When SIAM Journal on Optimization (SIOPT) began publication in 1991, it addressed a large and growing area of applied mathematics. The roots of optimization can be traced to fundamental questions of differential calculus, and interest in optimization has evolved rapidly in the past 40 to 50 years. Problems in engineering, economic planning, and nonlinear analysis, to name a few, have been addressed by techniques of optimization. This increase in applications has ensured a strong author base and keen interest among readers and researchers.

Today SIOPT contains research articles that address linear and quadratic programming, convex programming, nonlinear programming, complementarity problems, stochastic optimization, combinatorial optimization, integer programming, as well as convex, nonsmooth, and variational analysis. Through rigorous peer review, the editors work to ensure that articles contain substantially new results and relate them to the extant literature in a scholarly fashion. SIOPT articles are designed to be of interest to a large part of the optimization community.

The many exciting developments in the field in the last few years include new paradigms for integer and nonlinear programming. SIOPT was at the forefront of the advances in semidefinite programming, which is now a major tool in integer programming. SIOPT published one of the first papers in filter methods for nonlinear programming, a new idea that could revolutionize the field. SIOPT also took the lead in publishing papers about sampling methods that do not require derivatives. These three classes of methods have already found important applications in industry, science, and engineering, applications that can be expected to grow in the future.