Special Issue of INFORMS Journal on Applied Analytics—Decision Analysis
Introduction
The field of Decision Analysis (DA) continues to evolve with new areas of application and theoretical developments. The purpose of this special issue is to highlight recent exemplary applications of DA, for practitioners who seek to apply these tools in a variety of domains, and for teaching professionals who seek new examples that illustrate the breadth of DA practice. We hope to illustrate the richness and variety of DA applications in the special issue. Researchers also will benefit from an understanding for domain-specific challenges that arise during the application of DA. As such, the application articles in the special issue will facilitate a cross-fertilization of ideas between practitioners and researchers.
Special Issue Scope and Topics
Authors are invited to submit applied papers describing successful implementations of DA in diverse applications areas including (but not limited to) healthcare, R&D, portfolio management, environmental and natural resource management, operations, agriculture, transportation, security, and energy. Insightful syntheses of authors’ experiences from multiple related implementations are also welcome. We seek manuscripts that describe efforts to help decision makers improve their outcomes using a variety of methods from the DA literature, such as dealing with multiple attributes, utilities, and uncertainties.
We specifically encourage authors to discuss the implementation in a transparent manner so that other practitioners can understand and adopt it in their own applications; discuss, where appropriate, thought process for various modeling/analysis choices made during the application; and document improvement in decision quality using monetary or other metrics.
Timelines
The editors encourage potential authors to contact them with ideas for papers before a making a full submission. Please note the following dates:
• April 21, 2021: Letter of interest due to the editors, with an abstract including the organization at which the work was implemented (early letters are encouraged).
• August 31, 2021: Deadline for first round of submissions.
• November 30, 2021: First round of reviews completed; decisions (and requests for revision, if appropriate) delivered to authors.
• February 28, 2021: Revisions due after first round decisions.
• May 30, 2022: Second round of reviews delivered to authors.
• September 1, 2022: Final versions of accepted papers must be submitted.
Submission Instructions
The articles should follow the standard requirements of the INFORMS Journal on Applied Analytics articles available at https://pubsonline.informs.org/page/inte/submission-guidelines.
Papers must be submitted online at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/inte.
When submitting a paper, please note the following.
Under “Step 1: Type, Title, & Abstract,” select “Special Issue” for “Type.”
Under “Step 5: Details & Comments,” answer “This paper is for which special issue?” with “Decision Analysis.”
Publication contact information for the Special Issue Editors:
Saurabh Bansal
The Pennsylvania State University
Karen Jenni
U.S. Geological Survey
Jeffrey Keisler
The University of Massachusetts Boston
Johannes Ulrich Siebert
Management Center Innsbruck
