Submission Guidelines

Preparing Your Manuscript

Abstract

Each submitted article of an applications-style paper* must contain an abstract of no more than 300 words, structured in the following manner with the phrasing of these section titles embedded in said abstract:

1. Problem definition: Provide a brief description and the background associated with the application under consideration.
2. Methodology: State the analytical technique(s) deployed to solve instances of the problem.
3. Results and managerial implications: Contrast the recommendations provided by your methodlogy with those used by the organization prior to your intervention. Suggest how the organization is better off by using your methods.

*IJAA also accepts tutorials and literature reviews, which must also contain an abstract of no more than 300 words, structured appropriately but not necessarily according to the sections delineated above.

Artificial Intelligence Use Policy

Generative AI and large language models (LLMs) present opportunities and challenges. While we understand authors, reviewers, and editors could find the use of GenAI beneficial in the writing and review processes, it also introduces significant risks, including the risk that such technology could produce incorrect, incomplete, or biased reports and outcomes. (See the journal editorial statement for more information on LLM use in analytics models.) These considerations, together with the principle that submitted manuscripts are to be treated as confidential documents, result in the following guidelines for anyone involved in the INFORMS Journal on Applied Analytics process:

• Anyone involved in the INFORMS Journal on Applied Analytics submission process has full responsibility for any output or report provided by that member, including, but not limited to, the accuracy of all facts and references cited in the report.
• Furthermore, all opinions expressed by each member of the author team should be theirs and theirs only.
• Members of the review team will not upload a manuscript (or any portion thereof) submitted to INFORMS Journal on Applied Analytics into a generative AI tool in a way that might lead to violations of copyright and/or confidentiality.
• If an LLM is used in the preparation of a manuscript, authors should disclose to what extent that output appears in the final submission. This statement should appear in the acknowledgements section.

For papers that use LLMs as part of recommendations or decisions directly consumed by end users, please review the editorial statement for the journal's expectations of such content.

Double-Anonymous Peer Review

IJAA conducts double-anonymized reviews, meaning that both the authors and the reviewers are ‘blind’ to the identity of the other. Authors must remove from the manuscript explicit indications of the authors’ names and institutions, as well as acknowledgments. The paper should be written in such a way that it does not reveal an author’s identity (e.g., “I extend the work in my dissertation (Norman 1995)” should be written in a neutral manner such as “This work extends the research in Norman (1995)”). However, proper attribution of prior work, especially work done by the authors, is required and takes precedence over maintaining anonymity. As part of the file upload process in the submission system, authors should add a separate file containing their Title Page information but should not include this file in the system-generated merged manuscript file.

For use cases, i.e., those full-length journal articles that are not literature reviews or tutorials, a verification letter must be present. Please upload two versions: one original from the partner organization and one with any authors' information redacted.

Figures and Tables

Please write captions for figures and tables as complete sentences that explain the figure or table fully without forcing the reader to refer to the text. Conversely, readers should not have to refer back and forth from the text to the exhibits to understand the paper. If the caption exceeds one sentence, break and set second and subsequent sentences as a lightface note below figure/table. Precede that text with heading Note for one sentence and Notes for multiple sentences. Please refer to figures where appropriate with “(Figure 1)” and explain the meaning and implications of your data fully in the text. Do not require the reader to interpret the figure to understand what you have done, as in “Figure 1 shows the outcome of this survey.” Tables should list information in logical order.

Please be sure that figures are effective and efficient in their use of space. Labels interior to the figure should be large enough to be legible when the figure is reduced. Show the figure number and, if necessary, indicate the vertical direction of the figure. Label each figure numerically using the word “Figure” or “Table” (e.g., Figure1.eps). For example, label the figure as \label{Figure1} and cite the figure in text as \cite{Figure1}.

Footnotes

Do not use footnotes. If information is important, it deserves a place in the text.

Format

Submissions must be single-column, double-spaced (including abstracts and references), have 12-point font, and have 1-inch margins all around.

Headings

Please use one or two levels of headings. 

Keywords

Please include a set of keywords (up to five) to enable readers searching for specific information to easily find your paper.

Length

Although the journal does not have a strict page limit, authors are strongly encouraged to write concisely. Manuscripts should typically be 15 to 25 double-spaced pages in length (excluding references, figures, and tables). The editors will consider each manuscript carefully and will request revisions to make the final paper’s length commensurate with its contribution.

