OR/MS Today - June 1998 - INFORMS Online

June 1998

INFORMS Online:
Making OR/MS Famous

By Michael Trick

A perennial discussion among researchers and practitioners in OR/MS is how we can make the field better known? While most of us are convinced of the usefulness and interest in OR/MS, the vast majority of people outside the field have no idea what we do or why we do it. INFORMS Executive Director Randy Robinson referred to us as an "invisible profession" in a letter to USA TODAY, in reference to a long article on operations research that managed to avoid the phrase or a reference to INFORMS. Trying to describe what I do to strangers invariably elicits an, "Oh, so you're into computers, are you?" which only partially gets the point.

I think the Web has a role in making our field better known. As I say in these columns, the number of people who access INFORMS Online (http://www.informs.org) is an order of magnitude higher than the total number of INFORMS members. We have worked hard to make certain IOL is indexed in major search engines, and the content we have often results in the visitation from those with almost no knowledge of OR/MS. We see this as a great opportunity to educate people about our field. Here are a few of the highlights:

1. The Online Press Box. Barry List, INFORMS' director of Public Relations, has begun putting his press releases online (http://www.informs.org/Press). Every week or so, Barry writes a description of a journal article or conference presentation with the goal being to make the results appealing to a general audience. These articles provide insight into the breadth of work that goes on in the OR/MS field and are an ideal place to point outsiders to get a hint of who we are.

2. OR/MS Today Online (http://lionhrtpub.com/ORMS. shtml). These pages, produced by the editors and publishers of OR/MS Today, have recently been redesigned to make them even more appealing. About half the articles in each issue and many of the columns (including this one) are put online on or before the date of the printed magazine. These articles are designed to be accessible to the general public, and provide an in-depth description of important OR/MS work.

3. The Student Union (http://www.informs.org/student_ union). The editors of the Student Union provide guides to financial aid, career information, skill enhancement, professional development and more. While designed for students (and others) in the OR/MS field, the breadth and coverage of the Union make it a good place for students who need more information on OR/MS.

4. Members Home Pages (http://www.informs.org/Dir/weblist.html). Of course, it is INFORMS members that do OR/MS. The best picture of who we are and what we do is from those members. All members with web pages are listed on this page, and the lists make fascinating browsing. If you have a web page that is not listed, updating the information is no more than a quick "Change of Address" form away.

5. Videos and High School Math Modules. Frank Trippi and his Public Awareness Committee have put together two (soon to be three) videos on what OR/MS is and how it is used. The first two are aimed at middle school students (http://www.informs.org/FUTURE) and high school students (http://www.informs.org/Edu/oryou.html), with an upcoming video aimed at a broad audience. His group also supported Ken Chelst and Tom Edwards at Wayne State University in their creation of modules aimed at high school math teachers and their students (http://www.informs.org/Edu/Modules), which provide an interesting mix of information and activities.

6. Prizes (http://www.informs.org/Prizes). Prize winners, of course, represent the best that INFORMS and OR/MS offers. The prize page at IOL now contains detailed information on the prizes and past winners. There are details on many of the Lanchester Prize winners (the Lanchester Prize is for the best contribution to operations research and the management sciences published in English) and pointers to Practice Online's searchable index of Edelman abstracts.

As you can see, IOL and the other online activities of INFORMS contain a lot of easily accessible information suitable for those with limited knowledge of OR/MS.

There is no doubt we can do more. One page on the drafting board is a guide to OR/MS aimed at those who do not know the field, highlighting INFORMS and other pages directly useful to them (Mathematics of Operations Research is my favorite journal, but is probably not the first place to send people!). I certainly welcome your suggestions: What information and services should we provide to those who do not know our field? Feel free to write me at trick@cmu.edu for comments on this or any other aspect of INFORMS Online.

New at IOL

There is a new educational programs home page (http://www.informs.org/Edu/edu.html) that allows the easy addition and update of program information.

The online program for INFORMS Israel is available (http://www.informs.org/Conf/TelAviv98)

After a delay caused by a change in technology, online tables of contents for journals are back, and now include full abstracts (http://www.informs.org/Pubs/Pubshome.html).

Michael Trick of the Graduate School of Industrial Administration, Carnegie Mellon University, is the editor of INFORMS Online.

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