Technical Note—A Taxonomy for Operations Research

Early in 1968 the ORSA Publications Committee decided to develop a comprehensive index of the 829 articles published in the first fifteen years of Operations Research, covering the pioneering period from 1952 through 1967. The Committee accepted a proposal made by the author at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee to develop chronological, subject, and author indexes, and the result was published as Operations Research: 15 Year Index, Volumes 1–15, 1952–1967, Operations Research Society of America, Baltimore, Maryland, 1970. The major part of this task turned out to be the development of detailed subject classifications to cover every article published. The resulting taxonomy has much broader application than just as an indexing tool, and for this reason the author has felt that the readers of the Journal could benefit from a discussion of it.