INFORMS Journal on Computing

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A site for hosting software and data repositories associated with papers appearing in the INFORMS Journal on Computing

View source on GitHub

Instructions for authors

This document details the procedure for managing an IJOC GitHub submission from the perspective of an author.

If you have questions, please email the Associate Editor assigned to manage your GitHub submission.

To follow this guide, you must have already:

You must complete the steps in this guide before you submit the next revision of you paper.

Repository Name

The name of the repository associated with your paper is an eight-digit number of the form XXXX.YYYY. This number is derived from your manuscript ID in manuscript central.

The Manuscript ID has the format like JOC-XXXX-MM-OA-YYYY.RN, where

You will need to use the number XXXX.YYYY in many places.

The URL of your repository will be https://github.com/INFORMSJoC/XXXX.YYYY

Because it is initially private, you must be signed into GitHub using the user name provided to the Associated Editor in order to view and make changes to it.

Permissions and forks

Note that you do not have write access to the INFORMSJoC account. Please create a fork in your personal account and then push to that.

To create a fork, go to the website https://github.com/INFORMSJoC/XXXX.YYYY and click the “Fork” button in the upper right part of the screen.

Choose your personal user name, and click “Create fork”.

The next step depends on whether you are comfortable using git.

If you know how to use git

First, clone the repo, making sure to clone your fork instead of the INFORMSJoC account.

git clone https://github.com/YOUR_USER_NAME/XXXX.YYYY

git checkout -b initial-submission

Now, make your local changes. See the next section for instructions on what the repository must and should contain.

Once you have everything complete, create a new commit and push it to GitHub:

git add .
git commit -m "Initial code for paper"
git push -u origin initial-submission

Then, go to https://github.com/INFORMSJoC/XXXX.YYYY and follow the pop-up instructions to open a new pull request.

If you are asked to make changes in the GitHub review, make them locally, then do:

git add .
git commit -m "Changes in response to review"
git push

Your PR will update automatically.

If you do not know how to use git

If you do not know how to use git, you can upload files to GitHub using their web interface.

First, create a local folder on your machine, and add the code and data following the instructions in the next section.

When complete, go to https://github.com/INFORMSJoC/XXXX.YYYY and click the “Add file” button in the upper right, then click “Upload files”.

Drag and drop your local folder into the staging area, make the title “Initial code for paper”, and follow the instructions to open a pull request.

Repository layout

This section describes the structure of the code repository that you should prepare for submission.

Use the template repository https://github.com/INFORMSJoC/2019.0000, or look at other repositories in https://github.com/INFORMSJoC.

There are three files in the root of the template repository that you must include:

The remainder of the code repository is up to you. We suggest that you organize the code into the following subdirectories:

You may wish to have an additional README.md in any of the subdirectories to provide additional information.

Things to check

Ensure that all files contain proper copyright and licensing statements and that the copyright holders have been notified of the submission. The copyright holder may or may not be you, depending on your employment contract and who funded the work.

Review process

As part of the review process, additional changes may be requested. Respond to the Associate Editor by replying to the emails you receive from GitHub, or by commenting on the Pull Request.

Note that you can edit the files in an existing pull request; you do not need to create a new pull request to respond to a review.

Archive and DOI

Once accepted by the editor, a snapshot of the contents of the repo will be archived by creating a tag (known as a release on Github) with the name vXXXX.YYYY, where the repo’s name is XXXX.YYYY. This paper and the snapshot of the repo will be given their own separate DOIs, also derived from the manuscript number.

If the repo is named XXXX.YYYY, then the DOI for the paper will be

https://doi.org/10.1287/ijoc.XXXX.YYYY

and the DOI for the code repository will be

https://doi.org/10.1287/ijoc.XXXX.YYYY.cd

Citing the repo in your paper

Once your code has been merged, a release tagged, and the repository made public, the Associate Editor will send you an email asking you to submit a new revision of the paper that cites the code repo.

The repo must be cited in your paper, as a regular reference, and appear in the list of references as follows (if using BibTex). Notice that you must use both the doi and the note lines to make this reference appear correctly.

@misc{AuthorYear,
  author =     {Put the authors' names here},
  publisher =  {INFORMS Journal on Computing},
  title =      {The title of your paper},
  year =       {The current year},
  doi =        {10.1287/ijoc.XXXX.YYYY.cd},
  note =       {Available for download at https://github.com/INFORMSJoC/XXXX.YYYY},
}

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