Wos%ANL-MCS@sri-unix.UUCP (01/12/84)
From: Wos@ANL-MCS (Larry Wos) The Journal of Automated Reasoning will begin publishing in January of 1985. As editor-in-chief, I am officially calling for papers on appropriate topics. The following paragraphs describe the new journal. Please send papers to me. Larry Wos MCSD Argonne National Laboratory 9700 S. Cass Ave. Argonne, Il. 60439 Phone: 312-972-7224 Home 312-493-0767 ARPA: Wos@ANL-MCS Scope and Purpose: This new journal will publish papers focusing on various aspects of automated reasoning, maintaining a balance between theory and application. The theoretical questions, among others, are con- cerned with representation of knowledge, inference rules for drawing conclusions from that knowledge, and strategies for con- trolling the inference rules. The object of automated reasoning is the design and implementation of a computer program that serves as an assistant in solving problems and in answering ques- tions that require reasoning. Under the aegis of automated rea- soning we include, for example, the fields of automated theorem proving, logic programming, program verification and synthesis, expert systems, computational logic, and certain areas of artifi- cial intelligence. As the list of fields suggests, the journal will be interdisciplinary. The journal will publish papers that are quite theoretical and also publish papers that emphasize as- pects of implementation. The developments of the past five years illustrate the value that can accrue to one field by considering problems from another field with apparently unrelated interests. For example, the suc- cessful consideration of open questions in mathematics and in formal logic and the design and validation of logic circuits led directly to, among others, automated reasoning techniques for generating models and counter examples with an automated reasoning program. Evidence is mounting of the power and usefulness of such reasoning programs. In particular, a complex encryption al- gorithm currently in use has been proved correct by a system for program verification. The programming language Prolog and the expert system Mycin are examples of useful systems relying on au- tomated reasoning. The objective of the journal is to provide a forum for those in- terested purely in theory, those interested primarily in imple- mentation, and those interested in specific industrial and com- mercial applications. Thus we shall be equally interested in research papers and in papers discussing some application in which automated reasoning plays a role. We shall promote an ex- change of information between groups not always thought to share a common interest. For example, a paper might be published dis- cussing the prototype of some problem in industry--a problem that would appear to be solvable with some technique from some area of automated reasoning. A second paper might then be published with a solution to that problem, giving the detailed methodology that was employed and including certain implementation aspects. Articles considered for publication must be of the highest quali- ty and focus on some aspect of automated reasoning. All articles will be refereed. We shall encourage the submission of articles that survey a subfield of automated reasoning, that present some open question, and, especially, long articles that discuss theoretical constructs, a program that relies on those con- structs, and evidence of the performance of that program. We can summarize by saying that the journal will be broad in scope.