About Journal of Computer Applications

Journal of Computer Applications

Overview and identity

The Journal of Computer Applications (Chinese: 计算机应用; pinyin: Jisuanji Yingyong) is a Chinese-language computer journal published in Chengdu, Sichuan, sponsored by the Chengdu Institute of Computer Applications of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Sichuan Computer Society. Founded in 1981, it carries ISSN 1001-9081 and publishes applied research on artificial intelligence, data science, networks, information security and software engineering.

As its title announces, this is a journal of applications: not computing theory for its own sake, but the use of computers to solve problems — in industry, in science, in administration and in the intelligent systems that now pervade all three. Published from Chengdu, the technology capital of China's southwest, by an academy institute devoted to applications and the provincial computer society together, it has served the applied computing community since 1981.

History and founding

The journal was founded in 1981, at the moment when computing in China was pivoting from a purely institutional, mainframe activity toward broader application. The Chengdu Institute of Computer Applications of the Chinese Academy of Sciences existed precisely to make that pivot in the southwest — to carry computer technology into the region's industries and institutions — and its journal, co-sponsored by the Sichuan Computer Society, was the publication arm of that mission.

The journal has been published continuously since, through the personal-computer, internet and mobile eras and into the period of data science and artificial intelligence that dominates its current contents. Its founding pairing of sponsors — a CAS applications institute and a provincial learned society — has endured with it, giving the journal both academy backing and a rooted professional community in Sichuan.

Sponsors: academy institute and provincial society

The Chengdu Institute of Computer Applications is part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences' network of applied institutes, based in Chengdu; the Sichuan Computer Society is the provincial professional society for computing. Their joint sponsorship is a deliberate structure: the institute supplies editorial and research strength, the society supplies the profession-wide community of Sichuan's computer practitioners.

Chengdu itself is the third element of the journal's identity. The city has grown into one of China's great technology centres — software, electronics, games and data industries cluster there — and a computer applications journal published in Chengdu since 1981 has grown with its city, chronicling in its pages the southwest's transformation into a computing region.

Scope: artificial intelligence and data science

The journal's stated contemporary scope leads with artificial intelligence and data science: machine learning and its applications, data mining, big-data processing and the intelligent systems built on them. These are the fields that define applied computing in the 2020s, and the journal's emphasis reflects where its authors — and its sponsoring institute's clients — actually work.

Applied AI publishing differs from theoretical AI publishing: the questions are deployment questions — accuracy on real data, efficiency at scale, integration into working systems. A journal of applications asks of every algorithm what it does in the world, and the Journal of Computer Applications has organised its modern identity around exactly that question.

Scope: networks, security and software engineering

The journal's remaining pillars are networks, information security and software engineering: the infrastructure of applied computing, its protection, and the disciplined construction of its systems. Network research covers the protocols and architectures of connected computing; security research, the defence of systems and data; software engineering, the methods by which reliable systems are built and maintained.

Taken together with AI and data science, the five pillars describe the complete applied stack of modern computing — data, intelligence, connectivity, security and construction. The journal's scope is thus a map of what 'computer applications' means in the present decade, drawn by a journal that has redrawn that map continuously since applications meant mainframe data processing in 1981.

Standing and indexing

The journal is an established Chinese core-periodical title in computer science, sponsored by academy and society, published in Chinese with English titles and abstracts in the standard national format, and retrievable through China's national journal platforms and citation databases. Its ISSN 1001-9081 and its Chengdu sponsorship identify it unambiguously.

That identification matters, because the English title 'Journal of Computer Applications' is shared with unrelated publications — including an Elsevier journal of network and computer applications and various international titles. The Chengdu journal is the Chinese-language 计算机应用 founded in 1981; it should be cited and sought under its Chinese title and ISSN to avoid confusion with any namesake.

Publication and editorial model

The journal operates the standard model of a Chinese academy-society journal: an editorial office in Chengdu under its joint sponsors, peer review of submissions by specialists, and regular publication of research articles in Chinese. Its article flow serves a national authorship, with the southwest's universities and institutes — a large community anchored by Chengdu's and Chongqing's universities — naturally well represented.

Consistency is the model's virtue. Joint institute-and-society sponsorship has carried the journal through four decades without interruption, adapting its scope from era to era — the surest sign of an editorial operation embedded in a living research community rather than dependent on any single institution's fortunes.

Readership and authors

Readers are applied computing researchers and practitioners: the engineers and scientists who build intelligent systems, data platforms, networks and secure software, in universities, CAS institutes and the technology industry. For the Sichuan and southwest community in particular, the journal is a home title — the applications journal of their own institute and society.

Its authors come from the same world, reporting work whose point is use: systems built, methods deployed, applications evaluated. In a discipline whose prestige often flows to pure theory, a durable applications journal performs essential work — it is where the field records what computing actually did, not only what it proved.

Place in Chinese computer publishing

Founded in 1981 in Chengdu by the Chinese Academy of Sciences' applications institute for the southwest and the Sichuan Computer Society, the Journal of Computer Applications is one of the regional anchors of Chinese computer publishing: academy-backed, society-rooted, and devoted for more than forty years to the applied half of the discipline.

In the WorldNM directory it is profiled as a Chengdu-based Chinese-language magazine-category journal. Its profile represents a whole class of Chinese journals — the provincial-capital academy titles — that together form the connective tissue of the national research system.

The journal's founding decade gives it a particular documentary value. When it began in 1981, 'computer applications' in China meant bringing scarce mainframe and minicomputer capacity to scientific calculation, industrial control and data processing; its early volumes record the southwest's first generation of applied computing projects and practitioners. As the applications changed — personal computing, networks, the internet, mobile and intelligent systems — the journal changed with them, so that its back run reads as a history of what China has actually used computers for, decade by decade, written by the people who did the using.

Its joint sponsorship also models a wider Chinese pattern worth recording: academy institutes across the country co-publish journals with provincial societies, binding the national research system to regional professional communities. In the southwest, where Chengdu and Chongqing form a twin-centred technology region, the Journal of Computer Applications has performed that binding function for computing since 1981 — one reason its profile belongs in any directory that aims to show not just China's famous national journals but the regional institutions through which most Chinese researchers actually publish.