Forty years of the European Journal of Operational Research: A bibliometric overview

•We present a general overview of the journal over its lifetime by using bibliometric indicators.•The data come from the Web of Science Core Collection database.•We identify key contributing countries, institutions, authors, as well as trends in research topics.•The analysis involves a graphical visualization of similarities by the VOS software.•EJOR emerges as one of the leading journals in the area of operational research and management science.

The European Journal of Operational Research (EJOR) published its first issue in 1977. This paper presents a general overview of the journal over its lifetime by using bibliometric indicators. We discuss its performance compared to other journals in the field and identify key contributing countries/institutions/authors as well as trends in research topics based on the Web of Science Core Collection database. The results indicate that EJOR is one of the leading journals in the area of operational research (OR) and management science (MS), with a wide range of authors from institutions and countries from all over the world publishing in it. Graphical visualization of similarities (VOS) provides further insights into how EJOR links to other journals and how it links researchers across the globe.