Operations Research Letters is committed to the rapid review and fast publication of short articles on all aspects of operations research and analytics. Apart from a limitation to eight journal pages, quality, originality, relevance and clarity are the only criteria for selecting the papers to be published. ORL covers the broad field of optimization, stochastic models and game theory. Specific areas of interest include networks, routing, location, queueing, scheduling, inventory, reliability, and financial engineering. We wish to explore interfaces with other fields such as life sciences and health care, artificial intelligence and machine learning, energy distribution, and computational social sciences and humanities. Our traditional strength is in methodology, including theory, modelling, algorithms and computational studies. We also welcome novel applications and concise literature reviews.
Area Editors:
Approximation and heuristics
Gerhard J. Woeginger
The area covers all issues relevant to the development of efficient approximate solutions to computationally difficult problems. Examples are heuristic approaches like local search, worst case analysis or competitive analysis of approximation algorithms, complexity theoretic results, and computational investigations of heuristic approaches.
Continuous optimization
Hector Ramírez Cabrera
Papers in all fields of continuous optimization that are relevant to operations research are welcome. These areas include, but are not restricted to, nonlinear programming (constrained or unconstrained, convex or nonconvex, smooth or nonsmooth, exact or heuristic, finite or infinite-dimensional), complementarity, variational inequalities, bilevel programming, and mathematical programs with equilibrium constraints.
Financial engineering
Kumar Muthuraman
Financial engineering utilizes operations research methods (such as optimization, simulation, decision analysis and stochastic control) to analyze financial markets. This area is interested in papers that innovate in terms of methods or models that help financial applications. The studied problem examples include the pricing and hedging of financial instruments, credit and energy markets and portfolio selection
Game theory
Tristan Tomala
The area published papers in game theory with relevance to the field of operations research.
Graphs and networks
Gianpaolo Oriolo
The area seeks papers that apply, in original and insightful ways, discrete mathematics to advance the theory and practice of operations research, as well as those reporting theoretical or algorithmic advances for the area. Of particular, but not exclusive, interest are papers devoted to novel applications, telecommunications and transportation networks, graphs and web models and algorithms.
Inventory control
Sridhar Seshadri
The area welcomes innovative papers focused on inventory management. Examples of topics include, but are not limited to supply chain management, pricing, capacity planning, multi-item/echelon systems, algorithms and bounds, and incentive design.
Linear and stochastic optimization
Eugene Feinberg and Rudiger Schultz
The area solicits original articles dealing with theoretical and computational issues in linear optimization or optimization under stochastic uncertainty.
Logistics and revenue management
Mahesh Nagarajan
The area includes topics related to operations management and supply chain design such as location problems, production planning, transportation and routing, and revenue management and pricing. We welcome papers that study existing or new models and applications in these areas and provide significant new results. Examples are papers introducing new models, new algorithms or new analysis of known models or algorithms. Emphasis will be put on the relative importance of the paper's contribution to known theory and practice.
Mixed integer optimization
Marc Pfetsch
All submissions advancing the theory and practice of mixed integer (linear or nonlinear) programming like novel techniques and algorithmic approaches in convex relaxations, branch and cut, polyhedral combinatorics and theory driven heuristics are welcome. Case studies may be considered if they contribute to the general methodology.
Reliability and maintenance optimization
Jeffrey P. Kharoufeh
The area invites novel reliability and maintenance optimization contributions with a rigorous operations research component. Examples include, but are not limited to, stochastic models of reliability, dynamic maintenance decision making, novel uses of data within analytical frameworks, matrix-analytic methods and asymptotic results. The area will consider formal models, algorithms, bounds and computational advances.
Scheduling
Marc Uetz
We seek original and significant contributions to the analysis and solution of sequencing and scheduling problems. This includes structural and algorithmic results, in particular optimization, approximation and online algorithms, as well as game theoretic modeling. All results are welcome as long as the relevance of a problem and significance of the contribution is made compellingly clear.
Stochastic networks and queues
John Hasenbein
The area focuses on networks and queueing systems where stochastic variability and uncertainty play a crucial role. The area seeks papers that propose original models and develop novel analytical or computational methods. Innovative ideas and broad results receive precedence over incremental extensions or niche areas.