Preparation of a Manuscript

General Considerations

• Research manuscripts should normally comprise:
  • Front matter: Title, Author List, Affiliations, Abstract, and Keywords.
  • Main manuscript sections appropriate to the nature of the research, such as Introduction, Literature Review or Theoretical Background where appropriate, Methodology/Mathematical Model/Proposed Method, Results or Computational Experiments, Discussion, and Conclusions.
  • Back matter, where applicable: Supplementary Materials, Data Availability Statement, Funding, Acknowledgments, Author Contributions, Conflicts of Interest, and References.
• Review manuscripts should comprise the appropriate front matter, a clearly structured and critical review of the relevant literature, conclusions and implications, and the applicable back matter. Authors should use the journal template when preparing review manuscripts.
• Abbreviations should be defined at their first occurrence in the abstract and again at their first occurrence in the main text. Abbreviations appearing independently in figures or tables should be defined in the corresponding caption, legend, or note where necessary for clarity.
• SI Units (International System of Units) should be used wherever applicable. Imperial, US customary, and other units should be converted to SI units whenever appropriate.
• Equations: Equations must be provided in an editable format and should not be inserted as images. Authors preparing manuscripts in Microsoft Word should use the built-in Equation Editor or another compatible equation-editing tool. Mathematical symbols, variables, vectors, matrices, operators, and equation numbering should be presented consistently throughout the manuscript.
• Research Data and Supplementary Materials: Authors should make the data, materials, algorithms, computational resources, and other research outputs necessary to support and verify the principal findings available whenever legally, ethically, and practically possible. Any restrictions on access should be clearly disclosed and justified in the manuscript through an appropriate Data Availability Statement.

Front Matter

These elements should be included, where applicable, in manuscripts submitted to the journal.

• Title: The title should be concise, informative, specific, and relevant to the content of the manuscript. Avoid unnecessary abbreviations. Where the established abbreviated name of a decision-making, optimization, or analytical method is widely recognized in the relevant literature, it may be used where this improves clarity and conciseness.
• Author List and Affiliations: The full first and last names of all authors must be provided. Middle-name initials may be included. Affiliations should contain sufficient institutional information to identify each author’s organization, city, postal code where applicable, and country. At least one author must be designated as the corresponding author, and a valid e-mail address must be provided. The author list must comply with the journal’s authorship and publication ethics policies.
• Abstract: The abstract should normally not exceed 200 words and should be presented as a single paragraph without headings. It should briefly describe the research context and objective, the methodology or analytical approach, the principal results, and the main conclusions and implications. The abstract must accurately represent the content of the manuscript, must not contain results that are not presented and supported in the main text, and should not exaggerate the significance of the findings.
• Keywords: Authors should provide three to ten relevant keywords following the abstract. Keywords should accurately represent the main concepts, methods, applications, or research domain addressed in the manuscript and should facilitate indexing and discoverability.

Research Manuscript Sections

The organization of the main text may vary according to the nature of the research. Authors are not required to use identical section titles for theoretical, methodological, computational, empirical, and application-oriented studies. However, manuscripts should have a clear and logically coherent structure that allows readers to understand the research problem, methodological contribution, results, and implications.

