About Frontiers of Computer Science

Frontiers of Computer Science

Frontiers of Computer Science (FCS) is an international English-language academic journal launched in February 2007, co-administered by Higher Education Press and Beihang University in Beijing as part of the Ministry of Education-supported Frontiers series of Chinese journals. It publishes peer-reviewed research papers and review articles across computer science — architecture, software, artificial intelligence, theoretical computer science, networks and communication, information systems, image and graphics, and information security — with particular encouragement of emerging and multidisciplinary work. The journal has been indexed in the Science Citation Index Expanded and in Ei, carries the print ISSN 2095-2228 and electronic ISSN 2095-2236, and in 2013 started a Young Associate Editor project to serve younger scholars in China and abroad.

FCS belongs to a distinctive Chinese publishing programme. The Frontiers series, supported by the Ministry of Education and published by Higher Education Press, was created to give Chinese scholarship a set of English-language journals, each fronting a discipline, that would operate to international standards and carry Chinese research to the world. Computer science — a field in which China produces a very large share of global research output — was a natural member of the series.

The Frontiers Series and the Journal's Founding

The journal states its place plainly: it is one of the Frontiers series of journals in China supported by the Chinese Ministry of Education, co-administered by Higher Education Press and Beihang University. Higher Education Press is the Ministry of Education's publishing house and the publisher of the Frontiers family, which spans disciplines from mathematics and physics to medicine and engineering. Beihang University in Beijing — a university with particular strength in computing and aerospace — provides the journal's academic co-administration.

FCS was launched in February 2007. Its founding purpose, in its own words, is to provide a forum for the publication of peer-reviewed papers to promote rapid communication and exchange between computer scientists, and to reflect the international trends of research and development in the field. The emphasis on rapid communication and on international trends marks the journal's ambition: not a domestic bulletin translated for export, but an English-language forum intended to sit inside the field's global conversation.

Scope and Subject Coverage

The journal publishes research papers and review articles in a wide range of topics: computer architecture; software; artificial intelligence; theoretical computer science; networks and communication; information systems; image and graphics; and information security — together with interdisciplinary topics. It especially encourages papers from new emerging and multidisciplinary areas, and papers on special topics reporting progress made by computer scientists. Springer's statement of the journal's overview adds that it covers all major branches of computer science, including emerging and multidisciplinary fields, and publishes original review articles, research papers and special-topic reports.

That breadth is the standard shape of a general computer science journal, and it reflects how the field is organised: architecture and systems at one pole, theory at another, with artificial intelligence, networks, information systems, graphics and security between them. The explicit welcome for emerging and multidisciplinary work positions the journal for the areas where computer science grows fastest — work that crosses into biology, medicine, the social sciences and engineering — and its special-topic reports and calls, such as its recent activity around artificial intelligence and data-science competitions and paper awards announced for 2026, show it organising community attention around chosen themes rather than merely receiving submissions.

Publisher and Platforms

FCS is published by Higher Education Press, with co-publication arrangements that place it on Springer Nature Link, where its journal pages carry its aims and scope, metrics and calls for papers. It also maintains its own presence through Higher Education Press's journal platform, at journal.hep.com.cn, where the English homepage for the journal is found. This dual presence — the press's own Chinese platform and Springer's international platform — is the Frontiers series' characteristic distribution pattern, giving the journal a home base in China's publishing system and a storefront in the system most international libraries use.

Copyright in the journal rests with Higher Education Press, and Beihang University is listed alongside the press as the journal's partner institution in its Springer journal information.

Indexing and Standing

The journal is abstracted and indexed in an extensive list of services given in its Springer journal information, including the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE), Ei Compendex, Scopus, the ACM Digital Library, DBLP — the computer science bibliography, whose inclusion matters greatly for visibility within the discipline — INSPEC, the Chinese Science Citation Database, CNKI, Dimensions, EBSCO and ProQuest services, among others. Presence in both the general citation indexes (SCIE, Scopus) and the disciplinary infrastructure (ACM Digital Library, DBLP) means FCS papers are findable through both routes by which computer scientists actually search.

Category assessments place the journal in the first quartile in computer science categories, including Computer Science (miscellaneous) and Theoretical Computer Science in recent Scopus-based rankings; specific impact metrics vary by year and source. The journal's standing claim, however, rests less on any single metric than on its institutional identity: the computer science title of the Ministry of Education's Frontiers programme, co-run by a leading Beijing technical university, indexed in SCIE and Ei, and publishing in English since 2007.

The Young Associate Editor Project

One feature distinguishes FCS from most journals of its kind. In 2013, China Academic Journal Future Star, working with the journal, started a Young Associate Editor project for the journal, intended to serve younger scholars in the field of computer science in China and worldwide. The project recruits early-career researchers into editorial work — a deliberate investment in the next generation of the field's gatekeepers, and a mechanism by which a journal builds loyalty and expertise among rising researchers.

The initiative fits the journal's position in a young, fast-growing discipline. Computer science in China expanded enormously during the journal's lifetime, and its professoriate is correspondingly young; a journal that formally involves younger scholars in its editorial processes aligns its governance with its community's demographics, and gains editors close to the field's newest research fronts.

Publication Model and Frequency

FCS publishes peer-reviewed research papers and review articles in English. Its content appears through Higher Education Press and SpringerLink, with the journal's calls for papers, special topics and paper awards announced through its Springer pages. (One directory listing's description of the journal as annual is inconsistent with its continuous journal publication and its volume sequence on SpringerLink, and should be treated as a data error; the journal operates as a regular periodical with ongoing issues and special topics.)

The journal is primarily a subscription journal with articles also available through the publisher's standard access arrangements, rather than a fully open-access title; its papers are nonetheless broadly discoverable through the many abstracting services listed above.

Readership and Community

The journal's readers are computer scientists in universities and research institutes, in China and internationally: researchers in artificial intelligence, systems, theory, networks, graphics and security who need a general journal that reports across the field, and specialists following Chinese computer science, which is one of the world's largest national research efforts in the discipline. Its review articles and special-topic reports serve readers entering a new area; its research papers serve the sub-communities of its eight named scope areas.

For Chinese computer scientists, FCS offers an English-language, SCIE-indexed venue administered within China's own higher-education publishing system. For international readers, it offers a curated window on Chinese computing research from a journal whose stated purpose includes reflecting international trends — a two-way function that the Frontiers series was designed to perform.

Access and Identification

FCS is identified by print ISSN 2095-2228 and electronic ISSN 2095-2236, and cited by the abbreviation Front. Comput. Sci. Its journal pages are maintained on Springer Nature Link and on Higher Education Press's journal platform (journal.hep.com.cn/fcs), which carries its English homepage, submission information and archive.

Launched in February 2007 as the computer science member of China's Frontiers family, Frontiers of Computer Science has grown into an SCIE- and Ei-indexed general journal of the discipline: published by Higher Education Press with Beihang University, covering every major branch of computing from architecture to information security, and notable among Chinese journals for the Young Associate Editor project through which it has, since 2013, drawn younger scholars in China and worldwide into its editorial life.