This has been an exciting time for the journal. First, the journal continues to grow. There were over 600 submissions from January 1, 2020 to October 15, 2020, compared to 555 total submissions in 2019 and 413 submissions in 2018. There have been approximately 79,000 downloads of articles so far in 2020, compared to a total of 84,330 in 2019 and 78,551 in 2018. The journal’s Impact Factor rose to 2.15 in 2019, and the acceptance rate for the journal is now under 7%. I thank everyone who has contributed to this success. This includes authors, the editorial board, and the Editors and production team at Springer.

As a result of the growth of the journal and the increasing specialization of submitted papers, the journal is shifting the Editorial Board to a Departmental Structure. There are now six departments: Health Care Analytics, Health Care Management Science Practice, Health Care Operations Management, Health Care Productivity Analysis, Public Health Policy and Medical Decision Making, and Emerging Topics. Descriptions of the editorial objectives for each of these departments are listed under the “Aims and Scope” section of the journal web page. Authors will now be asked to indicate which department they believe is the best fit for their paper. I thank Nilay Tanik Argon, Bob Batt, Ebru Bish, Margrét Bjarnadottir, Julie Higle, Nan Kong, Alec Morton, Jonas Schreyögg, and Vikram Tiwari for offering to serve as the inaugural Departmental Editors for the journal.

Finally, in June 2020, the journal launched a Special Issue entitled “Management Science in the Fight Against COVID-19.” The issue has sought papers in which management science methods were applied to a wide range of issues. There have been more than 100 submissions to the special issue, and publication is scheduled for the March 2021 issue of the journal. I thank all of the guest editors, and in particular lead editors Alec Morton, Ebru Bish, Itamar Megiddo and Weifen Zhuang for organizing this important initiative.