Great Reasons to Write for the INFORMS Magazines

I have served as chair of the INFORMS Magazine Editorial Advisory Board (MEAB) and its predecessor (INFORMS’ OR/MS Today and Analytics Committee) for almost a decade, and most likely because of this, I am frequently asked what motivates someone to write for either of the two magazines published by INFORMS. This is certainly a fair question. OR/MS Today and Analytics are magazines; neither is a peer-reviewed academic journal, so a publication in either does not contribute much directly to an academic’s tenure and/or promotion case. Neither magazine will publish an article that promotes a company, product or service, which eliminates an obvious incentive for industry colleagues to submit an article.

This leads many to conclude that one publishes in OR/MS Today or Analytics out of altruism. This is a strong motivation, and one that I am confident drives each author of an article published by either magazine to some extent. This motivation clearly shines through in the exposition of the articles and in the comments I have received from authors after they have published articles in OR/MS Today or Analytics. The authors feel good about contributing to readers’ awareness of an issue faced by our discipline or an application that has made a difference in business operations and/or individual lives.

However, publishing in OR/MS Today or Analytics provides an author with much more than satisfaction of altruistic inclinations. Both magazines are open access, which means anyone can access and read the online articles. Our colleagues around the world read these magazines and are inspired by their articles, and journalists comb through the articles looking for ideas for interesting stories. An author can provide a nontechnical explanation of some interesting application of our discipline to a real and consequential problem through an OR/MS Today or Analytics article – even if the author has discussed the application in a technical paper published by a peer-reviewed academic journal. Such an article can increase awareness and appreciation of the work among our colleagues and beyond. I have been contacted several times by colleagues with ideas for related research in response to articles I have published in OR/MS Today or Analytics, and journalists have reached out to me to further develop something I wrote for OR/MS Today or Analytics into a mass-media story. Members of the editorial board of Significance magazine – a bimonthly magazine of the Royal Statistical Society, Statistical Society of Australia and American Statistical Association that publishes articles on topics of statistical interest presented at a level suited for a general audience – periodically review articles in OR/MS Today and Analytics searching for authors and topics for their magazine.

So, publishing in OR/MS Today and Analytics can satisfy your altruistic instincts and provide your work with broad exposure. Those reasons could certainly be sufficient to motivate you to submit an article, but there is more! The editor of these magazines generally allows authors a great deal of latitude in the topics of their articles, as long as the topics are related to our discipline in some way. I recently published an article in OR/MS Today about the operations research (O.R.) skills my mom demonstrated as she raised me and my four siblings – how many publications are interested in a story about someone’s mom? OR/MS Today values such contributions. And to top it off, I have received more positive feedback from that particular OR/MS Today article than from almost anything else I have written professionally. I received many notes from friends in the O.R. community detailing memories of how their mothers held everything together and kept their families running through what are essentially O.R. skills and techniques. The feedback has been a lot of fun to read (thanks to each of you who reached out to me about this article and shared memories of your mom – I have enjoyed reading and rereading your notes very much!).

Finally, the editors of OR/MS Today and Analytics have consistently made me look better than I have a right to expect. For decades, my good friend Pete Horner diligently and capably edited both OR/MS Today and Analytics. From the moment I wrote my first article for OR/MS Today (about the relocation of the 2005 INFORMS Annual Meeting from New Orleans to San Francisco), Pete was always there to support my professional efforts. And now, following Pete’s retirement, we are fortunate that the magazines are in the equally diligent and capable hands of Kara Tucker. Pete and Kara are both outstanding editors – if there is a potential kernel of value to the readers in a submission, they work with the author(s) to produce a well-organized, readable and interesting piece. They are particularly adept at working with academics and professionals who are unaccustomed to writing in a nontechnical style to make their work accessible to the general public (assistance that I have relied on often). In addition, members of the MEAB assist the editors of OR/MS Today and Analytics with finding topics and authors, reviewing initial drafts, and occasionally assisting with the editing of these drafts.

Working with Pete and Kara on the MEAB and previously INFORMS’ OR/MS Today and Analytics Committee has been as rewarding as any of my professional service roles. The gratification of seeing the great work they and the authors consistently produce and reading the reactions of the authors seeing their articles in OR/MS Today and Analytics has never diminished. The responses to the annual April special international issue and the annual August special issue on innovative education have been particularly satisfying. The international issue often sends readers to the internet to find more about the nations featured in its articles, and the authors are very appreciative of the opportunity to share their work with their INFORMS colleagues. As an added benefit, these issues bring new readers from around the world to OR/MS Today and Analytics (recall that both magazines are open access) who then regularly return to read articles in new issues (so when you publish in either of these magazines, you can count on reaching a global audience). The innovative education special issue is an opportunity for INFORMS members, many of whom spend much of their time on research, to reflect on our classrooms and how we interact with students and help them understand the complex topics and nuances of our discipline.

As I complete this draft, it is with the understanding and expectation that Kara will edit and greatly improve it. I hope that each of you who reads this article comes away understanding how fortunate INFORMS members have been and continue to be to belong to a professional society that publishes not one but two fine magazines in OR/MS Today and Analytics. I also hope that those of you who were not aware of the roles played by their editors (and I know many of you are aware) now appreciate how privileged we are to have had Pete and now Kara serve as the editors of these fine magazines. Finally, I hope many of you are now motivated to write for OR/MS Today and/or Analytics! Kara is constantly on the lookout for promising topics and authors, and she will welcome your thoughts and suggestions. If you have ideas for topics and/or would like to propose an article for either magazine, please contact Kara at [email protected]. I am confident you will be glad you did.