Editor's Cut :

COMMUNITY CHOICE EXPLANATIONS

Editors-in-chief and society/fora chairs share their thoughts on their Community Choice article picks.

A Multiple-Objective Decision Analysis of Stakeholder Values to Identify Watershed Improvement Needs

Chosen by: Vicki Bier, Editor-in-Chief

Published: Decision Analysis, 2005

This paper builds on the basic idea of value-focused thinking by introducing the idea of "value gaps," which can be loosely translated as "opportunities for improvement" -- but opportunities that are relatively robust to variations in decision-maker preferences. This has been extremely useful in subsequent work (and perhaps underrecognized relative to its importance!). It has been cited of course in the environmental literature, but also in work on other topics, such as terrorism protection, air-traffic management, and security and privacy issues in social media. It has influenced the development of more sophisticated methods for analysis of potential improvements in Decision Analysis (see, for example, https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/deca.1060.0072), and has been extended in a 2019 PhD dissertation supervised by lead author Merrick. Finally, the emphasis on robustness provides a creative but practical way to deal with the challenges of group decision making; the paper has therefore also been influential in work on community engagement, stakeholder participation, and other group decision processes.

Was Angelina Jolie Right? Optimizing Cancer Prevention Strategies Among BRCA Mutation Carriers

Chosen by: Vicki Bier, Editor-in-Chief

Published: Decision Analysis, 2017

This paper was influential in a completely different way. By building on public interest in Angelina Jolie's decision to have a prophylactic double mastectomy to prevent breast cancer, the authors were able to demonstrate how decision analysis can be useful in thinking about high-stakes personal decisions. While not heavily cited in the academic literature, the work that served as the basis for this paper was discussed in the mainstream press, including in the Washington Post and Science Daily. While motivated in part by author Elisa Long's own decisions regarding her diagnosis of breast cancer, the paper was also written to be more broadly useful, identifying an "optimal policy" for when preventive mastectomy and/or removal of the ovaries would make sense, based on a woman's risk factors. The authors find that some recommendations in the literature are overly aggressive even for women at high risk of ovarian cancer. This work received a "Special Recognition Award" from Decision Analysis in 2017, for the paper most worthy of recognition in the journal that year.

Scatter Search and Local NLP Solvers: A Multistart Framework for Global Optimization

Chosen by: Alice Smith, Editor-in-Chief

Published: INFORMS Journal on Computing, 2007

Not only has this paper attracted a large number of citations, but it continues to be highly cited to this day, many years following publication. In fact, a significant number of the publications are recent, showing that the authors were ahead of their time.

The paper describes the multi-start global optimization algorithm in the OptQuest solver, which can handle nonlinear programs in both continuous and integer variables, requiring only that the functions be differentiable with respect to the continuous variables. The algorithm suggests launch points for a local nonlinear solver, holding the integer variables constant, and is able to find global optima for most test problems using very few local solver launches (the most expensive operation).

As well as influencing academic researchers (as shown by the many citations), the paper has influenced the practice of global optimization. A large variety of applications have been successfully attacked using OptQuest, and commercial global optimization solvers such as LINDO have been influenced by the ideas described in the paper. OptQuest has also developed into a leading tool for simulation optimization.

Implementing Sponsored Search in Web Search Engines: Computational Evaluation of Alternative Mechanisms

Chosen by: Alice Smith, Editor-in-Chief

Published: INFORMS Journal on Computing, 2007

The paper by Feng, Bhargava, and Pennock is among the earliest publications to study mechanisms for the allocation of ads by search engine providers. The paper reports extensive computational simulations, allowing the authors to compare expected revenue obtained from a variety of ad placement strategies. The study provides insights into the impact of attention decay and other key factors. This highly cited paper continues to be an important reference for the community of researchers studying this rapidly growing sector of the advertising market. The work is a very nice example of the reach of operations research techniques into the new economy.

On Patient Flow in Hospitals: A Data-Based Queueing-Science Perspective

Chosen by: Shane Henderson, Editor-in-Chief

Published: Stochastic Systems, 2015

This paper opens up a range of new research directions in hospital modeling. It is a beautiful data exploration that points out features of hospital data that may or may not align with models that were current at the time of publication. It is highly innovative in that making the data public was no mean feat, and the explorations are highly illuminating! It has inspired much follow-on work.

On the Power of (Even a Little) Resource Pooling

Chosen by: Shane Henderson, Editor-in-Chief

Published: Stochastic Systems, 2012

This paper studies the benefits that accrue when one can pool one’s resources. For example, a health clinic may include (say) 10 doctors. If each doctor maintains their own patient panel and patients never see another doctor within the clinic, even when their doctor is busy, then essentially each doctor operates on their own. In this case, patients can wait a long time to see their doctor. But if even a few patients are willing to see another doctor within the clinic other than their own, then waiting times can dramatically decrease. This paper quantifies that benefit. The paper is important beyond healthcare; it is important essentially anywhere that one might consider pooling resources.

Twenty Years in the Making: The Evolution of the Journal of Manufacturing & Service Operations Management

Chosen by: Christopher Tang, Editor-in-Chief

Published: Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, 2019

I honestly think M&SOM's 20th anniversary special issue is pivotal because it captures the past and the future. Each individual paper in this special issue is pivotal and the entire issue is open access. This special issue really pushed for new frontiers from supply chain to healthcare, from online platforms to industry 4.0, from sustainability to gender equality. Also, the list of authors is diverse in terms of gender, geographical regions, business school and IE departments, etc. So I see this issue is pivotal! I cannot just pick 1-2 because it will not do justice to the authors.

Emergency response to a smallpox attack: The case for mass vaccination

Chosen by: Natalie Scala, Chair, Military and Security Society (MAS) and
JD Koopman, MAS Council

Published: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2002

The Kaplan et al. paper, published in the esteemed Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was the 2002 Koopman Prize winner and registers 481 citations in Google Scholar. The paper’s topic remains quite pertinent to today’s COVID challenges, and the first author, Ed Kaplan, is an active lifetime contributor to INFORMS.