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  2009 Computing Reviews Editorial
January 1, 2009

Change—the rhetoric of it, as well as the factual evidence of it—is all around. Change can come in small increments or in gigantic leaps from one plateau to the next.

Those latter sorts are particularly challenging: going from one regime, with its familiar parameters, to one that is fundamentally different. The pace of change is very significant to most of us; we prefer to exercise whatever control we can over how quickly things change. At Computing Reviews, we absolutely rely upon a stable workflow to handle the regular influx of publication metadata, new reviewer contributions, and periodic changes among our staff of category editors.

Our larger purpose could be thought of as trying to help readers grapple with change, if by that we mean the new ideas and technical developments as expressed in the computing literature. One long-anticipated change related to our operation concerns the launch of an update process for the Computing Classification System (CCS), which is basic to the framework of our operation. We look forward to influencing this effort, which will be led by Bernard Rous (ACM) and Gul Agha (University of Illinois Computer Science Department).

Under the rubric “change,” we should also mention the broader picture of scientific communication. Many currents of discussion revolve around aspects of peer review, open access in all its manifestations, and metrics for research. Add to that all of the possibilities wrought by the Web, only a few of which are “user-generated content” and Web 2.0. How do we fit there? From one perspective, Computing Reviews is post-publication commentary on material that has undergone some level of peer review. On the other hand, are reviewers “users” in the same sense as taken by Web 2.0 enthusiasts? According to some students of new media, Computing Reviews would not likely be a vehicle for user-generated content, since we have no place to accept and display general reader comments.

This could be a development direction for us, or maybe not. What do you think? Let us know at editorial@reviews.com.

 

Carol Hutchins

Editor in Chief

 
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