1. Submit papers for publication to the appropriate area editor or, if they fall outside the areas, to the editor,
* preferably by e-mail,
* or otherwise in triplicate by ordinary mail.
See the inside front cover for our areas, e-mail and postal addresses. Submission of a paper will be held to imply that it contains original unpublished work and that it is not being submitted for publication elsewhere. All papers submitted will be reviewed by the board of editors.

2. Language and length. Papers must be in English and not exceed 6 journal pages in total. A full text page of ORL without blank space, formulae etc. contains about 1250 words. Titles and subtitles should be short.

3. The first page of the manuscript should contain the following information: (a) title; (b) names and institutional affiliations of authors; (c) an abstract of at most 80 words; (d) at most six keywords; (e) a footnote giving the name, e-mail address and postal address of the corresponding author. The e-mail address is needed to send the proofs, the postal address to send the offprints.

4. Footnotes in the body of the text are not allowed. Incorporate subsidiary material in the text.

5. Formulas that are referred to should be numbered consecutively throughout the manuscript as (1), (2), etc. on the right. Display only important formulas.

6. Figures, including graphs and diagrams, should be numbered consecutively in arabic numbers. Put each figure on a separate page. Make sure that lettering and symbols are of a comparable size. For detailed instructions on the preparation of electronic artwork, please go to www.elsevier.com/locate/operes.

7. Tables should be numbered consecutively in arabic numbers. Put each table on a separate page.

8. References. Cite only the most relevant references and list only those cited in the text. Indicate citations in the text by bracketed numbers, e.g., [2]. At the end of the paper list references alphabetically by the surname of the first author and number them consecutively. For articles, give authors, title, journal, volume, year, and pages. For books, give authors, title, publisher, and year. For example:
[1] M.M. Flood. The traveling-salesman problem, Operations Research 4 (1956) 61-75.
[2] A. Schrijver, Linear and Integer Programming, Wiley, 1986.

9. Acknowledgements, including support information, should be given in a separate section just before the references.

10. Accepted papers are to be sent by the author to the editor, and by him to the publisher, in the form of a source file in LaTeX, TeX or Word, as well as a PDF file. The source file will be used for typesetting, the other file serves as a backup. The authors of an accepted paper will be asked to transfer its copyright to the publisher, which will ensure the widest possible dissemination of information.

11. Page proofs will be e-mailed as a PDF file to the corresponding author. Correct proofs carefully, and restrict corrections to points at which the proof is at variance with the manuscript. Deviations from the version accepted by the editor are only possible with the prior and explicit approval of the editor; such alterations will be charged. The corresponding author, at no cost, will be provided with a PDF file of the article via e-mail. 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.

12. Other enquiries. Please go to www.elsevier.com/trackarticle for the facility to track accepted articles and set up e-mail alerts to inform you of when an article's status has changed. This Link also provides detailed artwork guidelines, copyright information, frequently asked questions and more.
Contact details for questions arising after acceptance of an article, especially those relating to proofs, are provided when an article is accepted for publication.

13. Book reviews. We publish short and long book reviews. A short review is typically devoted to a single book and is no longer than one page. A long review discusses several related books or a development in the field, and may run to 6 pages. Books for review are to be sent to the book review editor.