The authorship and country spread of Operation Research journals

This paper surveys 56 internationally renowned OR journals published in 1996-2005 with regard to authorship. Our findings show that the USA was the country that contributed the largest amount, approximately one-third, of research results to OR journals. Authors tend to publish papers in their home-country journals. Journal of the Operations Research Society of Japan has the highest author concentration, with more than 85% of the authors from Japan and European Journal of Operational Research, on the contrary, has the widest country spread of its authors. The entropy measure provides a whole picture of the share of all countries, based on which the editorial policy of a journal can be adjusted.