Mathematical Notation

Mathematical notation should be chosen so that the formulas and ideas presented in them are clear. Important details can be found here. Write the body of the paper in words and put mathematical details in an appendix. If you insert equations elsewhere, please use numbers enclosed in parentheses flush with the right margin. When referring to the equation in the text, use the format ‘Equation (1)’.

Organizing and Writing a Paper

The following outline suggests an effective way of organizing a paper: (1) Describe the problem; (2) Explain what you did, how you did it, and what obstacles you encountered; (3) List the resulting benefits, both quantitative and qualitative; and (4) If appropriate, provide an appendix giving the particulars of the model or data.

In writing your paper, explain your work so readers outside your field can understand it. If you must use a specialized term, abbreviation, or acronym, please define it; write out the meaning of an acronym or abbreviation the first time you use it, and enclose the acronym or abbreviation in parentheses immediately afterwards. Where it is feasible, use the active voice rather than the passive, and the first person rather than the third.

References

References should be listed alphabetically by author name at the end of the paper in conformance with journal style. In-text citations should be indicated by the author’s last name and year of publication, e.g., (Norman 1977) or Norman (1977). Click here for examples of reference style.

To cite previous issues of IJAA, please reference the journal name that was used at the time of publication. Volume 1, issues 1 (1970) and 2 (1971) should use “The Bulletin”, volume 1, issue 4 (1971) through volume 48, issue 6 (2018) should use “Interfaces”, and volume 49, issue 1 (2019) forward should use “INFORMS Journal on Applied Analytics”.

Source Files

Source files may be submitted in either MS Word or LaTeX. For LaTeX files, the manuscript style is specified in the template file Interfaces-template.tex, which handles most stylistic issues. You can find the template and other necessary files here.

Supplementary Material

If your paper has supplemental material (i.e., an electronic-companion; additional material that is too voluminous to include in the IJAA printed article), please provide it in a separate file labeled “Supplementary File” and designate it as such in the submission system. Examples of electronic companions include backup tables and figures, programs, code, and executable software.

Title

Make your title short and specific. Instead of “Systems Analysis and Order Processing in a Multiechelon System,” try “Verizon Uses Systems Analysis to Speed Telephone Orders.” When readers are told they are going to read about a telephone company, they have a vivid image that includes the notion of a “multiechelon system.” Titles should be a maximum of 10 words in length—five or six words are preferable.

Verification Letter

A paper that describes applications or implementations must include a letter from the relevant organization(s) verifying the actual use of the application and its resulting benefits. The paper will not be sent out for review in the absence of this verification letter. It must be printed on company letterhead, signed, and addressed to the IJAA Editor-in-Chief. Two electronic copies of this letter should be submitted through ScholarOne Manuscripts with the paper: one original file from the partner organization, and one with the authors' information redacted. The files should both be designated as “verification letter” in ScholarOne Manuscripts. In general, columns and editorials are exceptions and do not require verification. Note: The verification letter must be written by someone other than an author of the paper.

Author Instructions for Book Reviews

Book Reviews cover an extensive and diverse range of books, including theory and applications in operations research, statistics, management science, econometrics, mathematics, computers, and information systems. In addition, we include books in other fields that emphasize technical applications. For more information about book reviews or to submit a book review, please e-mail the Book Reviews Editor, Wenjing Shen.

Author Instructions for Practice Summaries

Practice Summaries present interesting, topical, and novel applications of operations research (OR) methodology to a wide range of industrial applications. Practice Summaries are intended to provide IJAA readers with short descriptions of the most relevant aspects of OR-based projects, in a form that is accessible to academics and practitioners in other organizations. Authors should strive to restrict their submissions to fewer than 10 pages (without reference or appendices). The content of the practice summary should include:

• The problem and the client company or agency, including background information as necessary;
• Who in the client organization sponsored the work and who did the work;
• What OR approaches or models were used, and how they were applied to the problem, identifying software packages where appropriate;
• What the organization learned and what happened subsequently, including the current status of the work if it is ongoing, and in particular how the organization has received and used the results. We encourage authors to report constructive negative results.

A paper describing applications or implementations must include a letter from the relevant organization(s) verifying the actual use of the application and its resulting benefits. The paper will not go out for review until this verification letter is received. It must be printed on company letterhead, signed, and addressed to the IJAA editor-in-chief and be submitted with the paper through the ScholarOne Manuscripts system. The file should be designated as a “verification letter”. Submissions should be double-spaced and, unlike other manuscript types, should include all authors’ mailing addresses and the contact author’s telephone number, fax number, e-mail address, and a short abstract (approximately 50 words). Questions regarding Practice Summaries should be directed to the Editor-in-Chief, Alexandra Newman.

