brycewang-stanford Review Process (ors-review-process)
When to trigger
- You want to understand how Operations Research routes and decides on a manuscript.
- A decision letter arrived and you need to parse roles, signals, and the path forward.
- You are unsure who sees your identity and whose names you can see.
How OR review is organized
Operations Research uses a departmental structure run by INFORMS:
- Area-editor routing. At submission you select one of the journal's named
editorial areas; the manuscript is handled within that department by an Area
Editor (AE-area), who assigns an Associate Editor, who recruits reviewers.
Areas publish Area Editors' Statements defining scope, so a mismatched area can
cost you a re-route (see
ors-topic-selection). - Soft double-anonymous with asymmetric transparency. Author names are omitted from the submission. Reviewers cannot see authors. The Area Editor and Associate Editor can see author names. Distinctively, authors can see the handling Area Editor's name but not the Associate Editor or reviewers. This asymmetry distinguishes OR from fully blinded or fully open models.
Reading the decision letter
Typical decision types and what they signal:
| Decision | Read it as |
|---|---|
| Reject (or desk reject) | Fit/area mismatch, thin methodological contribution, or a fatal flaw |
| Major revision | The core idea has promise; substantial proof/experiment work expected |
| Minor revision | Results stand; address specific gaps and presentation |
| Accept | Rare on first round; expect at least one revision cycle |
When you read the letter:
- Identify the synthesis from the Area/Associate Editor — it ranks which reviewer points are binding versus optional. Prioritize the editor's emphasis.
- Separate proof concerns from exposition concerns. A "gap in the proof of Theorem X" is binding; a request to restructure is presentational.
- Note reproducibility requests. Expect questions tied to the ORJournal code/data review (pull-request workflow, README/LICENSE, runnable scripts).
- Watch conference/copyright items. If a prior conference version exists, the editor may probe the incremental contribution and copyright.
Expectations as an OR author
- Engage the technical substance: strengthen assumptions, tighten bounds/rates, add the missing baseline or instance set — not cosmetic edits.
- Respect the page tiers and the e-companion ≤ manuscript rule when expanding.
- Keep the introduction equation-free through revisions.
Anti-patterns
- Treating every reviewer point as equal and ignoring the editor's synthesis.
- Arguing with a reviewer instead of fixing a genuine proof gap.
- Expanding the paper past its page tier to answer reviewers.
- Assuming reviewers can see your identity (they cannot) or that you can see theirs (you cannot).
Output format
【Decision】reject / major / minor / accept
【Editor synthesis】binding points (proof vs. exposition vs. reproducibility)
【Identity map】reviewers blind to you; you see AE-area only
【Conference/copyright】flagged?
【Plan】what to fix, in priority order
【Next step】ors-rebuttal