During the last several years, there has been substantial and important growth in the application of quantitative analysis, i.e., operations research/management science, statistics, and related arenas, to interdisciplinary problems arising in the area of socio-economic planning and development.
Socio-Economic Planning Sciences is an international journal devoted exclusively to research in this important, but under-represented area. It provides a medium for research that might not appear in more specialized journals, either because of the interdisciplinary or applied character of the study, or the mathematical/quantitative nature of the research. The journal thus serves as a focus for investigations that have hitherto appeared in widely-scattered sources and/or less-than-appropriate sources.
Socio-Economic Planning Sciences strongly encourages contributions dealing with applications of quantitative models and techniques to important decision problems in the service and public sectors. Of particular interest are accounts of such studies carried out in developing countries and economically emerging regions of the world. Review articles in important methodological and substantive areas are also of interest.
The principal criterion used in evaluating a manuscript submitted to the journal is: uniqueness or innovation of the work in terms of the methodology being developed, and/or its application to a problem of particular importance in the public or service sector and/or the setting within which the effort is being made, e.g. an emerging region of the world. That is to say, of the model/methodology itself, the application, and the problem context, at least one of these must be unique and important.
Additional criteria considered in reviewing a submitted paper are its accuracy, the organization/presentation (i.e. logical flow), and writing quality.
Representative of the topic areas included in the journal are the following:
Studies directed toward the more effective utilization of existing resources, e.g. mathematical programming models of health care delivery systems with relevance to more effective program design; systems analysis of fire outbreaks and its relevance to the location of fire stations; statistical analysis of the efficiency of a developing country economy or industry.
Studies relating to the interaction of various segments of society and technology, e.g. the effects of government health policies on the utilization and design of hospital facilities; the relationship between housing density and the demands on public transportation or other service facilities: patterns and implications of urban development and air or water pollution.
Studies devoted to the anticipations of and response to future needs for social, health and other human services, e.g. the relationship between industrial growth and the development of educational resources in affected areas; investigation of future demands for material and child health resources in a developing country; design of effective recycling in an urban setting.

Editor-in-Chief
Vedat Verter
Institute for Health and Social Policy, Dept. of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health, McGill University, 1001 Sherbrooke St W, Montreal, H3A 1G4, Quebec, Canada Email Vedat Verter
Associate Editors
R. Batta
The State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, New York, USA
A. Baveja
Rutgers University, Camden, New Jersey, USA
A. Cotte Poveda
Universidad Santo Tomás, Bogotá, Colombia
M. S. Daskin
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
S. Deo
Indian School of Business, Hyberabad, India
A. Emrouznejad
Aston University, Birmingham, UK
A. Genovese
University of Sheffield, Sheffield, England, UK
M.E. Helander
IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, New York, USA
M.P. Johnson
University of Massachusetts Boston, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
B. Kara
Bilkent University
A.T Murray
University of California at Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California, USA
X. Nie
Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, USA
A. Nikolaev
University at Buffalo, Buffalo, New York, USA
M.A. Rauner
University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
M. Sommersguter-Reichmann
Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz, Graz, Austria
R. Stough
George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, USA
M. S. Tosun
University of Nevada, Reno, Nevada, USA
D. Wang
China University of Political Science and Law, China
P. Wanke
Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
R. Zotti
University of Torino