PROMETHEE Days

Pune, December, 2024

The Outranking & Decision (O&D) journal is built upon five essential keywords:

 

1. Outranking
2. Open
3. Top
4. Ethics
5. You

 

Paper submission and additional information are available at:

 

https://www.outrankinganddecision.com

 

 

1. A Journal for the Outranking Community

 

Multicriteria Decision Aid (MCDA) is crucial to quantitative management if we want to achieve a sustainable development and future for our World. MCDA, and especially the outranking approach, make it possible to bring back ethics at the center of decision making processes and to achieve more sustainable decisions. Our World and Earth definitely need it!

 

It is important to develop communication channels that the scientific community can use to spread MCDA developments and usage.

 

O&D is available to complement other journals and to promote the outranking approach to MCDA.

 

O&D welcomes all contributions related to outranking and decision, including (and not limited to):

 

• Theoretical developments of outranking methods.
• Applications of outranking methods.
• Comparative or critical studies.

 

2. An Open Journal

 

As we are approaching the third decade of the XXIst Century, our world is constantly changing, with many positive evolutions and some negative ones. This is also true for scientific publishing.

 

On the negative side:

 

• Publishing papers has become a major evaluation criterion for researchers and the notion of “Impact Factor” has become central to the evaluation of the quality of publications. “Impact Factor” measurement is a proprietary (and commercial) venture: first introduced by ISI, then purchased by Thomson Reuters, and currently owned by Onex Corporation and Baring Private Equity Asia through their Clarivate company. Lots of money, few science, no ethics. Fortunately, the scientific community is starting to react and to reconsider the way to evaluate the quality of published papers.
• Publishing papers is expensive. Given the race (or rage?) to publish, many journals are now asking authors to pay for paper submission and/or publication. Journal subscription is also quite expensive for individuals as well as for institutions.

 

On the positive side:

 

• We can now access on-line editions of most journals, either from our office, our home office, our conference hotel room or, soon, our airplane seat.
• We don’t need printed copies anymore. And when we absolutely need it (for instance for writing annotations), it is easier for us to use our own printer than to go to the library.
• The development of IT has made it possible to manage the complete publication cycle (from paper submission to actual publication) without the need for a commercial publisher.

 

O&D is an Open Journal with online publication only (no printed version). It relies on the free PKP software for Open Journal Systems (Public Knowledge Project - https://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs/).

 

This means that all O&D content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. This is in accordance with the BOAI definition of open access.

 

O&D is a non-profit project managed by scientists for scientists and it is completely independent of any commercial publishing company. Paper submission and paper publication are free. Paper access is free as well: no paid subscription is required to have access to O&D issues and content. Donation is welcome to help us cover the unavoidable expenses linked to the management of a journal. These involve hosting of the journal web site, certification, software licenses, ... We are trying to keep these expenses as low as possible and they are currently covered exclusively by personal money. In any case, all members of the Editorial Board are contributing to the success of O&D on a voluntary and non-paid-for basis.

 

3. A Top-Class Editorial Board

 

The O&D Editorial Board currently counts 23 distinguished members from 17 countries across 5 continents,

including three prominent Associate Editors:

 

• Professor Jean-Pierre Brans (Belgium)
  • Jean-Pierre is the father of the PROMETHEE methods and has been an essential actor for the worldwide development of operational research and outranking methods for the last 45 years.
• Professor Jason Papathanasiou (Greece)
  • Jason is our youngest Associate Editor. He is very active promoting outranking methods and he also represents Greece (ELECTRE, ORESTE and PROMETHEE… outranking has been strongly influenced by Greece, and Greece has been and still is greatly contributing to the success of outranking methods as well).
• Professor Jean-Philippe Waaub (Canada)
  • Jean-Philippe has been advocating the use of multicriteria outranking methods in the field of environmental decision and evaluation problems for over 30 years, in North America, in Africa and in Europe.

 

The members of the O&D Editorial Board are representative of the worldwide interest for outranking methods:

 

• In Africa:
  • Professor Mohamed Ayman Boujelben (Tunisia)
  • Professor Lamiaa Khazaz (Morocco)
• In America:
  • Professor Adiel de Almeida (Brazil)
  • Professor Jean-David Caprace (Brazil)
  • Professor Helder Gomes Costa (Brazil)
  • Professor Adel Guitouni (Canada)
  • Professor Juan Sepulveda (Chile)
  • Professor Johanna Trujillo (Columbia)
  • Professor Jean-Philippe Waaub (Associate Editor, Canada)
• In Asia:
  • Professor Tolga Genc (Turkey)
  • Doctor Maher Hushaysh (Palestine)
  • Professor Mandeep Kaur (India)
  • Professor Hsu-Shih Shih (Taiwan)
• In Europe:
  • Professor Jean-Pierre Brans (Associate Editor, Belgium)
  • Professor Boris Delibasic (Serbia)
  • Professor Gabriela Fernandez Barberis (Spain)
  • Professor Alessio Ishizaka (France)
  • Professor Pierre Kunsch (Belgium)
  • Professor Bertrand Mareschal (Editor-in-Chief, Belgium)
  • Professor Ivan Marovic (Croatia)
  • Professor Marko Mladineo (Croatia)
  • Professor Jason Papathanasiou (Associate Editor, Greece)
• In Oceania:
  • Professor Godwin Ayoko (Australia)

 

4. An Ethical Journal

 

Watch the news on TV, read the newspapers, browse the Web, … Most news reports show an increasing lack of ethics in our World:

 

• Corruption appears everywhere: as well in political circles as in commercial companies.
• Fake news are everywhere (especially on the Web).
• Personal interest takes the lead over social issues.
• There is an increasing gap between (very) rich and (mostly) poor people.
• Can’t you see the wall in front of us?

 

As scientists, we have to react, to adhere to and to promote strict ethical rules in our work. We are responsible for the future of our World and the education of the next generations. Our individual contribution can be small but together we can make a positive and effective impact. We have to!

 

All members of the O&D Editorial Board pledge to adopt ethical and scientific behavior in all their O&D duties (reviewing, editing, publishing, ...).

 

All papers published in O&D are peer-reviewed by at least two referees adhering to the ethical and scientific values highlighted by the journal.

 

5. Your Journal – Our Future

 

O&D is accessible freely to all interested persons, for paper submission or for reading or downloading published papers, through the following website:

 

https://www.outrankinganddecision.com

 

Help us to make scientific publishing great again!

Help us to bring back ethics at the core of our research!

 

Contribute to O&D:

 

• Submit your papers to O&D. We need seeds to develop our new, modern, free and ethical way to publish.
• Volunteer to join the O&D Editorial Board. We need people to make it possible.
• Read O&D and reference it in your own publications. We need audience to make it useful and recognized, and to get the journal properly and reasonably indexed.

 

 

Bertrand Mareschal

Editor-in-Chief

editor@outrankinganddecision.com