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A New Journal Devoted to Surveys in TCS

10 September 2004

Madhu Sudan is the editor in chief of Foundations and Trends in Theoretical Computer Science (FnT-TCS) is a new journal which is expected to start publication some time in 2005. The novel idea underlying this journal is that it intends to publish surveys of general interest to the theoretical computer science community. This is a great idea, as good survey papers can disseminate the results of the TCS community effectively to a broad audience, and can help newcomers enter our field.

A brief look at the editorial board for that journal, however, reveals two things:

1. the editorial board is stellar, and
2. what is meant by Theoretical Computer Science seems to be just what is covered by volume A of the Handbook of Theoretical Computer Science (edited by J. van Leeuwen, Albert R. Meyer, M. Nivat, Matthew Paterson and D. Perrin).

Neither of these two observations surprises me that much. The second reminded me of a pre-dinner drink in Iceland, when Magnus Halldórsson told a few of the people Anna Ingólfsdóttir, he and I were discussing with that they were in the presence of one of the great divides in TCS, viz. that between volume A and volume B of the Handbook of Theoretical Computer Science! (Mark Jerrum refers to this as the divide between TCS and Eurotheory.)

I believe that this divide is pernicious, and hope that the new journal will also publish surveys pertaining on Eurotheory topics.