# Ijoc Literature Positioning > Use when staking the computational/methodological contribution of an INFORMS Journal on Computing (IJOC) manuscript against OR/MS and CS prior art. Positions the advance relative to the right baselines and the right frontier; it does not invent citations. - Skill: `thedixitjain/ijoc-literature-positioning` (Agent Skill) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds add thedixitjain/ijoc-literature-positioning` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/thedixitjain/ijoc-literature-positioning/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: Marketing & Growth - Author: thedixitjain (https://skillmd.com/u/thedixitjain) - Updated: 2026-09-08 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/thedixitjain/ijoc-literature-positioning --- # Literature Positioning (ijoc-literature-positioning) ## When to trigger - Reviewers say "the contribution over existing methods is unclear" or "this is incremental" - Your related-work section cites application papers but not the **algorithmic/computational** prior art you actually compete with - You straddle OR and CS literatures and are unsure which frontier you are advancing - A referee names a recent method you did not compare against, and you must decide whether it is the relevant baseline ## Positioning IJOC papers — two frontiers, one claim An IJOC paper usually advances against **two literatures at once**: the OR/MS literature that owns the *problem* and the computing literature that owns the *method*. Your positioning must make clear which frontier you push and by how much, in computational terms. The decisive move is to identify the **state-of-the-art method you must beat or match**, cite it precisely, and commit to it as an experimental baseline. Vague positioning ("little work exists") reads as not having read the field and is a fast path to desk rejection by an Area Editor who knows it well. | Your claim type | The prior art you must engage | The baseline this implies | |-----------------|-------------------------------|---------------------------| | New exact method, larger instances | best published exact method for this problem | re-run or cite its reported results on shared instances | | New formulation, tighter bounds | strongest existing formulation / relaxation | root-gap and node-count comparison | | New heuristic, better quality/time | the leading heuristic and the best exact bound | gap-to-optimal and time-to-target | | ML-for-OR, learns to solve faster | both the OR baseline and prior learning approaches | beat the OR method *and* prior learning | | New simulation/estimation method | prior estimators for the same estimand | variance/cost at equal accuracy | | Software/tooling | prior tools and the methods they implement | feature/performance comparison, not just existence | ## Engaging recent work fairly IJOC reviewers are active researchers in the chosen area; they will know the last two years of work. Cite the **most recent** competing methods, not only the classics, and state honestly where a competitor is still better (e.g., "Method X remains faster on dense instances; we win on sparse and large"). Honest scoping is more credible than a blanket "we outperform all." When a competitor's code is in the IJOC GitHub repository or a public repo, plan to actually run it rather than quoting stale numbers from different hardware. ## Sibling-journal framing in the related work Position so the reader sees why this is IJOC and not a sibling: emphasize the **computational/methodological delta**. If the related work reads like an *Operations Research* model survey, the computing contribution is buried; if it reads like a CS algorithms paper with no OR task, the OR relevance is missing. The synthesis — "here is the OR problem, here is the computing frontier, here is the gap we close" — is the IJOC signature. ## Using the IJOC corpus and deposit as evidence Two underused positioning moves are specific to IJOC. First, the **IJOC Software and Data Repository** means many recent competing methods ship with runnable code; cite those and, where feasible, re-run them on your instances rather than quoting heterogeneous published numbers — a re-run comparison is far more persuasive to a referee who knows the field. Second, IJOC's **"Test of Time" award** and its published archive signal which methods the area considers canonical; engaging those anchors your claim in the literature the Area Editor and reviewers actually hold as the bar. Position against the strongest *reproducible* competitor, not merely the most cited. ## Checklist - [ ] The single state-of-the-art method you compete with is named and cited precisely - [ ] Both the problem (OR/MS) literature and the method (computing) literature are engaged - [ ] Recent (last ~2 years) competing methods are cited, not only canonical ones - [ ] Each claimed advantage is tied to a baseline you will actually run or fairly quote - [ ] Where a competitor is still better, the paper says so and scopes the claim - [ ] The positioning makes the IJOC (not OR/MS/MPC/IJOO/CS) fit obvious - [ ] No invented or padded citations; every cited result is checkable ## Anti-patterns - "Little/no prior work exists" on a topic the Area Editor has published in - Comparing only to old baselines while a current method dominates the field - Citing application papers as if they were your methodological competitors - Quoting a competitor's runtimes from a different machine as if comparable - A related-work section that could belong to *Operations Research* or a CS venue with the journal name swapped - Overclaiming "we outperform all existing methods" without per-regime honesty ## Output format ```text 【Journal】INFORMS Journal on Computing 【Skill】ijoc-literature-positioning 【SOTA to beat/match】named method + citation 【Frontier(s) advanced】OR/MS problem / computing method / both 【Claimed delta】the computational gap closed, in measurable terms 【Honest scoping】where a competitor still wins 【Sibling boundary】why IJOC and not OR / MS / MPC / IJOO / CS 【Next skill】ijoc-methods ``` --- **Source:** [`brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills`](https://github.com/brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills) → `INFORMS-Journal-on-Computing-Skills/skills/ijoc-literature-positioning/SKILL.md`