From msom-skills
Guides shaping and stress-testing a research question for M&SOM journal fit, including identifying the operations decision, choosing analytical vs. empirical lane, and matching to an editorial department.
How this skill is triggered — by the user, by Claude, or both
Slash command
/msom-skills:msom-topic-selectionThe summary Claude sees in its skill listing — used to decide when to auto-load this skill
- You have a problem idea but are unsure it belongs in M&SOM versus a general OR or strategy venue
M&SOM's defining screen is that an operations decision or problem is central to the contribution, not a backdrop. The journal covers the design, procurement, production, delivery, and recovery of goods and services. A strong analytics, pricing, marketing, or finance paper that merely uses an operational setting is routinely desk-screened. Before anything else, write one sentence: "The operational decision is ___, the tradeoff is ___, and the operational lever is ___." If you cannot, the topic is not yet M&SOM-ready.
M&SOM publishes both analytical/stochastic modeling (optimization, queueing, stochastic models, game theory, revenue management) and empirical OM / data-driven analytics. Pick the lane that the decision demands:
Map the question to one of the six departments — Manufacturing & Supply Chain Operations; Services, Platforms & Revenue Management; Environment, Health & Society; Operational Innovation; Analytics in OM; or the Practice Platform. A field-driven or practice-based study may target the Practice Platform; a thought-leadership perspective is an OM Forum piece (an identifying banner), not a standard research article. Your topic should clearly belong to one department, because the manuscript's fate hinges on that match.
Run this as a concrete capability pass. First lock the process bottleneck, decision policy, queue/inventory/service mechanism, and implementation constraint; then test whether the manuscript addresses operations reviewers who look for service/manufacturing process insight, implementable policies, and operational performance evidence.
claim / evidence / blocker / next edit rows so the next pass can patch the manuscript directly.resources/official-source-map.md for volatile rules and name the one unresolved fact that could change the recommendation.Vignette: a team has scanner data and wants to study whether a loyalty program raises sales — as stated, a marketing question that would be desk-screened. Reshaped it becomes fit: does the program change the store's replenishment decision by making demand more forecastable, and what is the optimal safety-stock adjustment? Now the lever (safety stock) and the tradeoff (holding cost vs. stockout) are central. The same reshaping rescues "does advertising raise demand?" (→ how does demand shaping change the inventory decision?) and "we apply deep learning to logistics data" (→ which staffing decision does it improve?).
【Operations decision】lever / tradeoff ...
【Lane】analytical / empirical — why ...
【Department】primary + second choice ...
【So-what】managerial implication ...
【Verdict】M&SOM-fit: yes / reshape / wrong venue
【Next step】msom-theory-development
npx claudepluginhub brycewang-stanford/awesome-journal-skills --plugin msom-skillsGuides the screening and routing of operations management research questions for JOM, testing operational fit, empirical mandate, theory contribution, and relevance, then assigning to one of 12 departments.
Helps shape and stress-test research questions for Management Science (INFORMS) by confirming decision-relevance, selecting the correct Department, and checking fit against sister journals to avoid desk rejection.
Determines whether an operations-management project fits Production and Operations Management (POM), which department to route it to, or whether another venue is better.