Wiley

Journal Of Operations Management

(ISSN 1873-1317)

Overview

The mission of Journal of Operations Management (JOM) is to publish original, empirical operations and supply chain management research that demonstrates both academic and practical relevance.

Academic relevance means the research contributes to on-going academic discussions and debates on relevant topics in operations management. All manuscripts published in JOM must, in one way or another, also transcend the immediate empirical context in which the research is embedded. An ideal manuscript is one that simultaneously takes the context seriously (is empirically disciplined) and seeks some sense of generality.

Practical relevance means the manuscript links explicitly to an actual, relevant managerial challenge. While manuscripts published in JOM do not necessarily have to give advice to managers, they must have something non-obvious to say about the practice of operations management. In preparing your manuscript, ask yourself: Do I think I could keep a manager interested in talking about my research for an hour? What would I say, what would I argue?

An ideal manuscript balances rigor with relevance and offers a novel aspect to a topic of contemporary concern. Novelty does not necessarily mean focusing on emerging phenomena, novel approaches to examinations of established phenomena are equally interesting and relevant.

Audience

JOM is first and foremost an academic journal where OM scholars push the boundaries of knowledge by rigorous, original research. Our readership is similarly by and large academic, although we also encourage work that garners the practitioner's attention. We do not, however, publish manuscripts whose primary audience is the practitioner; academic relevance is always a necessary condition.

Aims and Scope

JOM's distinctive emphasis is on the management of operations: manufacturing operations, service operations, supply chain operations, et cetera. The scope encompasses both for-profit and non-profit operations. Whatever the topic and context, operations must be at the heart of the research question, not just in the context. For example, work on charismatic leadership at a manufacturing plant is within the scope only if the research question links clearly to the management of operations (the vast majority of work on charismatic leadership does not); the fact that the empirical context is manufacturing does not constitute a sufficient condition. Papers published in JOM must be about operations management, and they have to link to authentic practical operational questions and challenges. This does not mean all work must be motivated by practical considerations, it means the link to practice must be credible, and something that is considered at the outset of the research endeavor, not merely as an implication. Authors cannot simply assume or declare that knowledge produced strictly for academic purposes can be "translated" or "implemented" to make it practically relevant.

We encourage primarily empirical research that is grounded in relevant operations management problems. Non-empirical work is not categorically excluded, but because demonstrating both academic and practical relevance is difficult in typical conceptual work (e.g., literature reviews, theory development), we invite prospective authors to focus on empirical submissions. We also welcome empirically-grounded analytic models, the guidelines for which can be found here.

We promote no specific methodology or epistemology. We encourage diversity both in terms of theoretical bases and empirical approaches. On methodological matters, the key considerations are rigor and fit: Is the work methodologically transparent? Do the claims plausibly follow from the premises? Is there a fit between the research question and the methodology used? All these questions are agnostic to the kind of methodology used or the epistemological foundation embraced. Finally, while some of JOM's departments may be more suitable to interdisciplinary work, it makes no sense to discourage paradigmatically more focused, unidisciplinary work, if it provides good fit with the research question.

General topics covered by the journal are divided into eleven departments. Click here to read the departmental mission statements.

Abstracting and Indexing

Engineering Information, Inc

Executive Sciences Institute

INSPEC

International Abstracts in Operations Research

Cambridge Scientific Abstracts

SciSearch/Science Citation Index

CompuMath Citation Index

Current Contents/Engineering, Computing & Technology

Information Access Company

Social Sciences Citation Index

Published on behalf of the Association for Supply Chain Management