• Introduction: The Introduction should clearly define the research problem and explain its relevance. The current state of knowledge should be summarized with appropriate references to relevant literature. Authors should clearly identify the research gap, motivation, and contribution of the study. Research objectives, research questions, or hypotheses should be stated where applicable. The Introduction should conclude with a clear statement of the purpose and principal contributions of the work.
• Literature Review or Theoretical Background: Where appropriate, authors should provide a critical and focused review of the literature relevant to the research problem. The review should identify the theoretical or methodological context of the study, establish the research gap, and explain how the proposed work advances existing knowledge. A separate Literature Review section is recommended when the volume or complexity of the relevant literature cannot be adequately addressed within the Introduction.
• Methodology, Mathematical Model, or Proposed Method: The methodology should be described with sufficient detail to allow readers to understand, evaluate, and, where possible, reproduce the research. Mathematical assumptions, notation, definitions, models, algorithms, procedures, and computational settings should be stated clearly. New methods and algorithms should be described in sufficient detail, while established methods may be summarized and appropriately cited. Authors should identify the name and version of relevant software used and indicate the availability of computational code where applicable.
• Results, Numerical Analysis, or Computational Experiments: Results should be presented clearly, accurately, and systematically. Depending on the nature of the study, this section may contain theoretical results, numerical experiments, simulations, optimization results, comparative analyses, sensitivity analyses, robustness tests, empirical findings, case studies, or other appropriate forms of validation. Authors should provide sufficient information to support the conclusions drawn from the results.
• Discussion: Authors should interpret the results in relation to the research objectives and relevant previous studies. The theoretical, methodological, managerial, operational, or practical implications of the findings should be discussed where appropriate. Authors should clearly identify the principal limitations of the study and may discuss relevant directions for future research. The Discussion may be combined with the Results section where this provides a clearer presentation.
• Conclusions: The Conclusions should summarize the principal findings and contributions of the study without unnecessarily repeating the abstract or results. The section should explain the significance and implications of the findings and may identify limitations and directions for future research. A separate Conclusions section is strongly recommended for research manuscripts.

Back Matter

• Supplementary Materials: Authors should identify any supplementary files associated with the manuscript. Supplementary figures, tables, datasets, algorithms, appendices, or other materials should be clearly labeled and referred to in the main manuscript where appropriate.
• Data Availability Statement: Authors should provide a statement describing the availability of data and other research materials supporting the findings. Where data are deposited in a repository, the repository name and persistent identifier or link should be provided. Where data cannot be publicly shared because of legal, ethical, confidentiality, contractual, commercial, or other legitimate restrictions, this should be clearly stated.
• Funding: All sources of financial support for the research and/or publication of the article must be disclosed. Grant numbers and funding organizations should be provided where applicable. If no external funding was received, authors may state: “This research received no external funding.”
• Acknowledgments: Authors may acknowledge individuals, institutions, organizations, technical assistance, or other contributions that supported the research but do not meet the criteria for authorship. Funding information should normally be reported separately in the Funding statement.
• Author Contributions: The contribution of each author should be stated transparently. Authors are encouraged to use the CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) terminology where appropriate. Authorship must be limited to individuals who have made substantive contributions to the work and who have approved the submitted manuscript.
• Conflicts of Interest: Authors must disclose any financial or non-financial relationships, activities, or interests that could influence, or could reasonably be perceived to influence, the work. If no relevant conflicts exist, authors should state: “The authors declare no conflicts of interest.”
• References: References must be numbered in the order in which they first appear in the text, including citations appearing in figure captions and table notes where applicable. Each reference should be listed individually at the end of the manuscript. Authors should include the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) whenever one is available.

References

Citations in the Text

Authors must ensure that every reference cited in the manuscript appears in the reference list and that every item in the reference list is cited in the manuscript. References should normally not be included in the abstract. Where citation in the abstract is essential, sufficient bibliographic information must be provided in accordance with the journal’s reference style.

Unpublished results and personal communications should normally be cited only in the text rather than included in the reference list. A work described as “in press” must have been formally accepted for publication.

Web References

Web sources should be included in the main reference list. At minimum, the author or responsible organization, title of the page or document, full URL, and date of access should be provided where applicable. Additional bibliographic information, including publication or update dates, should be included when available.

Data References

Authors are encouraged to cite datasets that support or are directly relevant to the research. Dataset references should be included in the reference list and should contain, where available, the author or creator, dataset title, repository, version, year, and a persistent identifier such as a DOI.

Numerical Citation Style

References are cited using numbers enclosed in square brackets, for example [1] or [26]. Reference numbers are assigned according to the order of first appearance in the manuscript.

• Reference numbers should be enclosed in square brackets.
• Citations should normally appear before the relevant punctuation where consistent with the journal template.
• Once a source has been assigned a reference number, the same number must be used for all subsequent citations to that source.
• Multiple references should be separated by commas, for example [1, 3, 5].
• A continuous range of references may be indicated using a dash, for example [1–5].

Examples of In-Text Citations

“The proposed framework extends previous approaches [13].”
“The model was originally introduced in [1].”
“Several recent studies [3, 4, 15, 16] have investigated this problem.”
“Related formulations can be found in [7].”

