Wednesday, June 25, 2008

JWS policy on special issues

The Journal of Web Semantics is happy to receive proposals for special issues devoted to a specific topic that is within it's scope. Successful proposals will focus on research or application areas of emerging significance or for which innovative and novel work is being done. The journal is generally not interested in mounting special issues primarily based on papers that have been published in the proceedings of a conference or workshop. A special issue (SI) proposal should include the following information.
  • One or more people who will serve as the special-issue editors and work with the JWS editors in chief and/or an area editor to produce the issue. A short biosketch should be submitted for each. If there are more than one SI editor, please select one to be the lead point of contact.
  • A concise description of the SI topic along with a justification of why a special issue is appropriate at this time.
  • A description of the research communities that the SI will draw from or be of interest to.
  • Any papers or authors that the SI editors intend to invite.
  • Any constraints or preferences for publication date or number of pages for the SI.
The actual publication date and number of pages for accepted proposals will be decided by the editors in chief in consultation with the SI editors and is subject to the constraints imposed by the publisher. All special issues must have an open call for submissions to which member of the research community can respond by submitting papers. The SI editors are free, of course, to invite submissions. The call will be available on the JWS web site but the SI editors will be expected to advertise the call is appropriate venues. All papers, whether invited or submitted, will undergo the same thorough review process used for regular papers submitted to the journal. This normally involves seeking reviews from three qualified reviewers. The SI editors will be responsible for recruiting reviewers and ensuring that their reviews are done in a timely manner and of high quality. The submission and review process must be carried out using Elsevier's Web-based EES system. This includes accepting initial submissions, recruiting and assigning reviewers, entering reviews, issuing decisions, submitting revised version and providing the final version of accepted papers. Final decisions of accepted papers must be approved by an editor in chief.

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

JWS receives high impact factor from Thomson Reuters

During the past year, the Journal of Web Semantics was added to the list of journals indexed by Thomson Reuters. Their most recent Journal Citation Report (2007) gives the JWS an impact factor of 3.41, which is the third highest out of the 92 titles in its category -- Computer Science, Information Systems. Thomson Reuter's journal impact factor is a measure of the frequency with which the average article in a journal has been cited in a particular year. The 2007 impact factor is computed as the citations received in 2007 to all articles published in 2006 and 2005, divided by the number of "source items" published in 2006 and 2005.