European Journal of Operational Research and other journals in this research area have been experiencing numerous cases of plagiarism and double submissions. These are very serious offences against the scientific publishing. Authors who follow that practice will normally be debarred from submitting to the journal for up to five years. In addition, the Editors keep the possibility of sending a letter to the offending author's university to inform university principals about the case, if they consider it is necessary. For the Ethical Guidelines for Journal Publication please visit http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/intro.cws_home/ethical_guidelines

Online submission
Submissions are handled online at http://ees.elsevier.com/ejor Once you have logged on as an author using your username and password you will be guided through the creation and uploading of your files. The system automatically converts source files to a single Adobe Acrobat PDF version of the article, which is used in the peer-review process. Please note that even though manuscript source files are converted to PDF at submission for the review process, these source files are needed for further processing after acceptance. All correspondence, including notification of the Editor's decision and requests for revision, takes place by e-mail and via the Author's homepage only. Therefore users need to keep their contact coordinates on the registration page up-to-date with the "UPDATE MY INFORMATION" option.

Legal and Copyright
Submission of an article implies that the work described has not been published previously (except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture or academic thesis), that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, that its publication is approved by all Authors and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was carried out, and that, if accepted, it will not be published elsewhere in the same form, in English or in any other language, without the written consent of the Publisher.

Upon acceptance of an article, Authors will be asked to transfer copyright. See http://authors.elsevier.com/copyright for more information.

If excerpts from other copyrighted works are included, the Author(s) must obtain written permission from the copyright owners and credit the source(s) in the article. Elsevier has forms for use by Authors in these cases: contact Elsevier's Rights Department, Oxford, UK: phone (+44) 1865 843830, fax (+44) 1865 853333, e-mail permissions@elsevier.com. Requests may also be completed on-line via http://www.elsevier.com/locate/permissions

Editorial policy
The European Journal of Operational Research (EJOR) publishes high quality, original papers that contribute to the methodology of operational research (OR) and to the practice of decision making. The relation with ongoing research should be demonstrated by providing proper reference to the recent OR literature. With application papers, originality should be demonstrated by applying OR to a problem with interesting new aspects or by providing fresh insights leading to successful implementation. Practitioners often suffer from the need to conceal commercial secrets. Referees will take this into sympathetic consideration when advising on an application paper, but it will not be allowed to detract from clarity of the presentation.

EJOR is much more selective than in the past due to the growing inflow of submissions and limited volume. Papers that do not contain a major new research finding or novel approach to the application of OR will be rejected and not sent out for review. The same applies to papers written in poor English. As acceptance to EJOR is competitive, a paper may also be rejected because in the opinion of the editor it does not make a sufficient scientific contribution - even if some of the reviewers support publication.

EJOR welcomes the following types of papers:

• Invited Reviews, explaining to the general OR audience the developments in an OR topic over the recent years
• Innovative Applications of OR, describing novel ways to solve real problems
• Theory and Methodology Papers, presenting original research results contributing to the methodology of OR and to its theoretical foundations,
• Short Communications, including comments on papers previously published in EJOR

An Invited Review may be either on a specific research topic, a tutorial, or a bibliographic survey. Anyone interested in writing a review is requested first to suggest a topic to one of the editors or to a member of the editorial board of EJOR. A paper presenting an Innovative Application of OR may be worthy of publication simply because it can be used to convince managers of the value to be gained by applying OR to particular problems.

The Theory and Methodology Papers will be classified into one of the seven headings:

• Continuous Optimization
• Discrete Optimization
• Production, Manufacturing and Logistics
• Stochastics and Statistics
• Decision Support
• Computational Intelligence and Information Management
• Interfaces with Other Disciplines

The above classification will be based on the EJOR keywords (see the list at the end of the Guide).

All submitted papers that conform to the editorial policy will be refereed. However, the manuscripts that do not will be rejected without refereeing.

The corresponding author, at no cost, will be provided with a PDF file of the article via e-mail or, alternatively, 25 free paper offprints. The PDF file is a watermarked version of the published article and includes a cover sheet with the journal cover image and a disclaimer outlining the terms and conditions of use.

