The Journal of the ACM (JACM) provides coverage of the most significant work on principles of computer science, broadly construed. It is published six times per year.

The scope of research we cover encompasses contributions of lasting value to any area of computer science. To be accepted, a paper must be judged to be truly outstanding in its field. JACM is interested in work in core computer science and at the boundaries, both the boundaries of subdisciplines of computer science and the boundaries between computer science and other fields.

Scope

The best indicator of the scope of the journal is provided by the areas covered by its Editorial Board. These areas change from time to time, as the field evolves. The following areas are currently covered by a member of the Editorial Board:

        Algorithms and Combinatorial Optimization
        Algorithms and Data Structures
        Algorithms, Combinatorial Optimization, and Games
        Artificial Intelligence
        Complexity Theory
        Computational Biology
        Computational Geometry
        Computer Graphics and Computer Vision
        Computer-Aided Verification
        Cryptography and Security
        Cyber-Physical, Embedded, and Real-Time Systems
        Database Systems and Theory
        Distributed Computing
        Economics and Computation
        Information Theory
        Logic and Computation
        Logic, Algorithms, and Complexity
        Machine Learning and Computational Learning Theory
        Networking
        Parallel Computing and Architecture
        Programming Languages
        Quantum Computing
        Randomized Algorithms and Probabilistic Analysis of Algorithms
        Scientific Computing and High Performance Computing
        Software Engineering
        Web Algorithms and Data Mining

Research Areas

Computational Biology

Computational Biology has experienced exceptional growth in the past years. Computational Biology is an interdisciplinary field that aims at generating new biological insights from genomic, proteomic and other novel molecular data with current-day and innovative informatics methods. The field has spawned specially targeted journals and results are also being published in journals targeted towards the biological sciences. By inviting submissions from Computational Biology, the Journal of the ACM manifests its commitment to interdisciplinary aspects of informatics.

Computational Biology offers fundamental challenges to the analysis of biological data for instance: New methods of pattern recognition, modeling and simulation have to be developed and applied in order to elicit biologically relevant signals in generally noisy biological data. Approaches to systematic validation of the methods have to be brought forward in the face of incomplete understanding such fundamental concepts to biology as evolution or free energy. Since cost functions in computational biology are inherently inaccurate, confidence estimates are very helpful if computer predictions are to be interpreted. The development of the definition and algorithmic solution of a problem tend to go hand in hand, rather than the algorithm development following the definition of the problem. “Protein function” is a good example for a central term in the field that is developing as the field progresses. Information integration is a central issue since biological signals are often weak and can only be separated from background noise by using many different data sources.

JACM invites Computational Biology papers, especially those that address methodical issues like the ones mentioned above. Submissions should contain a clear and concise description of the biological background and the goal to be achieved, a definition of the problem statement, a presentation of an original contribution to insight into or a solution of the problem, and the description of a validation on artificial and/or biological data. It has to be argued especially if a paper does not contain substantial validation on biological data. Finally, the relevance of the contribution has to be argued in terms of other related work in the literature spanning the fields of computer science, computational biology and biology.

Submissions may be reviewed by computer scientists, computational biologists and biologists.
 
Editors for this area: Pavel Pevzner
 
Economics and Computation

JACM seeks papers that make fundamental advances of broad interest at the interface of economics and computation. Specific topics include but are not limited to: computational social choice; design of auctions, markets, and mechanisms; economics of e-commerce, the Internet and social networks; equilibrium computation; learning in games and markets; prediction markets; and the price of anarchy.
 
Editors for this area: Tim Roughgarden
 
Networking

JACM welcomes papers on the topic of Networking, particularly ones that focus on the fundamentals of networking. Typical papers of interest include ones that (1) unify a class of networking techniques, such as flow control mechanisms, routing mechanisms, multicast protocols; (2) demonstrate how an analytical technique or modeling tool can be applied to a class of networking problems; (3) expose a common principle that has been used to solve several networking problems; or (4) propose unifying theories of networking.
 
Editors for this area: Vishal Misra
 
Programming Languages

JACM seeks papers that contribute to the scientific study of the design, semantics, implementation, and application of programming languages. Specific topics include: (1) compilation, including parsing, type checking, optimization, code generation, and run-time organization; (2) program analysis, including flow analysis, abstract interpretation, and type inference; (3) programming language concepts such as functional programming, object-oriented programming, modularity, data abstraction, concurrency, and parallelism; (4) foundational formalisms such as lambda-calculus, type theory, and process calculus; (5) semantics of programming languages, including axiomatic, operational, and denotational methods; (6) and domain theory and category theory as applied to programming languages.

Papers that may be suitable for submission as either Programming Languages, Software Engineering, or Logic in Computer Science will be handled through close coordination with the area editors. Papers should be submitted to only one area editor.
 
Editors for this area: Greg Morrisett, Philip Wadler, Xavier Leroy
 
Software Engineering

JACM seeks papers that aim to establish a scientific basis for the design and development of large, complex software systems. Papers on all aspects of software engineering are welcome, including those that address: (1) all phases of system development: requirements elicitation, specification, design, prototyping, analysis, testing, debugging, verification, maintenance, and reverse engineering; (2) languages, techniques, and tools used during these phases; (3) and functional and non-functional properties of systems, e.g., correctness, performance, fault-tolerance, reliability, resource usage, safety-critical, security, time-critical, and usability.

Authors should use one or more traditional scientific methods, ranging from proof to experimentation, to demonstrate the soundness of their results. They should also provide evidence that their ideas scale. Submitted papers should be of interest to the entire Computer Science community.

Papers that could be submitted to either Programming Languages or Software Engineering will be handled through close coordination between both area editors. Authors should submit to only one.
 
Editors for this area: Jeannette Wing