Rapid economic development in Asia-Pacific brings new challenges that will keep fueling OR researches in the region - a trend, which unfortunately, has not been fully appreciated by the western scholars. Globalization has fueled rapid and drastic changes in the economies within the Asia-Pacific region, particularly, those of China and India. It is here where changes have brought about new and more challenging optimization and decision making problems in energy, transportation, telecommunication, financial engineering, urban planning, health care, environmental pollution, natural resource consumption, transnational logistics, to name a few. In general, traditional theories and methodologies of operational research and management science are no longer adequate given the complexity and depth of these problems. Solving these problems requires a good understanding of their underlying background and inherent nature, requiring the development of new theories, methodologies and modeling approaches.
With socio-economic changes enriching OR work in Asia-Pacific, an increase in OR publications in the region is expected. More OR journals are needed to contain these papers that address new and upcoming problems relevant to the region’s new dynamics.
However, compared with North America and Europe, there are currently very few international academic journals on OR in the Asia-Pacific region. The Association of Asia-Pacific Operational Research Societies (APORS) has only one official academic journal, Asia-Pacific Journal of Operational Research. A couple of national OR societies in the region have their own journals, such as Journal of the Operations Research Society of Japan, Australian Society for Operations Research Bulletin, the Philippine Journal of Operations Research, and the newly launched Journal of the Operations Research Society of China.
Apart from quantity, quality is an issue that has to be considered. At the moment, most OR journals in Asia-Pacific region are not of the high standard expected for several reasons. First, most OR journals in Asia- Pacific region are very young, relative to famous international journals in the west. Second, it has been hard for the less known OR journals in Asia-Pacific region to attract submissions from western scholars. Third, researchers from Asia-Pacific region prefer to submit their work to western academic journals rather than to their local journals owing to evaluation systems that favor publications in the more recognized western journals.
With Asia-Pacific becoming an increasingly significant contributor to global economic growth and dynamics, more attention should be paid to the region’s OR problems and OR development. More OR academic journals of better quality are no doubt of strategic importance.
I am very grateful to many western scientists who have been supporting OR journals in Asia-Pacific region. In particular, I would like to take this opportunity to thank those who agreed to serve on the editorial board of the newly launched Journal of the Operations Society of China. As the list is long, I will mention only a few of them, including the former IFORS president, Professor Dominique de Werra; General secretary of International Mathematics Union, Professor Martin Groetschel; and Professor Yinyu Ye of Stanford University, who is an INFORMS John von Neumann Theory Prize winner.
I hope that more and more OR scholars from the west would help the OR journals in Asia-Pacific region. You could show your support in many ways. First, you could submit papers to OR journals from Asia-Pacific region, or encourage your colleagues to do so. Secondly, you could join the editorial boards of these journals. Thirdly, you could recommend our journal to libraries. Your support will be much appreciated.
It is clear that the OR journals from Asia-Pacific region still have a long way to go to catch up with the top OR journals in the world. But I am certain that with the international community lending a helping hand to their colleagues from the Asia-Pacific region, we will get there in time.
Appeared in IFORS News, Vol 7, No. 3 (Sept, 2013).
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