A Letter From the Associate Executive Editor

Abstract

As of the production of its third volume, issue 3, year 2008, the Journal of Computers, Communications & Control (IJCCC) entered a new era. I was pleasantly surprised when in March, 2008, a message arrived from Ioan Dzitac, the Associate Editor-in-Chief of IJCCC, notified me about the inclusion of this new periodical in the prestigious Master Journal List of Thomson Reuters Database. Two months later, more pleasant news came: IJCCC was covered in Science Citation Index Expanded (also known as SciSearch) as its quality figure of merit. This incredible achievement is emphasized by the journal’s age. Started in 2006 as a quarterly peer-reviewed periodical, this almost new-born journal knew an increased interest ever since, due to its increasing quality over this short time period. To ensure high publication quality, all published manuscripts passed through a peer-review process. This process provides authors with valuable critiques of their work by at least three independent experts in the topic field of their manuscripts, helping the editors to assess the scientific and technical merit of the work described.
We are all aware of the Thomson Scientific Journal selection process and how selective this is. Several factors are considered and have to be fulfilled when evaluating journals for coverage, including the publication timeliness, editorial content, international diversity, citation analysis and, finally, the journal’s electronic format. Out of these, the relative weakness of the IJCCC resides in the citation issue measured by its impact factor. However, as IJCC is a new journal, no citation history exists to date. For the future, a special attention shall be paid to this issue as its value is a strong indicator related to the journal’s importance and popularity in its scientific field.