New Editor-in-Chief of The Computer Journal

From 1 January 2021, I became Editor-in-Chief of The Computer Journal for a five-year term, taking over from Professor Steve Furber. Published by Oxford University Press, and founded in 1958, The Computer Journal is one of the longest-established journals serving all branches of the academic computer science community; it is an official journal of BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT.

A number of major breakthroughs in computer science were first reported in The Computer Journal, including the Quicksort algorithm proposed by Tony Hoare in 1962. The Wilkes Award (named after Maurice Wilkes) is also presented annually to the authors of the best paper published in the volume of The Computer Journal from the previous year. It has been the central journal in the BCS publishing portfolio for a number of years, providing a venue for diverse theoretical and applied computer science research across a number of areas, as articulated by its four sections:

• Section A: Computer Science Theory, Methods and Tools (Section Editor: Professor Iain Stewart, Durham University, UK)
• Section B: Computer and Communications Networks and Systems (Section Editor: Professor Alan Marshall, University of Liverpool, UK)
• Section C: Computational Intelligence, Machine Learning and Data Analytics (Section Editor: Professor Fionn Murtagh, University of Derby and Goldsmiths University of London, UK)
• Section D: Security in Computer Systems and Networks (Section Editor: Professor Chris Mitchell, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK)

The Computer Journal mainly publishes original research articles, but other submission types may be considered if their contribution can be justified; the journal also considers special issue proposals. There is one volume per year, twelve issues per volume; the number of manuscript submissions is c.1000 per year.

We have seen significant changes to scholarly communication and the dissemination of academic research across disciplines in recent years; this is alongside the wider push to open access (and indeed: open data, open software, and thus open research). We have also seen the rise of computational and data-driven research, with computer scientists working at the interface of disciplines, solving interdisciplinary problems and publishing the outputs of their work in new venues and across domains. This presents a significant opportunity for The Computer Journal to build upon its impressive history and legacy to position itself as an internationally attractive venue for publishing high-quality computer science research. I thus look forward to working with the Section Editors and the Editorial Board — as well as the wider international computer science research community — to shape and evolve the journal over the coming years.