From the Interim Editor

Professor Prakash Mirchandani found it necessary to step down as JOC Editor-in-Chief in February 2007, due to a family health issue. During and in the months before his time as EiC, Prakash brought a number of changes and needed initiatives, on which he reported in this column in the Winter 2007 issue. We thank him for his EiC work, not to mention his many years of prior service as JOC Area Editor for Telecommunications and Electronic Commerce. Professor Terry Harrison, INFORMS Vice President for Publications, then asked me to return as EiC on an interim basis, while last year’s search committee reconvenes and recommends a new EiC, and I was happy to do so. I’m grateful for the search committee’s agreement to resume their work; Bob Fourer chairs the committee, and its other members are Bruce Golden, Steve Graves, and Ramesh Sharda. In the meantime, the business of JOC continues uninterrupted, with submissions, reviews, decisions, production, and publication, as usual. Last year as EiC, I requested a substantial page-budget increase to 672 pages, which was granted by the INFORMS Board. Thus, this issue and the one before it this year are substantially thicker, with substantially more papers than has been possible over the past few years. Although we still have a healthy backlog of accepted work (see “Forthcoming Papers” on the JOC website), we’re now in the process of meaningfully reducing that backlog, with the result that the time from acceptance to publication is being shortened noticeably, better serving readers and authors alike. After many years of fine service to JOC, Professor Edward Kao of the University of Houston has decided to step down as Area Editor for Computational Probability and Analysis. Under Edward’s leadership, this important Area has grown and flourished, certainly covering the uncertain aspects of the OR/CS interface. Rather than naming a new Area Editor, I’m supporting that role until a new EiC is chosen. There are several changes among the Associate Editors to report as well. In the Simulation Area, Paul Fishwick (University of Florida), Harriet Black Nembhard (The Pennsylvania State University), and Leyuan Shi (University of Wisconsin) have rotated off after many years of fine service to that community, and James Calvin (New Jersey Institute of Technology) and Bruno Tuffin (IRISA/INRIA) have agreed to come on board. In the Telecommunications and Electronic Commerce Area, Debabrata Dey (University of Washington) has rotated off after long-standing and excellent work for the journal, and Bernard Fortz (Universite Libre de Bruxelles) has agreed to come on. In the Design and Analysis of Algorithms Area, we welcome Christoph Helmberg (Technische Universitat Chemnitz). And in the former High-Performance Computing Area, Betty Hickman (University of Nebraska at Omaha) has rotated off. At this writing, the JOC EiC search committee has made excellent progress, and by the time you read this editorial a new EiC could well have been named. Please check the JOC website for this information.