Thomas Schwentick, Meena Mahajan and Pascal Weil (Chair, Secretary and Treasurer of the TheoretiCS Foundation, respectively) sent me the following information on TheoretiCS, which I am happy to share with our community with their permission. I encourage everyone to support the journal by submitting their best work to it!
TheoretiCS was officially launched in
December 2021 and we wish to present you with the current status of the
project. You can find more precise information on the journal's site, theoretics-journal.org.
The first papers were submitted right away in December 2021, and some
were published in 2022: Volume 1 (2022) has two papers. Volume 2 (2023)
already has five published papers, more are very near acceptance and
there is a healthy list of papers under review, with more papers
submitted every month.
Our intention was to have a journal that covers the whole of Theoretical
Computer Science, and this is reflected in the list of published
papers. We also wanted to have an open-access journal (it operates under
the so-called diamond open access paradigm, which means that no charges
are levied to read it, nor to publish in it), and one that involves the
theoretical computer science community as much as possible. This was
done by first establishing an Advisory Board, where the majority of the
members are representatives of many of the most prominent conferences of
the domain. The Advisory Board selected a pair of remarkable
Editors-in-Chief (Javier Esparza, TU München, and Uri Zwick, Tel-Aviv
University) and then worked with the EiCs to assemble a prestigious
Editorial Board. The Advisory Board continues to meet regularly, with
the EiCs, to help steer the journal.
We also wanted to innovate in the reviewing process, streamlining it
without compromising in any way the quality of the papers — as we are
aiming to become one of the very top journals in the field. The
Editorial Board has a so-called Phase 1 process which typically lasts
between 2 and 3 months, which determines whether the paper is of the
caliber expected for the journal (quality of the results and quality of
the exposition, relatively wide interest), under the assumption that the
proofs are correct. When this Phase 1 concludes positively, Phase 2
starts, with the objective of verifying the proofs and, possibly, making
constructive suggestions to the authors as to how to better present
their results. The result, we hope, is a higher quality for the papers
published, and also a shorter response time for most of the papers which
will end up being rejected. As of early 2023, on average, a decision
for Phase 1 was reached 64 days after submission, within the three-month
commitment the Editorial Board made. 85% of the papers got a Phase 1
decision within 94 days.
TheoretiCS remains a work in progress, though we now have something to
show for our efforts. The long-term success of the journal will however
continue to depend on the support of the scientific community it wants
to serve. Your support is precious in this context, and we hope you will
spread the word and encourage people around you to submit their best
papers to TheoretiCS.
With best regards,
Thomas Schwentick, Meena Mahajan and Pascal Weil,
respectively Chair, Secretary and Treasurer of the TheoretiCS Foundation
