) their work will be placed in the outlet that will
maximize its visibility and impact. I want editors and
reviewers to feel good about the service they offer and
to feel excited to participate in the process. Finally, I
want Management Science to be the means by which
we collectively produce and disseminate deep, important ideas that will impact how we view and practice
management. I hope you share a similar vision, and I
am excited to work with you to achieve it.