Scientific Journal of Applied Computer Systems: Looking Back and Moving Forward

Precisely twelve years have passed since 2000, when the first issue of the 5 series of “Computer Science, Applied Computer Systems” was compiled into the Scientific Journal of Riga Technical University. According to the Chinese Zodiac based on a twelve year cycle, in which each year in a cycle is related to an animal sign and its reputed attributes, the Scientific Journal of Applied Computer Systems is attributed the sign of a Dragon. Dragon is a mythical powerful creature highly worshiped in Chinese culture that symbolizes strength, health, harmony, and intellectual power. Many consider Dragons extremely lucky and blessed. Most entities born or created under this Chinese Horoscope sign are generally charismatic, endued with great powers and are likely to evolve into great inventors, scientists, actors, lawyers, politicians, and managers. Likewise, we are convinced that the Journal publishing the research results in the traditional fields of Institute of Applied Computer Systems, which has been born under the Dragon’s sign, is endowed with all these features. The first 12-year cycle is over, and the co-editors of the Journal of Applied Computer Systems would like to give a brief overview by looking back into the history of the journal formation and reaching its current status. The first issue was published in 2000 in response to the appeal by professor Ivars Knets to regenerate scientific traditions and to provide an opportunity for the scientists to publish major results of their research. The volume contained 9 papers that were presented at the 40 RTU International Scientific Conference. In its turn, to go on with the tradition of publishing scientific papers in the journal next year, the editors issued the call for paper with the announcement that the applications from PhD students would be of special interest. As a result, the amount of the submitted papers doubled. The second compiled issue bridged the 20 years' gap between the so-called “old” scientific school lead by professor Janis Osis, who developed the original approach to complex technical system diagnostics based on topological models, and the young generation of scientists. It is quite significant that the first paper of this issue was the paper dedicated to the history of research on system modeling at RTU, in which professor Janis Osis in honor of 40-year anniversary of the faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology described the evolution of the faculty scientific school over the last 40 years and presented its structure. The third issue of the series opened with the five papers presented at the international conference “Information System Development” (ISD), which for the first time was held in Eastern Europe and organized by the Division of System Theory of RTU. The papers devoted to the common problems investigated by the scientists of the Institute of Applied Computer Systems were also included in the agenda. In 2002 the editorial board had already 38 submissions of papers, which required a careful review. Therefore, the evaluation of the papers for this issue was characterized, first, by two blend reviewers for each paper, where disputable papers were additionally evaluated by one of the core editors. Figure 1 shows statistical data on the number of the published and rejected papers for all 13 issues launched during the last twelve years.

section_content: editors issued the call for paper with the announcement that the applications from PhD students would be of special interest. As a result, the amount of the submitted papers doubled. 

The second compiled issue bridged the 20 years' gap between the so-called "old" scientific school lead by professor Janis Osis, who developed the original approach to complex technical system diagnostics based on topological models, and the young generation of scientists. It is quite significant that the first paper of this issue was the paper dedicated to the history of research on system modeling at RTU, in which professor Janis Osis in honor of 40-year anniversary of the faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology described the evolution of the faculty scientific school over the last 40 years and presented its structure. 

The third issue of the series opened with the five papers presented at the international conference "Information System Development" (ISD), which for the first time was held in Eastern Europe and organized by the Division of System Theory of RTU. The papers devoted to the common problems investigated by the scientists of the Institute of Applied Computer Systems were also included in the agenda. In 2002 the editorial board had already 38 submissions of papers, which required a careful review. Therefore, the evaluation of the papers for this issue was characterized, first, by two blend reviewers for each paper, where disputable papers were additionally evaluated by one of the core editors. Figure 1 shows statistical data on the number of the published and rejected papers for all 13 issues launched during the last twelve years. In line with the tradition to publish papers of both generations of scientists, the fourth issue of the journal opened with the two papers, where the founders of the two research directions of the faculty, namely, professors Janis Osis and Janis Grundspenkis, outlined the new perspectives of topological and structural modeling. The new generation of scientists was widely represented in this volume as well. They were the authors of the two thirds of the accepted papers. 

Young scientists obtained the new results in formal methods, organization theory, object oriented approach in systems design and many other urgent topics. The traditional problem domain, such as application of information technology in learning, insurance and knowledge management, was also included in that issue. The volume also included various topics dedicated to programming languages and software engineering. A new feature of the fifth issue was inclusion in the volume of a pretty good number of the papers presented by young scientists from our neighbor countries -Lithuania and Estonia. 

The sixth volume was compiled to coincide with the ISD conference, where 11 papers of the doctoral consortium held in Lithuania were published in our journal. Statistics in Figure 1 showed only the topics on Applied Computer Systems. The same, the third issue is represented only by a number of journal's submissions not the papers from ISD conference. 

The seventh volume continued the tradition of the previous years to provide an opportunity for young scientists to publish their research results. About eighty percent of the authors or co-authors were young scientists. That issue covered the traditional research fields of the Institute of Applied Computer Systems: development and testing of software, database technologies, application of intelligent systems in learning, computer-based education systems, and other. The paper describing the results of the research of study program improvement marked a new trend and widened the scope of traditional topics covered in the volume. 

In the eighth issue, in addition to traditional research fields a relatively large amount of papers was devoted to the analysis of situation in Latvia in such areas as knowledge management, professional education and improvement of study programs. 