Author Instructions for Papers Derived from Conference Proceedings

Papers that were published in refereed proceedings can be accepted for publication in the INFORMS Journal on Applied Analytics as long as the following conditions are met:

1. The IJAA paper clearly references, in a prominent location such as the introduction of the paper, a previous or concurrent conference paper, and briefly explains any differences in the papers.

2. The IJAA paper extends the work and results published in all related proceedings papers in substantial and meaningful ways. "Substantial and meaningful" can include extensions of key results, additional modeling or methodological contributions, or detailed developments of the application (to include scenario analysis). The “substantial and meaningful” criteria are subject to the discretion of the Editor-in-Chief, associate editor, and reviewers.

3. The following are included in any submission to IJAA: a) the proceedings paper; b) a one-page summary description of the differences between the papers or a version of the submitted paper with all portions that are identical to the proceedings paper highlighted clearly.

4. Authors will ensure that the copyright policy of the conference is respected when submitting work to IJAA.

Submitting Your Manuscript

Use the IJAA ScholarOne Portal

IMPORTANT NOTE: By submitting a manuscript to or reviewing for this publication, your name, email address, and affiliation, and other contact details the publication might require, will be used for the regular operations of the publication, including, when necessary, sharing with the publisher (INFORMS) and partners for production and publication. The publication and the publisher recognize the importance of protecting the personal information collected from users in the operation of these services, and have practices in place to ensure that steps are taken to maintain the security, integrity, and privacy of the personal data collected and processed. You can learn more here.

The ScholarOne Submission Process

There are six steps for uploading a manuscript in the ScholarOne system:

Step 1: Type, Title & Abstract: Enter your manuscript type (ie, original article, column, editorial). Provide the manuscript title. Add the abstract (not more than 300 words).

Step 2: File Upload: Authors will upload as many files as needed for their manuscript. These files will be combined into a single PDF document for the peer review process. For revisions, authors should include only the latest set of files. Reviews are double-blind.

Step 3: Attributes: Please provide up to five keywords.

Step 4: Authors and Institutions: All authors and their institutions must be identified. Please note that the submitting author is required to provide their ORCID iD (more information about ORCID iDs can be found here).

Step 5: Details & Comments: Authors can include their cover letter either in the text box or as a separate file. This information will be viewed by the Editor and the Associate Editor but will not be viewed by the reviewers. Authors will denote funding in this section. Last, authors will certify that they are complying with the journal's ethical policy.

Step 6: Review & Submit: As the final step, authors will review the previous five steps for completeness and view the PDF proof generated by the ScholarOne system (this is required). Be sure to select “Submit” when done.

Ethical Statements Authors Will Certify

As part of Step 5 (above), authors will certify the following ethical statements within the ScholarOne system:

Prior Submission

Has this manuscript been submitted previously?
If yes, what is the manuscript ID of the previous submission?

Blinding

Confirm that you have prepared (a) a complete text and (b) complete text minus the title page, acknowledgements, and any running headers of author names, to allow blinded review.

Ethical Guidelines

I acknowledge that I am aware of IJAA's guidelines for ethical behavior in publishing (http://pubsonline.informs.org/page/inte/submission-guidelines) and all INFORMS policies referred to therein and that this submission conforms to those policies. I have disclosed (in my cover letter and in any related submission questions) any possible perceived conflicts of interest and noted all of my work that has substantial overlap to prior publications, conference proceedings, book chapters, and papers submitted to this journal or any other journals. I also certify that the copyright for all portions of this paper can and will be transferred to INFORMS upon acceptance.

Plagiarism & Copyright

I acknowledge that in submitting this paper I am aware of INFORMS policy on plagiarism and copyright (/authorportal/copyright-plagiarism). Further I acknowledge that I will report to the editor(s) of the journal all of my manuscripts (e.g., prior publications, conference proceedings, book chapters, papers submitted to other journals) that have substantial overlap with the submitted paper. I also certify that the copyright for all portions of this paper can and will be transferred to INFORMS upon acceptance.

Troubleshooting

For additional training and support for using the ScholarOne Manuscripts submission system, please visit ScholarOne’s Author Resources page.

Contact Your Managing Editor

Annie Stevenson
INFORMS
5521 Research Park Drive
Suite 200
Catonsville, Maryland 21228
[email protected]

The Review Process

The Editor-in-Chief reads each manuscript to determine whether the topic is suitable for the journal. If the topic is not suitable, the manuscript is returned quickly to the author(s), typically within two weeks. If the topic is deemed suitable, the editor-in-chief will assign the manuscript to an associate editor who will handle the article. The associate editor will typically obtain at least two reviews from well-qualified reviewers.