Word processors
Save the file in the native format of the word processor used. The text should be in single-column format. Keep the layout of the text as simple as possible. Most formatting codes will be removed and replaced on processing the article. In particular, do not use the word processor's options to justify text or to hyphenate words. However, do use bold face, italics, subscripts, superscripts etc. Do not embed "graphically designed" equations or tables, but prepare these using the word processor's facility. When preparing tables, if you are using a table grid, use only one grid for each individual table and not a grid for each row. If no grid is used, use tabs, not spaces, to align columns. Preferably embed all figures and tables into the text file and upload as one complete file. If the size of the complete file is too large to be uploaded then uplod figures and tables separately (see under Illustrations). To avoid unnecessary errors you are strongly advised to use the "spellchecker" function of your word processor.

Article
Language. Articles must be written in good English

Length. Articles should be as concise as possible. Regular articles should not exceed 25 standard manuscript pages and short communications should not exceed 10 standard manuscript pages, including tables and figures. A standard manuscript page is A4 or letter size, text with 1.5 line spacing, 12 pt font and ample margins. In exceptional cases the Editors may waive this requirement. Supplementary material is allowed, which will be available in e-version only.

Supplementary material. The authors of accepted papers can be allowed to have some supplementary material, such as large data tables, appendices, or long proofs of theorems, published online alongside the electronic version of the paper in Elsevier web products, including ScienceDirect: http://www.sciencedirect.com. These materials would not appear in the printed version.The supplementary material should be included in any reviewed version of the submission. In order to ensure that submitted material is directly usable, the data should be provided in one of the recommended file formats. Authors should submit the material in electronic format together with the article and supply a concise and descriptive caption for each file via EES. The main body of the paper should reference the supplementary material.

Title. Concise and informative. Avoid abbreviations and formulae.

Author names and affiliations. Where the family name may be ambiguous (e.g., a double name), please indicate this clearly using appropriate script (capital cases as first letter of authors' first and surnames followed by lower cases). Present the Authors' affiliation addresses (where the actual work was done) below the names. Indicate all affiliations with a lower-case superscript letter immediately after the Author's name and in front of the appropriate address. Provide the full postal address of each affiliation, including the country name, and, if available, the e-mail address of each Author.

Corresponding Author. Clearly indicate who is willing to handle correspondence at all stages of refereeing and publication, also post-publication. Ensure that telephone and fax numbers (with country and area code) are provided in addition to the e-mail address and the complete postal address.

Abstract. An abstract of between 50 and 250 words should state the purpose of the research and the main results. An abstract is often presented separate from the article, so it must be able to stand alone. Abstracts should not contain formulae.

Keywords. Must be included and at least the first one should be selected from the list below. Some keywords from outside the list may be added but the total number of keywords should not exceed five. The letters before the keywords are those of the surnames of the three editors. The paper is submitted to the editor whose initial is given before the first keyword selected from the list.

Illustrations. Graphics files can be uploaded via http://ees.elsevier.com/ejor A guide on electronic artwork is available on http://authors.elsevier.com/artwork

References
All citations in the text should refer to:
- Single Author: the Author's name (without initials, unless there is ambiguity) and the year of publication;
- Two Authors: both Authors' names and the year of publication;
- Three or more Authors: first Author's name followed by "et al." and the year of publication.
Examples: "as demonstrated in (Allan, 1996a, 1996b, 1999; Allan and Jones, 1995). Lee et al. (2000) have recently shown"

In the references list references should be arranged first alphabetically and then further sorted chronologically if necessary. More than one reference from the same Author(s) in the same year must be identified by the letters "a", "b", "c", etc., placed after the year of publication. Examples:

Reference to a journal publication:
-Griffiths W, Judge G. Testing and estimating location vectors when the error covariance matrix is unknown. Journal of Econometrics 1992;54; 121-138 (note that journal names are not to be abbreviated).

Reference to a book:
-Hawawini G, Swary I. Mergers and acquisitions in the U.S. banking industry: Evidence from the capital markets. North-Holland: Amsterdam; 1990.

Reference to a chapter in an edited book:
-Brunner K, Melzer AH 1990. Money Supply. In: Friedman BM, Hahn FH (Eds), Handbook of monetary economics, vol.1. North-Holland: Amsterdam; 1990. p. 357-396.

Citing and listing of Web references. As a minimum, the full URL should be given. Any further information, if known (Author names, dates, reference to a source publication, etc.), should also be given. Web references can be listed separately (e.g., after the reference list) under a different heading if desired, or can be included in the reference list.

