ORiON
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Submission of manuscripts
Anonymous papers (accompanied by a cover e-mail detailing the names and affiliations of authors) may be submitted electronically (preferably as postscript or pdf documents typeset in LATEX) to the Editor-in-Chief via ORiON’s online submission system at http://www.orssa.org.za/ojs — the only other file format that will be accepted is MS Word documents.

Preparation of manuscripts
Authors are requested to conform to the example paper format available in postscript and pdf formats on the ORSSA webpage http://www.orssa.org.za → ORiON → Submissions → Example of Paper Format. This format is also supported by the ORiON LATEX style sheet (which may be downloaded from http://www.orssa.org.za → ORiON → Submissions → Style Sheets).
Instructions on how to use these style sheets are available in postscript and pdf formats at
http://www.orssa.org.za → ORiON → Submissions → Instructions for Style Sheets.

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 or e-mail accompanying submissions. These items will be incorporated into the manuscript by the journal manager upon acceptance (submissions should not originally include this information, so as to facilitate blind peer review).

Abstracts and key words
Papers submitted in English should be preceded by an abstract not exceeding 400 words. However, all papers not in English should be accompanied by an extended and detailed abstract in English of about 1 000 words in length, in addition to a brief abstract in the language of submission (not exceeding 400 words). In all cases 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.

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, it 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 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 journal 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 — further information on how to utilise these environments in LATEX may be found at http://www.orssa.org.za → ORiON → Submissions → Instructions for Style Sheets.

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 literature citations involving two authors, both authors’ names should be listed, separated by an ampersand (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, §3).” or “According to Dantzig et al. (1972, §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 ampersand (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.”).

A more comprehensive list of citation examples (using both standards) may be found at http://www.orssa.org.za → ORiON → Submissions → Example of Paper Format; click on the link Examples of Reference Citations and Bibliography Listings.

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, 2nd 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 example below:
[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.
[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. A more comprehensive list of referencing examples may be found at http://www.orssa.org.za → ORiON → Submissions → Example of Paper Format by clicking on the link Examples of Reference Citations and Bibliography Listings.

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Review process
All papers are subjected to blind and anonymous peer review (i.e., in addition to the standard practice that authors are not aware of the identities of referees who evaluate their manuscripts, referees are also not aware of the identities of authors of the manuscripts evaluated by them). A minimum of two referees are appointed to review each paper. Reports by the referees are made available to authors for the sake of transparancy and to enable them to improve their manuscripts. A turn–around time of 12 weeks from submission is the goal for first readings of manuscripts submitted in English and 8 weeks for each subsequent iteration (if required). However, for manuscripts submitted in any of the other ten official languages of South Africa, a turn–around time of 24 weeks from submission is the goal for first readings of manuscripts and 16 weeks for each subsequent iteration (if required).