--- name: msom-review-process description: Use to understand how Manufacturing & Service Operations Management (M&SOM) review and decisions work — the author-routed six-department structure, the Department Editor / Associate Editor / referee chain, double-anonymous review, special tracks (OM Forum, Practice Platform, OM Grand Challenges), and how to read a decision letter — before or after submitting. --- # Review Process (msom-review-process) ## When to trigger - You want to set realistic expectations before submitting to M&SOM - You received a decision letter and need to understand the roles behind it - You are deciding whether a special track (OM Forum, Practice Platform, Grand Challenges) fits - You are unsure how department routing shapes who handles your paper ## The editorial chain: department routing decides your fate M&SOM uses an **author-driven version of departmental routing**. You choose a primary **Department** and name **two preferred Department Editors**; the manuscript is then handled by a **Department Editor (DE)**, who assigns an **Associate Editor (AE)**, who recruits **referees**. The journal is organized into **six departments**: (1) Manufacturing & Supply Chain Operations, (2) Services, Platforms & Revenue Management, (3) Environment, Health & Society, (4) Operational Innovation, (5) Analytics in OM, and (6) a **Practice Platform**. Because the AE board is large (~119) and routing is by department, *matching the right department is as consequential as the paper's quality* — a misrouted paper meets the wrong expertise. ## Double-anonymous review Review is **double-anonymous**: authors and referees are blind to each other. Author identities are known only to the **Editor-in-Chief**, the DE, the AE, and editorial staff, and remain confidential to referees. This is why anonymization (see `msom-submission`) is strictly enforced. ## Decision criteria and special tracks Decisions weigh **importance, originality, clarity, validity, and relevance**, gated by the **operations-centrality** requirement. Beyond standard research articles, M&SOM institutionalizes practice and perspective: - **OM Forum** — thought-leadership/perspective pieces under an identifying banner. - **Practice Platform** — a dedicated department for field-driven, practice-based OM. - **OM Grand Challenges (2026)** — SDG-aligned academic-practitioner proposals; accepted proposals presented at the 2026 MSOM Conference (12–14 July 2026) automatically advance into a second review cycle for a dedicated M&SOM special issue — a conference-to-journal fast-track. > Editor context: Georgia Perakis (MIT) is Editor-in-Chief since January 2021; her final term expires 31 December 2026 (successor to be named by 1 July 2026). Department-editor rosters rotate — verify the live editorial-board page. Acceptance rate is **待核实**. ## Reading a decision letter - **Reject / desk reject:** often an operations-centrality or fit miss — reassess venue and department. - **Major revision:** the DE/AE see a path; the referee points are the contract for the next round. - **Minor revision:** address precisely; do not reopen settled modeling choices. - Identify which comments come from the **DE/AE** (binding priorities) vs. **referees** (must be addressed or rebutted). ## Checklist - [ ] Primary Department and the role chain (DE → AE → referees) understood - [ ] Double-anonymous expectations clear; manuscript fully anonymized - [ ] Special-track fit assessed (OM Forum / Practice Platform / Grand Challenges) - [ ] Decision letter parsed into DE/AE priorities vs. referee points - [ ] Realistic timeline and multi-round expectations set ## Anti-patterns - Picking a department by prestige rather than fit, drawing the wrong expertise. - Treating all reviewer comments as equal weight, ignoring DE/AE signals. - Assuming a perspective piece will be judged as a standard research article (it is OM Forum). ## Desk-screen and decision patterns to expect A desk reject on "fit" usually means the operations decision is a backdrop; an "incremental" reject means structure was proven but no managerial insight attached; an "identification" reject means endogenous operations were treated as exogenous; a perspective piece judged as a research article was on the wrong track (it belongs in OM Forum). M&SOM is the INFORMS MSOM-Society journal for the operations management of manufacturing and service systems, so a contribution a practitioner can use is the bar. ## Worked micro-example (illustrative) Vignette: a paper on warehouse pick-path optimization is submitted to "Analytics in OM." Two referees split: one praises the method, the other notes the warehouse layout is treated as fixed when it is in fact a managed decision. The AE flags layout endogeneity as the binding item and asks for a clearer takeaway. Reading the letter correctly means treating the AE's items — not the referee's praise — as the contract, then switching into `msom-rebuttal`. ## Referee-pushback patterns and the venue fix - *"Strong analytics, but where is the operations decision?"* → Re-center on the operating lever; analytics in service of an OM decision, not for its own sake. - *"This belongs in a broader OR/MS or general-management outlet."* → If a sibling venue genuinely owns the contribution, re-route; M&SOM's scope is tighter and OM-specific. ## Output format ``` 【Department / role chain】DE → AE → referees ... 【Review model】double-anonymous; anonymization OK? ... 【Track】standard / OM Forum / Practice Platform / Grand Challenges ... 【Decision parsed】DE-AE priorities vs. referee points ... 【Next step】on R&R → msom-rebuttal ```