Submission checklist
" One Author designated as corresponding Author:
" E-mail address
" Full postal address
" Telephone and fax numbers
" All necessary files have been uploaded
" Keywords
" All figure captions
" All tables (including title, description, footnotes)
" Manuscript has been "spellchecked"
" References are in the correct format for this journal
" All references mentioned in the Reference list are cited in the text, and vice versa
" Permission has been obtained for use of copyrighted material from other sources (including the Web)

List of keywords*

" (A) Applied probability
" (A) Artificial intelligence
" (S) Assignment
" (D) Auctions/bidding
" (S) Branch and bound
" (P) Business process reengineering
" (S) Combinatorial optimization
" (S) Complexity theory
" (A) Computing science
" (B) Conic programming
" (B) Constraints satisfaction
" (A) Control
" (B) Convex programming
" (P) Cost benefit analysis
" (S) Cutting
" (D) Data envelopment analysis
" (A) Data mining
" (A) Decision support systems
" (D) Decision analysis
" (P) Distributed decision making
" (B) Distribution
" (A) Dynamic programming
" (D) E-commerce
" (P) Economics
" (D) Education
" (D) Environment
" (S) Evolutionary computations
" (S) Expert systems
" (B) Facilities planning and design
" (P) Finance
" (P) Flexible manufacturing systems
" (A) Forecasting
" (B) Fractional programming
" (S) Fuzzy sets
" (A) Game theory
" (P) Gaming
" (S) Genetic algorithms
" (B) Geometric programming
" (B) Global optimization
" (B) Goal programming
" (A) Graph theory
" (S) Group decisions and negotiations
" (S) Heuristics
" (D) Human resources
" (B) Integer programming
" (B) Interior point methods
" (B) Inventory
" (P) Investment analysis
" (S) Knowledge-based systems
" (B) Large scale optimization
" (A) Linear programming
" (A) Location
" (P) Logistics
" (A) Maintenance
" (P) Manufacturing
" (D) Marketing
" (A) Markov processes
" (S) Metaheuristics
" (P) Modelling systems and languages
" (S) Multi-agent systems
" (S) Multiple criteria analysis
" (B) Multiple objective programming
" (A) Multivariate statistics
" (A) Network flows
" (A) Neural networks
" (B) Nonlinear programming
" (P) Organization theory
" (A) OR in agriculture
" (A) OR in airlines
" (P) OR in banking
" (A) OR in biology
" (A) OR in developing countries
" (A) OR in energy
" (D) OR in government
" (B) OR in health services
" (P) OR in manpower planning
" (B) OR in medicine
" (B) OR in military
" (D) OR in natural resources
" (D) OR in research and development
" (D) OR in societal problem analysis
" (D) OR in strategic planning
" (A) OR in telecommunications
" (S) Packing
" (S) Parallel computing
" (B) Parametric programming
" (B) Penalty methods
" (S) Petri nets
" (S) Polyhedra
" (P) Pricing
" (D) Problem structuring
" (P) Production
" (D) Productivity and competitiveness
" (P) Project management
" (S) Project scheduling
" (D) Psychology
" (P) Purchasing
" (B) Quadratic programming
" (A) Quality control
" (P) Quality management
" (A) Queueing
" (A) Regression
" (A) Reliability
" (A) Replacement
" (P) Retailing
" (D) Revenue management
" (P) Risk analysis
" (P) Risk management
" (A) Robustness and sensitivity analysis
" (S) Rough sets
" (B) Routing
" (P) Scenarios
" (S) Scheduling
" (S) Search theory
" (B) Semi-infinite programming
" (S) Simulated annealing
" (A) Simulation
" (A) Stochastic processes
" (A) Stochastic programming
" (D) Supply chain management
" (P) Systems dynamics
" (S) Tabu search
" (A) Time series
" (S) Timetabling
" (B) Traffic
" (B) Transportation
" (B) Travelling salesman
" (P) Uncertainty modelling
" (P) Utility theory
" (P) Visual interactive modelling
*Codes of Editors: (A) - Jesus Artalejo, (B) - Jean-Charles Billaut, (D) - Robert Dyson, (P) - Lorenzo Peccati, (S) - Roman Slowinski