Submissions

Author Guidelines

Submission of manuscripts
Anonymous manuscripts (accompanied by a cover letter detailing the names and affiliations of authors) may be submitted electronically (as pdf documents typeset in LaTeX or as Microsoft Word documents) via this online submissions system.

Preparation of manuscripts
Authors are requested to conform to the example paper format available in English (ps,pdf) and in Afrikaans (ps,pdf). This format is also supported by the ORiON LaTeX style sheet in English and in Afrikaans, and instructions on how to use this style sheet are also available in English (ps,pdf) and in Afrikaans (ps,pdf). Authors typesetting their manuscripts in Microsoft Word should please follow these instructions carefully.

Author and affiliation details
The names of all authors, their affiliations, postal addresses, e-mail addresses and fax numbers should be included in a cover letter accompanying submissions. These items will be incorporated into the manuscript by the business manager upon acceptance (submissions should not originally include this information, so as to facilitate blind peer review).

Abstracts
Papers should be preceded by an abstract not exceeding approximately 300 words in length. Authors should, where possible, avoid citing references in the abstract.

Key words
A list of suitable key words should be listed directly after the abstract, so as to facilitate searches in electronic databases to which ORiON abstracts are contributed. Authors should consult the list of official ORiON keywords, and preferably only use words in this list. However, use of unofficial key words is permitted in cases where the nature of a manuscript absolutely necessitates this.

Mathematical formulae
All mathematical formulae should form part of sentences (and should hence include punctuation, where necessary, but should not be preceded by colons). Mathematical formulae and expressions should be typeset in text lines where possible, the only exceptions being formulae that are so bulky that they would force increased line spacing if included in the text, or formulae that have to be numbered for further referencing.

Formatting
All Latin abbreviations or phrases, such as e.g., i.e., et al., vice versa, etc. should be typeset in italics. If MS Word is used to prepare a manuscript, the package should be utilised appropriately. For example, all mathematical formulae and expressions should be typed in Microsoft Equation Editor (and not merely as italicised text) and section headings should be typeset as headings (and not as enlarged, bold faced normal text). Both the full stop and comma are acceptable as decimal separators - however, a choice between these separators should be made and applied consistently by authors.

Figures and tables
Figures and Tables should be numbered consecutively, using separate numbering sequences (e.g. Table 1, Table 2, Figure 1, Table 3, Figure 2, . . . rather than Table 1, Table 2, Figure 3, Table 4, Figure 5, . . . ). Tables and figures should be accompanied by detailed captions and should be included in the main body of the text (not on separate pages at the end of the manuscript). Authors need not include separate high quality photographs or electronic copies of figures when submitting manuscripts - these will be requested by the business manager (if necessary) upon acceptance of the manuscript. All figures and tables should be referenced in the text.

Theorems, algorithms and other numbered environments
Theorems, algorithms and other numbered environments should be numbered consecutively, using separate numbering sequences (e.g. Theorem 1, Theorem 2, Algorithm 1, Corollary 1, Algorithm 2, . . . rather than Theorem 1, Theorem 2, Algorithm 3, Corollary 4, Algorithm 5, . . . ). These environments are supported by the official ORiON LaTeX style sheet for authors using LaTeX (see Preparation of Manuscripts above).

Literature citations
Authors have a choice whether to follow the Harvard (author date) standard or the Vancouver (numerical) standard for literature citations. One of these standards should be applied consistently. Footnotes should not be used for citation purposes. All items in the bibliography should be cited in the text.

According to the Harvard standard, literature citations in the text should proceed by listing the relevant author's name and the year of publication (e.g. "An optimal solution exists (Dantzig 1963)." or "According to Dantzig (1963) an optimal solution exists."). Additional information, such as page numbers, chapter numbers, theorem numbers, etc., may be given directly after the date, separated by a comma (e.g. "An optimal solution exists (Dantzig 1963, p. 69)." or "According to Dantzig (1963, p. 69) an optimal solution exists."). For literture citations involving two authors, both authors' names should be listed, separated by an amprasand (e.g. "An optimal solution exists (Dantzig & Wolfson 1967, Theorem 4.2)." or "According to Dantzig & Wolfson (1967, Theorem 4.2) an optimal solution exists."). For literture citations involving more than two authors, only the first author's name should be listed in conjunction with the phrase "et al." (e.g. "An optimal solution exists (Dantzig, et al. 1972, p. 3)." or "According to Dantzig, et al. (1972, p. 3) an optimal solution exists."). In cases of more than one bibliography entry per author per year, small alphabetical characters should be used to distinguish between references (e.g. "An optimal solution exists (Dantzig 1965b)." or "According to Dantzig (1963b) an optimal solution exists.").