Instructions for IJAA reviewers can be found on our Reviewer Guidelines.

Reviewers are asked to respond within six weeks. Once reviews are received, the associate editor summarizes the reviews, provides his/her own comments, and makes a recommendation to the Editor-in-Chief. The final decision as to whether or not a manuscript is accepted, rejected, or asked to be revised for further consideration is made by the Editor-in-Chief and is then communicated by the Editor-in-Chief to the author(s).

The goal is to provide a report and communicate an editorial decision to the author(s) within two months of submission of a manuscript. Although this is not always feasible due to the busy schedules and competing commitments of everyone involved in the review process, the editorial board of IJAA is committed to giving authors feedback as quickly as possible.

Appeals Policy

Appeals are only considered for cases in which the author(s) believe that one or more significant technical errors have been made by the reviewers and/or editors that affected the final decision. Appeals are not for cases in which (i) the paper was desk-rejected due to lack of fit in the journal, and/or (ii) the author(s) believe that the reviewers and /or editors did not sufficiently appreciate the paper.

If an appeal is made for reasons other than those given in (i) or (ii), the author(s) may appeal by email to the Editor-in-Chief. This should be done at least one month after but not more than two months after the final decision was transmitted to the author(s).

The Editor-in-Chief will consider the merits of the alleged error(s) and choose a path of action that consists of one the following: (i) uphold the decision made; or (ii) secure one or more additional reviews of the paper for further consideration. All appeals are final and only one appeal per paper throughout its entire review process is allowed.

Artifical Intelligence Policy

Generative AI presents opportunities and challenges. During the review process, there is a risk that such technology could produce incorrect, incomplete, or biased reports and outcomes. These considerations, together with the principle that submitted manuscripts are to be treated as confidential documents, result in the following guidelines for anyone involved in the INFORMS Journal on Applied Analytics process:

• All opinions expressed by each member of the review team (Reviewers, Associate Editor, Senior Editor) should be theirs and theirs only.
• The author of any report is responsible for the accuracy of all facts and references cited in the report.
• Members of the review team should not deliberately upload a manuscript (or any portion thereof) submitted to INFORMS Journal on Applied Analytics into a Generative AI tool in a way that might lead to violations of copyright and/or confidentiality.
• If an LLM is used in the preparation of a manuscript, authors should disclose to what extent that output appears in the final submission. This statement should appear in the acknowledgements section.

After Acceptance

We respectfully request that authors upload their final files to the submission site within 14 days from receipt of the acceptance decision letter. The decision of accept is not considered binding until final files have been received.

Final Files

Accepted papers are forwarded directly to the IJAA copy editor. Approximately one month later, the copy editor will contact the corresponding author with a set of revisions to make the paper more readable and to conform to IJAA style guidelines. As a condition of acceptance, authors must revise their paper within one month after receiving comments from the copy editor. Authors will be required to submit the following files to the copy editor:

1. Source file of the article (e.g., Microsoft Word or LaTeX);
2. A PDF file of the paper (generated by the author, not the ScholarOne system);
3. Online supplemental materials (if any) in the format they should have when appearing online (PDF, plain text, etc.);
4. Brief author biographies (placed at the end of the manuscript file);
5. The signed copyright transfer form; and
6. The completed Editorial Checklist.

Bitmap files (i.e., files with a BMP or PNG extension) are not acceptable. Figures submitted in color will be published in color in the online version of the journal without charge to the author (they will be in grayscale in the print version of the journal). Please ensure that captions reflect the grayscale publication of the paper. For color in the print version, the author is responsible for color printing fees and must pay the fees prior to publication. To request that figures be printed in color, complete and return the Editorial Checklist; in the File Notes section of the checklist, please note the figures for which you are requesting cost estimates.

Open Access

The INFORMS Open Option (IOO) provides an Open Access alternative for articles accepted in any INFORMS journals that would have otherwise been available only through subscriptions or pay per view. Please be advised there is a $3,000 (US) fee to make an article Open Access that will be assessed during the production process. Authors who would like to make their article Open Access do not need to complete the regular copyright transfer form. Additional details for IOO as well as other types of Open Access can be found here.

Publication Forms

• IJAA Copyright transfer agreement
• IJAA Editorial Checklist
• Media Promotion Form
• IOO Publication License (if you would like to make your paper Open Access)