From the Editor

Abstract

The very name of JOC suggests that we should be on the cutting edge of technology when it comes to disseminating research, as well as in the content of the work itself. One aspect of this is our growing repository of Online Supplements housed permanently on our website. As I write this, there are some 17 supplements supporting 18 papers, and several more are in development. I invite you to peruse them for a flavor of the kinds of things that we’re able to do in JOC. They include voluminous material for which we don’t have room in the papers themselves, as well as a wide variety of other information in forms not amenable to inclusion in the papers, like downloadable code, data sets, and links to other sites. And as a purely practical budgetary matter, the Online Supplements allow us to shorten some papers, thus making room for more research to appear closer to the completion of the actual work, without impeding access. (It’s hard to imagine any JOC readers at all without ready Internet access.) If you’re an author, you might also think about creative ways to enhance your papers via this medium . . . we’re certainly game to try out new ideas. The Summer 2004 and Fall 2004 issues will focus our attention on the growing and critically important field of biology and on what our community has to offer the exciting prospects there. The Summer 2004 issue will begin with a state-ofthe- art survey on the topic, and the Fall 2004 issue will be a Special Issue devoted entirely to biology. Founding Editor-in-Chief Harvey Greenberg has been the driving force behind both of these efforts. Also in development is a special issue on OR in electrical and computer engineering, guest-edited by John Chinneck. And a special cluster of papers on computation in music will be guest-edited by Elaine Chew. So, running the gamut from electrical engineering to biology to music, we are definitely charting new directions in OR and CS, as our tag line claims. After many years of service as an Associate Editor working primarily in the Telecommunications & Electronic Commerce Area, Rita Vachani has decided to rotate off at this time, and we thank her very much for her fine work for JOC. We welcome Edmund K. Burke of the University of Nottingham as a new Associate Editor, serving primarily in the Heuristic Search and Learning Area, especially on metaheuristics. And we are also happy to have Leyuan Shi of the University of Wisconsin-Madison as a new Associate Editor for our Simulation Area.