Purpose and Scope
John R. Rice · ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software · 1975
The primary purpose of the ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software (TOMS) is to expand the opportunities to publish important results concerning mathematical software and significant computer programs.There is no intention to compete with existing journals (including ACM's own journal) which publish theoretical results in numerical analysis and mathematical computing.The publication of algorithms in TOMS replaces the algorithms department of Communications of the ACM, and ACM's looseleaf service "Collected Algorithms from ACM" (formerly "from CACM") (CALGO) will have the same relationship to TOMS that it has had with that algorithms department.From the top-down view of science, TOMS is partially on the top, abstract level and partially on the second, more concrete level.The top level, for example, is represented by fundamental research papers on the analysis and critical evaluation of computer programs; the second level is represented by practically oriented, concrete research and development in traditional areas like linear algebra, polynomial manipulation, and nonlinear programming.There has been very little outlet for such work and TOMS is to provide it.The definition of the scope of a new journal is a critical, point.Unfortunately, there is little consensus on just what "mathematical software" means: some clearly mathematical problems (e.g.sorting, searching, program proofs) are currently considered to be in the province of other specialities of computer science; some areas (e.g. program dissemination and maintenance) included in the scope of TOMS are clearly not mathematical.We may consider the scope from two viewpoints, one vertical and one horizontal.In either case there is to be heavy emphasis on practical and applications oriented work.A key requirement for papers in TOMS is that they support significant areas of computer application.The vertical definition of the scope of TOMS involves seven levels of abstraction and applicability: