SISC Redefined

Abstract

This issue of SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing marks the beginning of a new era for the journal. During the past decade, the area of scientific computing has continued to evolve and now broadly spans three major areas: the invention and analysis of new core algorithms remain of key importance, but much current research in the field targets challenging scientific or engineering applications, and substantial work goes into advanced software development and exploration of new architectures for large-scale computing. To properly reflect this ongoing development of the field, the journal is now arranged into three distinct sections to reflect these developments. All three aspects are occasionally involved in today's research projects on advancing computational methods. It is therefore a natural step for SISC to expand its scope and adapt to properly and accurately reflect changes in the scientific community. The typical classical SISC paper is now found in the section Methods and Algorithms for Scientific Computing. These papers deal with algorithmic development for scientific or engineering problems of wide interest. The editorial policy states that “papers in this category may include theoretical analysis, provided that the relevance to applications in science and engineering is demonstrated. They should contain meaningful computational results and theoretical results or strong heuristics supporting the performance of new algorithms." Accepted papers typically introduce a new algorithm with a performance that is demonstrated to be superior to that of the current state-of-the-art algorithms for the type of problems being addressed. The new SISC section Computational Methods in Science and Engineering deals with building numerical strategies for exploring challenging scientific or engineering problems through computer simulations. Using the computer as a virtual laboratory in this way is often referred to as computational science and engineering (CSE). Successful papers in this section do not necessarily develop new fundamental algorithms but may offer novelty in the way well-known algorithmic building blocks and computational tools are combined to address a new problem or to explore a previously solved problem in new and superior ways. To quote the editorial policy: “Papers in this section will typically describe novel methodologies for solving a specific problem in computational science or engineering. They should contain enough information about the application to orient other computational scientists but should omit details of interest mainly to the applications specialist." The new section on Software and High-Performance Computing (S/HPC) contains papers in which the novelty and innovation occur in the way software is designed and implemented or emerging computing architectures are explored. Significant portions of research budgets in scientific computing projects are spent on these issues, and many projects on scientific discovery through computer models are strongly dependent on innovation in software development, parallel algorithms, and hardware utilization. This section in SISC aims to facilitate the exchange of new ideas and tools and thereby to help raise scientific standards. The editorial policy states: "Papers in this category should concern the development of high-quality computational software, high-performance computing issues, novel architectures, data analysis, or visualization. The primary focus should be on computational methods that have potentially large impact for an important class of scientific or engineering problems." Authors are asked at submission to choose a SISC section for their manuscript. However, the editors reserve the right to reassign the manuscript to the section they find most appropriate. The editorial structure of SISC has likewise changed to reflect this new structure, and section editors, one for each of the three new sections, have been appointed to help the editor-in-chief implement this new structure. The new sections in SISC will change neither the purpose nor the quality of the journal. The purpose remains that of advancing computational methods for solving scientific and engineering problems, and the section descriptions above aim to make it clear that SISC papers must address problems and techniques of wide importance, and present new and superior computational approaches. The quality of SISC is widely acknowledged in the scientific community and also reflected in various bibliographic metrics. SISC dates back to 1980, when the journal was born as SIAM Journal on Scientific and Statistical Computing. Its name was changed to SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing in 1993. The new section model and the new editorial policy mark yet another important milestone in the journal's history and ensure that SISC will continue to position itself as a leading outlet for research in a rapidly changing and very exciting field.