The characteristic feature of the ninth issue was the a set of traditional research topics being extended by the new ones, which among other included optimization, navigation of autonomous systems, software product quality, studies of foresight methods and multifractal system property analysis, as well as investigation and implementation of different transformation methods. The works included in that volume reflected the currently central research fields of the Institute of Applied Computer Systems supplemented with the works of researchers of Latvia University of Agriculture. That issue was also characterized by a record amount of the submitted papers, which can be explained by a great number of scientific projects being at the stage of active development in the institute at that time period. However, the amount of the rejected papers after the evaluation was also very large and the number of published papers was not so expressive to maintain the achieved level of the quality of the journal. It is worth mentioning that for the first time all the papers were published in English thus ensuring inclusion in international databases of scientific publications, such as CSA (Cambridge Scientific Articles) and EBSCO Publishing. 

In 2009 the editorial board of the journal was welcoming all our readers with the tenth anniversary of the issue and expressed our gratitude to all of those, who with their enthusiasm, ideas and hard work supported both its qualitative and quantitative development. The characteristic feature of the tenth issue was that among different research directions represented in this issue two already traditional topics predominated, namely, development of multiagent systems for tutoring and knowledge assessment and model driven architecture. Half of all publications in this issue were devoted to the above mentioned topics which, in fact, were acquiring a central place in the research activities of the Institute of Applied Computer Systems. Besides, papers on integrated approach to effective organization management, identification of the requirements for changes in information systems, information security management, graph visualization, and regression model building were also included. The survey papers gave an insight into classification of MDA tools, software reuse, and test-driven aspect-oriented development. 

Readers of the eleventh volume "Applied Computer Systems" in Computer Science series of Scientific Proceedings of Riga Technical University could notice that the format of the papers had changed while the issue itself has developed into the Scientific Journal of Riga Technical University. The quality of the papers was stimulated by a clearly defined procedure in accordance with which the papers were to be accepted for publication only after presentation at the annual international scientific conference of RTU, international reviewing and elimination of the drawbacks and shortcomings. 

The twelfth issue of "Applied Computer Systems" in Computer Science series of the Scientific Journals of Riga Technical University continued the tendency of improving the quality of the journal because the editorial board was constantly developing more elaborate procedures for acceptance of the submitted papers. All submitted papers receive careful evaluation. The first precondition for submission of the paper is its presentation at the annual international scientific conference of RTU. After that the paper is reviewed by two reviewers, one of which is member of the editorial board or an invited reviewer, who is not employed by the Institute of Applied Computer Systems. The final decision on acceptance of the paper is made only after all the shortcomings and drawbacks, at which reviewers have pointed out, have been eliminated by the authors. 

The thirteenth volume of the scientific journal of the Applied Computer Systems published in 2012 closes the twelve year cycle mentioned at the beginning of the digest. Publication of the issue is connected with two factors. First, in future the volume will be published under a new title -Applied Computer Systems and will keep the enumeration of the issues starting with the first one published in 2000 and continuing with the 14 th to be published in 2013 to ensure proper indexing of the journal in a number of scientific data bases in addition to those mentioned above. Second, the conference that was held in 2011, also marked the first time when at the plenary session of the scientific conference of the Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology, in honor of the 50-year anniversary of the faculty, six professors, founders of their own scientific schools, presented the history and results of their research. 

Thus, the tradition established back in 2001 is continued, which allows us to hope for the relentless movement forward in the formation of our journal. Papers included in the 13 th issue expand the traditional spectrum of the research: the first three publications are devoted to the new topic -development of multi-robot technology. There are also several papers, which present new results in the traditional research directions of the Institute of Applied Computer Systems, namely, development of the concept map based intelligent tutoring systems, as well as modeling and transformation procedures within the framework of model-driven architecture. Besides, readers will also find papers dedicated to specific problems in computer science and information technology. So far, in the recent years the portfolio of the editorial board accumulated almost a double amount of submitted papers in comparison to those published after serious reviewing and evaluation (on average, twenty papers are published annually). The editorial board contributed a lot of efforts in improving the procedure of paper submission and the evaluation form. The mandatory requirement is that one of the reviewers must be a scientist, working in foreign countries. All submitted papers are written in English. Thus, not only the audience of our scientific publications has become noticeably expanded, but the journal was also included in the two scientific databases mentioned above. 

We would like to thank all the nine professors -Jānis Bārzdiņš, Jānis Bubenko, Albertas Čaplinskas, Jānis Grundspeņķis (editor in chief since 2002), Hele-Mai Haav, Audris Kalniņš, Leonīds Novickis, Oksana Ņikiforova and Jānis Osis, who were with the issue from the very beginning, gained experience, bore the brunt of compiling and tailoring the first five and subsequent issues, and still remain the core of the editorial board. We also would like to thank professors H. Linger, W. Wojtkowski, M. Buiķis, A. Lupeikiene, Z. Markovičs, W. Bodrow, D. Dzemjdiene, Z. Huzar, R. Kuusik, A. G. Nilsson, K. Wang, B. Wangler, O. Vasilecas, G. Arnicāns and K. Freivalds, who kindly agreed to join our editorial board, as well as the reviewers specifically invited for several issues -M. Gills, A. Kajackas, D. Kumlander, N. Goranin, E. Celms, J. Tepandi, who gave careful and matterof-fact evaluation of each of the submitted papers. The editor Vita Graudiņa joined the editorial board when the sixth issue was under way or a year later and currently continues her contribution in making the issue. 

And, of course, our great thanks to all the 147 authors, who have been published in the journal since 2000. With efforts of the above mentioned colleagues and thanks to authors' contributions the scientific journal "Applied Computer Systems" has grown into serious and widely distributed information "Dragon", which has its regular readers among the faculty, students, and representatives of the industry.