About the OR Society

Founded over 50 years ago in succession to the Operational Research Club which was set up in 1948, The OR Society is the world's oldest-established learned society catering to the Operational Research (O.R.) profession, and one of the largest in the world, with 2500 members in 53 countries (see How the world of O.R. societies began).

The Society's principal activities are:

• Fostering higher standards in O.R. by providing the world's most extensive training programme in O.R.
• Enabling members of the profession to keep up to date by publishing journals of international repute to disseminate the latest developments in O.R., and by organising national, international and specialist conferences in the subject.
• Enabling members to find the information they need in their work by making available to members in searchable form the International Abstracts in OR, which catalogues papers from every reputable O.R. journal world wide. The Society also maintains a library which is housed at Brunel University.
• Enabling members to share their work through the Document Repository, which enables conference presentations, case studies, lecture notes and many other types of document to be quickly uploaded to the web. Sharing of work, knowledge and expertise is further fostered by the Society's special interest groups and regional societies, which organise regular meetings open to all.
• Demonstrating to the wider community the benefits, in terms of greater efficiency, improved service or otherwise, that O.R. can bring to society.
• Sponsoring educational activities such as summer schools for researchers and research projects on, for example, investigating the potential contribution of O.R. to environmental planning, the use of O.R. by community groups such as housing associations, and the factors making for successful O.R.
• Preserving, developing and managing the historical record of the subject by establishing and supporting the world's only official O.R. archive and sponsoring the world's first official history of O.R.
• Supporting conferences, the aims of which are to further knowledge in, or about, O.R.

The OR Society Equality Statement:

The Society aims to be non-discriminatory amongst its members, staff and customers, and in performing all its roles and activities, with particular reference to age, disability, ethnicity, gender, religious belief, and sexual orientation.