International Journal of Production Economics and other journals in the same and other closely-related fields of research have been experiencing numerous cases of plagiarism and double submission. These are very serious offences in scientific publishing. Authors found to have committed such offences will normally be debarred from submitting papers to the journal for up to five years. In addition, the Editors reserve the right of sending a letter to the authority of the offending authors' institutions to alert them to such cases, if they consider it necessary to do so. For the Ethical Guidelines for Journal Publication, please visit http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/intro.cws_home/ethical_guidelines

Please check carefully that your manuscript complies with the Scope of the IJPE.

(1) Articles must be written in good English.
Language Polishing. Authors who require information about language editing and copyediting services pre- and post-submission please visit http://www.elsevier.com/locate/languagepolishing or contact authorsupport@elsevier.com for more information. Please note Elsevier neither endorses nor takes responsibility for any products, goods or services offered by outside vendors through our services or in any advertising. For more information please refer to our Terms & Conditions http://www.elsevier.com/termsandconditions.

(2)Manuscripts
Manuscripts should normally not exceed 15 printed journal pages (around 30 manuscript pages).

(3) Online Submission
All submissions are handled online at http://ees.elsevier.com/ijpe. Once you have logged on as author using your JOURNAL 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 "CHANGE DETAILS" option.

Submission of a paper will be held to imply that it contains original unpublished work and is not being submitted for publication elsewhere. The Editor does not accept responsibility for damage or loss of papers submitted. Upon acceptance of an article, author(s) will be asked to transfer copyright of the article to the publisher. This transfer will ensure the widest possible dissemination of information.

(4) Word processors

Text should be submitted with double-lined spacing and preferably in a 12 point font size. Margins all around should be 2.5 cm or 1 inch.
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. Do not import the figures into the text file but, instead, indicate their approximate locations directly in the electronic text. To avoid unnecessary errors you are strongly advised to use the "spellchecker" function of your word processor.

(5) Article

The first page of the manuscript should contain the following information: (i) the title; (ii) the name(s) and institutional affiliation(s) of the author(s); (iii) an abstract of not more than 100 words. Footnotes on the same sheet should give the name, address, and telephone and fax numbers of the corresponding author [as well as an e-mail address], and email addresses of other authors.

Text: Follow this order when typing manuscripts: Title, Authors and their affiliations, Abstract, Keywords, Main text, Acknowledgements, Appendix, References, Vitae, Figure Captions and then Tables. Do not import the Figures or Tables into your text. The corresponding author should be identified with an asterisk and footnote. All other footnotes (except for table footnotes) should be identified with superscript Arabic numbers. Please avoid other footnotes whenever possible.

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). The Present Authors' affiliation addresses (where the actual work was done) should be written below their names and surnames. 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.

The e-mail address of each Author should be included.

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. A concise abstract of no more than 100 words should briefly 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.

Classification codes and keywords. On the first page provide up to 5 keywords.

Illustrations. Graphics files can be uploaded via http://ees.elsevier.com/ijpe. A guide on electronic artwork is available on http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions. All graphs and diagrams should be referred to as figures, and should be numbered consecutively in the text in Arabic numerals.
Tables should be numbered consecutively in the text in Arabic numerals.

(6) Acknowledgements and information on grants
Please include this information in a section after the main text, before the appendices and references.

(7) Footnotes
Should be kept to a minimum and numbered consecutively throughout the text with superscript Arabic numerals. They should not include displayed formulae or tables.

(8) Displayed formulae
Should be numbered consecutively throughout the manuscript as (1), (2), etc. against the right-hand margin of the page. In cases where the derivation of formulae has been abbreviated, it is of great help to the referees if the full derivation can be presented on a separate sheet (not to be published).

(9) Abbreviations
Because of the international character of the journal, no rigid rules concerning notation or abbreviation need to be observed by the authors but each paper should be self-consistent as to symbols and units which should be properly defined. When using a full stop (period) in an abbreviation, the full stop indicates letters omitted. A full stop should not be used if the abbreviation ends with the same letter as the original word. "Volume" may be abbreviated "Vol.", "section" may be abbreviated "sec.", etc., but "Doctor" should be abbreviated "Dr" without an ending full stop.

(10) Symbols
All mathematical symbols should be typewritten. Greek letters and unusual symbols should be identified in the margin. Distinction should be made between capital and lower case letters; between the letter O and zero; between the letter l, and the number one and prime; between k and kappa. A vector will be printed bold face and to indicate this, the letter should be underscored with a single wavy line. The numbers identifying mathematical expressions should be placed in parentheses after the equation.

(11) References
Please check carefully that reference to relevant recent IJPE articles is made. No reference to the IJPE indicates that this journal might not be the most natural or suitable outlet for your research.

All publications cited in the text should be presented in a list of references following the text at the very end of the manuscript. All references in this list should be mentioned in the text. The references in the text should follow the format Tu and Cheng (1998) or Karp et al. (1999)

References should be in the following style:
1. Tu, C.-C., Cheng, H., 1998. Spectral methods for graph bisection problems. Computers and Operations Research, 25 (7-8), 519-30.

2. Karp, R.M., 1992. Reducibility among combinatorial problems. In: Miller, R.E., Thatcher, J.W., (Eds.). Complexity of computer computations. New York: Plenum Press, 85-103.

3. Magazine, M., 1969. Optimal policies for queuing systems with periodic review. Dissertation, University of Florida, USA.

Note that journal titles should not be abbreviated.

Any manuscript that does not conform to the above instructions may be returned for the necessary revision before publication.

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)

For any further information please contact the Author Support Department at authorsupport@elsevier.com.

Page proofs will be sent to the corresponding author. Proofs should be corrected carefully; the responsibility for detecting errors lies with the author. Corrections should be restricted to instances in which the proof is at variance with the manuscript. No deviations from the version accepted by the Editors are permissible without the prior and explicit approval by the Editors; these 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.