Editorial Statement

I am thrilled to have the opportunity to serve as editor-in-chief (EIC) of Transportation Science (TS). TS is widely regarded as the pre-eminent scholarly outlet for impactful and innovative scientific articles related to transportation and logistics systems. I attribute this both to the distinguished EICs who came before me, whom I am humbled to follow, and to the author community, whose work I am honored to support.

Before turning to what I hope to accomplish as EIC, I would like to thank my immediate predecessor, Karen Smilowitz, for her outstanding efforts and accomplishments as EIC. Due in no small part to her stewardship, the journal is in a very strong position. Submissions to the journal consistently increased during her tenure. Current projections suggest that TS will receive more than 600 submissions in 2025, yet review times consistently decreased during Karen’s tenure. At the time of this writing, the mean duration to first decision of papers sent out for external review is 100 days, which is in line with other INFORMS journals. Perhaps most importantly, the impact factor of TS has consistently increased. Its current five-year impact factor is 6.2, which is considered high for the INFORMS suite of journals. Thinking beyond journal metrics, Karen fundamentally changed how TS is organized by establishing journal areas at the beginning of her tenure. I think it is safe to say that the introduction of areas enabled the trends in performance metrics outlined earlier. I feel fortunate to have the opportunity to lead the journal when it is in such a strong position.

Next, I would like to discuss three opportunities I will pursue as EIC that I believe will contribute to the success of the journal and broaden its impact. The first is to ensure an outstanding author experience, as authors submit to a journal both because of its reputation and the experience they expect to have. The second is to make space in the journal for papers that document practice-inspired research, because I believe doing so can benefit TS by raising its reputation for practically relevant research. The third involves ensuring TS has an area that explicitly focuses on how transportation systems can and do affect, both positively and negatively, the planet and its people. I believe doing so can benefit TS by raising its reputation for socially impactful research.

Regarding the author experience, my goal is to ensure that every author has an experience with TS in which they feel their paper was given a fair and in-depth assessment, and the recommendations their paper receives align with the reviewer guidelines. To achieve this, I will focus on the quality of referee reports while maintaining Karen’s success in reducing review times. Further, when an author receives a decision of Major Revision, they will receive clear instructions on the improvements required for a decision of Accept. To ensure this experience, I ask the following of our referees and editorial board members.

I ask referees to recognize that their reports represent a significant portion of an author’s experience with the journal and to write the reports they would want to receive for their papers. I ask associate editors (AEs) to consider sending reports back to referees when they do not provide substantive feedback or follow the guidelines. I ask area editors (AEDs) to consider sending reports back to AEs when they do not clearly identify what needs to be addressed in a Major Revision. I ask AEs and AEDs to view sending reports back as an educational opportunity to train the next generation of editorial board members. I ask us all to remember that editorial board members and referees are volunteers and to value their time accordingly.

Regarding the guidelines, I recall our referee template, which asks a referee to “state the main contributions of the paper in terms of problem novelty, scientific methodology, technical results, and/or practical implications.” Further, it states “a paper does not need to contribute in all of these ways,” ande our guidelines state that “a successful paper does not need to be outstanding in all dimensions but should be outstanding in at least one of them.” I ask all of us to remember these statements when assessing a submission. Further, I ask all of us to remember that, although there are risks in publishing papers with findings that do not stand the test of time, there are also risks in rejecting papers that do.

Regarding practice-inspired research, I believe there is room in TS for a limited number of articles that successfully address practical problems, even if doing so involves simple methodologies. I have worked on industry problems throughout my career and can attest that doing so requires addressing different challenges and issues than what are discussed in typical TS papers. I think the TS readership would benefit from awareness of those issues. To enable this, I will explore several approaches. The first is to invite practitioners, or academics who have significant experience with industry problems, to write articles that highlight issues that are understudied academically but can have practical impact. The second is to organize a special issue on practice-inspired research. Of course, such a special issue raises the question of how to define a practice-inspired research article and whether such an article should be assessed differently than a regular submission. I will work with the editorial board to answer both these questions.

Regarding socially impactful research, the TS author community is already doing such research and TS is publishing such papers. Examples include papers that have focused on humanitarian logistics, which are often found in the Emerging & Cross-Functional Topics Area, and electric vehicle routing, which are often found in the Logistics & Routing area. However, I believe a key aspect of a journal’s areas is communicating to stakeholders outside the TS community what the journal publishes. As such, I think the journal and its author community would benefit from having a single area, potentially called Transportation for Social Good, that focuses on such papers. I believe this would send a clear signal to the broader Operations Research and Management Science community that the TS author community does socially impactful research. I intend to work with the editorial board to determine how best to integrate such an area into the existing structure.

With these three opportunities in mind, I am revising a portion of the journal’s editorial statement:

A Transportation Science paper should present rigorously derived knowledge that advances our understanding of well-motivated issues and problems related to the planning, design, economic, operational, and social aspects of transportation systems.

Keeping this in mind, please think big in the problems you choose to work on and design solutions to those problems and not what you perceive TS requires. I believe the TS author community possesses a unique capacity to do research that benefits the health of our economies, societies, and planet. I will try to find a home for such papers.