According to the Vancouver standard literature citations in the text should proceed by listing the number of the relevant bibliography entry (e.g. “An optimal solution exists [7].” or “According to Dantzig [7] an optimal solution exists.”). Additional information, such as page numbers, chapter numbers, theorem numbers, etc., may be given directly after the citation number, separated by a comma (e.g. “An optimal solution exists [7, p. 69].” or “According to Dantzig [7, p. 69] an optimal solution exists.”). For literature citations involving two authors, both authors’ names may be listed, separated by an amprasand (e.g. “An optimal solution exists [9, Theorem 4.2].” or “According to Dantzig & Wolfson [9, Theorem 4.2] an optimal solution exists.”). For literature citations involving more than two authors, only the first author’s name may be listed in conjunction with the phrase et al. (e.g. “An optimal solution exists [10,§3].” or “According to Dantzig et al. [10, §3] an optimal solution exists.”).

References
Books should be listed in the bibliography by including the surnames and initials (without punctuation) of all authors and/or editors (in small capitals), the date of publication, the title (in italics, using small letters only, the only exceptions being the first word of the title and proper nouns), the edition (if second or higher), the publisher, the city of publication (followed by the official two-letter abbreviation of the state for cities in the United States — no country names should be listed), and the relevant pages cited (if appropriate), such as in the examples below:

[1] Dantzig B, 1963, Linear programming and extensions, 2^nd Edition, Princeton University Press, Princeton (NJ).

[2] Gendreau M, Laporte G & Potvin J-Y, 2002, Metaheuristics for the capacitated vehicle routing problem, pp. 129–149 in Toth P & Vigo D (Eds.), The vehicle routing problem, SIAM, Philadelphia (PA).

Journals should be listed in the bibliography by including the surnames and initials of all authors (in small capitals), the date of the issue, the title of the relevant paper (in italics), the title of the journal (not abbreviated), the volume (and issue/part) number (in bold face), and the pages of the relevant paper, such as in the following example:

[3] Norese MF & Toso F, 2004, Group decision and distributed technical support, International Transactions in Operational Research, 11(4), pp. 395–417.

Online resources should be listed in the bibliography by including the surnames and initials of the web page designer (if known, in small capitals), the date of construction of the web page (if known), the title of the web page (if known, in italics — this is typically found in the title bar at the very top of the web page), an indication that it is an online reference, the date on which the site was accessed, and the URL (in true type or courier fonts), such as in the example below.

[4] Skiena SS, 1997, The algorithm design manual, [Online], [Cited September 9th, 2004], Available from http://www2.toki.or.id/book/algdesignmanual/index.htm.

Theses and dissertations should be listed in the bibliography by including the surnames and initials of the author, the date, the thesis (or dissertation) title, the university where the thesis (or dissertation) was submitted and the city in which the university is situated, such as in the example below [5]. An example of an unpublished technical report [6] is also shown below.

[5] Vumbi AI, 2003, Algorithmic complexity, MSc Thesis, University of Stellenbosch, Stellenbosch.

[6] Hamming R, 1956, On the amount of redundancy required to correct information errors, (Unpublished) Technical Report TR 1956-371, Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill (NJ).

An example of the format in which an unpublished conference paper should be listed in the bibliography is given in [7] below, whilst an example of the bibliography listing format of a paper published in conference proceedings is shown in [8] below.
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[7] Lacomme P, Prins C & Ramdane-Cherif W, 2002, Fast algorithms for general arc routing problems, Paper presented at the 16th Triennial Conference of the International Federation of Operations Research Societies, Edinburgh.

[8] Wilkinson C & Gupta SK, 1969, Allocating promotional effort to competing activities: A dynamic programming approach, Proceedings of the 5th Triennial Conference of the International Federation of Operations Research Societies, Venice, pp. 419–432.

The bibliography should be arranged in alphabetical order, according to first author surnames.

Note that although authors may use either the Harvard standard or the Vancouver standard (consistently) for citation purposes in the text, all references in the bibliography are expected to adhere to the guidelines above — irrespective of which citation standard is utilised by authors. A more comprehensive list of referencing examples are available in ps and pdf.