It is not necessary to state the authors’ names or publication year when citing a source unless this information is relevant to the narrative. When referring directly to a numbered source, a formulation such as “In [26]” is sufficient.

Reference List

References should be numbered according to their first appearance in the manuscript and should contain sufficient bibliographic information to identify the cited source. Authors should follow the formatting used in the journal template. DOI identifiers should be included whenever available.

Reference to a Journal Article:

[1] Van der Geer, J., Hanraads, J. A. J., & Lupton, R. A. (2010). The art of writing a scientific article. Journal of Scientific Communications, 163, 51–59.

Reference to a Book:

[2] Strunk, W., Jr., & White, E. B. (2000). The Elements of Style (4th ed.). Longman.

Reference to a Chapter in an Edited Book:

[3] Mettam, G. R., & Adams, L. B. (2009). How to prepare an electronic version of your article. In B. S. Jones & R. Z. Smith (Eds.), Introduction to the Electronic Age (pp. 281–304). E-Publishing Inc.

Reference to a Website:

[4] Organization or Author. Title of webpage or document. Available at: https://example.org/ (accessed Day Month Year).

Reference to a Dataset:

[5] Oguro, M., Imahiro, S., Saito, S., & Nakashizuka, T. (2015). Mortality data for Japanese oak wilt disease and surrounding forest compositions. Mendeley Data, Version 1. https://doi.org/10.17632/xwj98nb39r.1.

Journal Names

Journal titles should be presented consistently throughout the reference list and in accordance with the formatting requirements specified in the journal template.

Preparing Figures, Schemes, and Tables

• Figures and schemes must be of sufficient quality and resolution for scholarly publication. Raster images should normally have a resolution of at least 300 dpi at the intended publication size. Vector formats are recommended for line drawings, diagrams, mathematical graphics, and other materials where appropriate. Common file formats such as TIFF, JPEG, PNG, EPS, and PDF may be used where supported by the submission system.
• Figures and tables should be inserted in the main manuscript close to their first citation whenever possible. They should be numbered consecutively according to their order of appearance, for example Figure 1, Figure 2, Table 1, and Table 2. Schemes or other visual elements, where used, should follow a consistent numbering convention.
• Every figure, scheme, and table must have a concise and informative title or caption. All symbols, abbreviations, and notation necessary to understand the material should be defined in the caption, legend, or accompanying note where appropriate.
• Table columns must have clear and informative headings. Tables should be created as editable tables rather than inserted as images. Authors using Microsoft Word should use the built-in table functionality.
• Figures may be prepared in color. Authors should ensure that figures remain interpretable when viewed electronically and, where relevant, by readers with color-vision deficiencies.
• Where separate high-resolution figure files are requested during submission or production, authors should upload them using the appropriate file categories provided by the journal’s submission system.

Supplementary Materials, Research Data, and Software Source Code

Data Availability

Spectrum of Operational Research supports research transparency and reproducibility. Authors should make the data and research materials necessary to support the principal findings openly available whenever legally, ethically, contractually, and practically possible. Appropriate recognized repositories should be used where available.

Where data cannot be made publicly available because of confidentiality, privacy, commercial sensitivity, contractual restrictions, third-party ownership, security considerations, or other legitimate reasons, authors must explain the restriction in the Data Availability Statement and, where appropriate, describe the conditions under which access may be granted.

Computer Code and Software

For research in which novel computer code, algorithms, scripts, or software are central to the reported results, authors are encouraged to make the relevant code available through a recognized public repository or as supplementary material whenever legally and practically possible. The name and version of software used for the analysis should be clearly reported. Where code essential to reproducing the principal results cannot be shared, the reason should be stated where appropriate.

Supplementary Material

Additional datasets, figures, tables, mathematical derivations, algorithms, computational results, appendices, code, and other supporting files may be submitted as supplementary material. Supplementary files should use common, accessible, and preferably non-proprietary formats wherever possible. Supplementary material may be made available to reviewers as part of the peer-review process.

References in Supplementary Files

References cited exclusively in supplementary material may be included in a separate reference list within the supplementary file. References that are also cited in the main manuscript should use bibliographic information consistent with the main reference list.