As you may know, Computing Reviews relies on the ACM’s Computing Classification Scheme (CCS) to help us classify all of the items we review. Since the computing field changes so quickly, it is necessary to update the CCS structure and terms on a regular basis. The right elements for a much-overdue update of the CCS have been elusive until now, in spite of the best intentions.
Previous updates typically involved gathering an editorial committee for intense work and decision making over the course of a weekend. In order to move this long-delayed project along quickly and to provide the most accurate results, a broader, more comprehensive method must be employed.
ACM has enlisted the services of a third-party firm, which specializes in taxonomy development in a variety of settings. The company will process the ACM full-text database and ancillary resources—including Ralston's Encyclopedia of Computer Science, documentation of the 1998 CCS update decisions, author-generated keywords, and so on—to produce a proposed initial draft of a new CCS scheme. The resulting machine-assisted first cut will be reviewed by experts from ACM SIGs, led by Zvi Kedem (New York University), Editor in Chief of the CCS update.
Mechanisms that will allow the community to review the proposed draft are being studied. I anticipate that CR's editorial team will make contributions at this stage. I hope for a result that will make it easier for authors to apply CCS terms to their works, and better serve the internal workings of CR. The CCS update process is on a very fast track, with the final product due in May 2011. Watch the ACM and Computing Reviews Web sites for more information.
Carol Hutchins
Editor in Chief