1 Introduction

In an increasing volatile global environment, businesses and public entities face complex challenges, arising from issues like economic crises, climate change, disruptions in the supply chains, energy security, and geopolitical risks. This environment creates deep uncertainties and requires the consideration of multiple factors in any decision-making context.

Analytical tools for decision-making as now well-established and widely used in various areas in management and engineering. They originate from fields like statistics, operations research, and artificial intelligence. These fields have evolved rapidly over the past decades, assisted by the advances in computational systems. While, for the most part, these areas have developed independently, the area of analytics has recently emerged based on the idea of integrating different computational technologies to support complex decision-making tasks.

The analytics paradigm has data at its core. The vast amounts of data now available create huge opportunities as well as challenges for improving the decision-making process. However, in contrast to other data-driven fields like statistics, data analysis, and machine learning, analytics is not simply focused on discovering interesting data patterns in a descriptive context. The scope of analytics is to employ data-driven procedures for transforming data into information that can be used for decision making purposes in a prescriptive framework. In that regard, traditional decision analysis and aiding tools and are integrated with data-driven technologies, thus leading to integrated systems designed to provide guidance in addressing complex problems in the business environment.

In this context, Discover Analytics aims at becoming a leading research journal in this field, serving a wide range of researchers working on different areas, such as management science, operations research, artificial intelligence, and other related fields. Discover Analytics in an open access multidisciplinary journal that is committed to publish high-level research through a rapid review and publication process.

Discover Analytics provides a platform for novel experimental and theoretical findings in all fields of business, including production, marketing, human resources, finance, innovation, and behavioral sciences. The journal welcomes papers describing innovative research that adds to the understanding of analytical theory on new or existing methodologies, or report on the application of analytical techniques for the discovery, interpretation, and communication of meaningful patterns of data across multidisciplinary areas.

1.1 Topics

Papers suitable for Discover Analytics will cover advances in the theory, methodology and practice of analytical techniques to a wide range of fields and applications. Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

  • Artificial intelligence and business intelligence

  • Decision analytics, decision aiding, and decision support systems

  • Financial decision-making

  • Marketing analytics

  • Operations research

  • Policy analytics

  • Risk analytics

  • Statistical methodologies for analytical techniques

  • Supply chain analytics

  • Organizational, ethical, and social implications of analytics.

The journal particularly welcomes submissions that describe applications of analytics to sustainable development, including the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals of economic growth, reduced inequalities, and sustainable cities.

1.2 Invitation to contribute

Discover Analytics welcomes full-length research articles as well as brief communications of empirical findings, reviews, perspectives, comments, case studies, registered reports, and data notes from across the full range of disciplines concerned with analytics research. The journal also publishes guest-edited topical collections of relevance to analytics research, management science/operations research, and related fields.