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 stable routing frame is organized around Manufacturing & Supply Chain Operations, Services/Platforms/Revenue Management, Environment/Health/Society, Operational Innovation, Analytics in OM, and Practice Platform; the current editorial-board page also lists AI in Operations and Outreach groups. Because 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 listed as Editor-in-Chief on the 2026-06-20 M&SOM pages; INFORMS announced that her final term expires 31 December 2026 and that the search committee aims to propose a successor by 1 July 2026. Check the editorial-board page before naming current DEs or AEs in a submission plan.

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