Information for Contributors

Submission

Five copies of the manuscript should be submitted to:

Professor Ram Narasimhan
Decision Sciences Editor
The Eli Broad College of Business
Michigan State University
Department of Marketing & Supply Chain Management
N370 Business Complex
East Lansing, MI 48824-1122
(517) 432-4664, fax: (517) 432-4665
e-mail: decsci@pilot.msu.edu

Your submission of a paper certifies that none of the contents are copyrighted, published or accepted for publication by another journal, under review by another journal, or submitted to another journal while under review by Decision Sciences. All manuscripts should be printed in Times Roman (12 pt), double-spaced on paper, accompanied by an abstract of not more than 180 words, and an author's vita of not more than 150 words. The author's name and affiliation should appear on a separate page.

All equations should be set on separate lines, centered, and numbered consecutively in parentheses that appear flush with the right margin of the page. Figures and charts, as well as tables, should be consecutively numbered in arabic. Decision Sciences does not allow the use of footnotes or end notes. A copy of all referenced forthcoming papers should accompany the submitted manuscript. References should be listed alphabetically by author at the end of the paper and referred to in the body of the text by Name (date). While the ``Name (date)'' style is new to Decision Sciences, the general format remains the same. It would do prospective authors no great harm to scrutinize past issues of the journal prior to preparing manuscripts for submission. However, conformity to exact page layout is not the responsibility of the authors.

To facilitate the reviewing process, authors must indicate appropriate key words for their papers. Papers submitted to Decision Sciences without key words will suffer a delay in the assignment of reviewers and associate editors. The key word list presently in use at Decision Sciences is also located on the DSI gopher, although authors can specify other key words if that list is not adequate. Authors should specify as many key words as apply to their papers, however key words must be specified in at least one functional area and at least one methodological area.

Should the manuscript be accepted for publication, the author will be asked to submit a copy of the disc containing the final post-review version of the paper. The word processing file (or ASCII text file) will be used in the typesetting process.

There is a nonrefundable submission fee of $25 per manuscript for Institute members and $50 for nonmembers. Checks are to be sent to the editorial offices at Michigan State University along with the manuscripts.

Editorial Philosophy

The central theme of the Decision Sciences Institute is not problem solving per se, but decision making in public and private organizations utilizing behavioral, economic, and quantitative methods of analysis. Decision Sciences articles, therefore, must have a decision-making orientation and address problems of managerial significance. A reasonable case should be made for the importance of the problem. Under this aegis, the Editor's objective is to attain a broad coverage of topics at a level of sophistication that will place the journal within the grasp of the entire membership.

Educational research papers and tutorials that are not merely reportorial but make a unique contribution to the decision sciences and to the teaching of decision sciences will be welcome. Articles on new course designs or improved approaches to education in the decision sciences should, as a general rule, include evidence that the new designs or methods are indeed superior to other approaches. Conceptual and theoretical articles should make clear how their contents contribute to the decision- making process or our understanding of that process. Articles posing new methodologies or improvements over existing ones should make clear why they are important for decision makers to consider, and what important problems they address. Papers concerned with the development of algorithms that are not directly related to a specific decision problem will not be published in Decision Sciences.

There is no restriction on the length of articles, particularly on the down side. However, conciseness will be considered a virtue. Articles must be written in the English language as Decision Sciences does not have the capability to do foreign language translations.

Reviewing Process

Each article submitted to Decision Sciences is subjected to the following reviewing process:

1. An initial screening by the Editor to determine the suitability of the article for the Journal. Assuming it is suitable, it is assigned to two referees, according to its functional and methodological content.
2. A careful review by two referees, each of whom makes a recommendation to the Editor and supplies comments, of varying detail, for the author.
3. An appraisal of the reviews by the Editor, who makes an initial decision regarding the disposition of the paper. If in the Editor's judgment the paper should proceed in the review process, the paper and the reviews are assigned to an Associate Editor for blind review and a recommendation. If the Editor feels the paper has potential for publication, the author is invited to make revisions according to the suggestions of the reviewers and the Associate Editor, who will also process the revised paper.
4. A critique by the Associate Editor who reviews the revised paper, the original paper, and the comments of the referees. The Associate Editor provides the Editor with a recommendation regarding publication and may indicate that further revisions are necessary.
5. A final decision made by the Editor, who appraises the entire review process, making certain that all revisions suggested by the referees and the Associate Editor prerequisite to publication have been made.

The Editor reserves the right to deviate from the above procedures when the situation warrants and as it is deemed appropriate.

Revised July 18, 2002