Using Citation Analysis to Explore the Intellectual Base, Knowledge Dissemination, and Research Impact of Interfaces (1970–1992)

Many leading OR professionals think that our primary mission should be to apply the mathematical and scientific principles of OR to real-world problems rather than to pursue theoretical research. To encourage the application of OR models, in 1976 the editors of Interfaces shifted the emphasis of the journal from meta research to applications and survey papers. I analyzed the citations and selective references over the last two decades or so of Interfaces to obtain a snapshot of where the field has been and where it is heading. I analyzed 1,294 articles, 2,190 authors, and more than 2,500 references.