Guest Editor and Editor-in-Chief details:

• Adolf Acquaye, Khalifa University, UAE (email) - Guest Editor

• Martin H. Kunc, University of Southampton, UK (email)

• Said Salhi, Khalifa University (email) and University of Kent, UK (email)

• Zhe George Zhang, Western Washington University, USA and Simon Fraser University, Canada (email)

 

Submission timeline and instructions:
Submission Deadline: 1 June 2024
Expected First Revision Deadline: 15 August 2024
Full Paper Accepted Date: circa mid-September 2024

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In order to meet the above deadlines, only submissions with “Minor Revise” decisions will proceed to the next round of the review process. 

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Submissions should be made via the journal homepage and authors should indicated the title of the special issue when prompted on the Taylor & Francis submission form.

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About the issue:

The world is currently facing grand challenges, which encompass the range of complex global issues outlined by the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) identified by the UN in its 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, launched in 2015. To help address these challenges, which can be evident in different forms at all levels of the value chain, be it macro (industry, national, or global-levels), meso (firm-level) or micro-levels (individual-level), evidence-based inform decision-making becomes imperative.  

 
Operational research (OR), which has a long history spanning decades and was first applied in military efforts before Second World War, has long since spread to many disciplines such as engineering and management science as an analytical method for problem solving and decision making in organizations.

The Journal of the Operational Research Society (JORS) has commissioned a special issue with a singular focus on the development and application of operational research methods, models, and tools to address complex global issues outlined by the 17 SDGs. This is part of its 75th anniversary.

Quantitative and qualitative OR methods, such as those discussed in the encyclopaedic article of methods, models and algorithms by Petropoulos et al. (2023), which can be used to model sustainability problems, are crucial when examining complex combinations of environmental, social and economic systems at the macro, meso, or micro levels to inform decision-making processes. Modelling these systems involves integrating knowledge and perspectives into conceptual and computational tools, such as OR that explicitly acknowledge how human decisions impact the sustainability agenda, including the protection of natural capital and the environment.

The complexity of current grand challenges as exemplified by the SDG’s and decision support processes and systems needed to address these challenges implies that real transition towards sustainability and sustainable development, would require modeling tools, including that of OR. This call for papers seeks original research papers that expands the potential of OR in the broader context of sustainability and sustainable development. The use of methods, models and tools from modern operational research to address major themes of sustainability and sustainable development are a prerequisite for any analytical or empirical research paper to this special issue to enter the review process.  If a paper passes initial screening, it will proceed to a normal review process, overseen by the Guest Editor of this special issue and the Editors-in-Chief of JORS. Once accepted, the paper will be expedited for publication. 

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Reference:
Petropoulos, F., Laporte, G., Aktas, E., Alumur, S. A., Archetti, C., Ayhan, H., . . . Zhao, X. (2023). Operational Research: methods and applications. Journal of the Operational Research Society, 1-195. doi:10.1080/01605682.2023.2253852