Hugh J. Miser

The Easy Chair: Journal Editing As I See It

From time to time there arise in professional circles discussions of how scientific and technical journals are managed and especially how the editors choose their contents. Members of INFORMS had such a discussion recently, and the editor-in-chief of this journal offered a thoughtful response (Michael H. Rothkopf, Editorial refereeing—How blind should we be? Interfaces, Vol. 24, No. 6, pp. 14–18, 1994.). Unfortunately for a scientific community dedicated to seeking models of operating systems involving human behavior, OR/MS has offered no discriminating and objective studies of the editorial process to enlighten those with concerns about it.

The Easy Chair: What Kinds of Papers Will Contribute to a Well-Rounded View of the Conditions and Craft of Or/Ms Practice?

With an OR background of varied practice. I began my editorial career in operations research over three decades ago. Even then it was clear that readers of our journals wanted more of what were already being called applications papers. Note that this term appears to have conceded that the subjects center of attention was developing theory rather than exploring the phenomena that OR was undertaking to understand and explain. A balanced view of the subject should regard the two activities as inseparable partners: theory without an observational base is only an intellectual game; practice without adequate intellectual conceptions (that is, models) is mere management gamesmanship.

The Easy Chair: Judging Effectiveness of Work in Or/Ms Practice and Claiming Credit for its Consequences

Discussion of the “practical credentials” of the OR/MS work and what it is that constitutes quality and effectiveness in OR/MS practice as seen by our profession, and especially by its large and growing academic community. The matter of scientific quality is left aside, as the supporting material for the cases offers ample evidence of their excellence.

The Ombudsman: Reaction to Armstrong's

In the July–August 1996 issue of Interfaces, “The Ombudsman” column consisted of an article by J. Scott Armstrong, which dealt primarily with the difficulties that academics face in getting papers published describing findings that are controversial or that contradict management folklore, and comments by three other authors, each of whom had similar difficulties with controversial work of their own, yet each of whom took a different perspective on the issue.