ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software
| Discipline | Mathematical software |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Edited by | Zhaojun Bai and Wolfgang Bangerth |
| Publication details | |
| History | 1975–present |
| Publisher | Association for Computing Machinery (United States) |
| Frequency | Quarterly |
| Standard abbreviations | |
| ISO 4 | ACM Trans. Math. Softw. |
| MathSciNet | ACM Trans. Math. Software |
| Indexing | |
| ISSN | 0098-3500 (print) 1557-7295 (web) |
| Links | |
ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software (TOMS) is a quarterly scientific journal that aims to disseminate the latest findings of note in the field of numeric, symbolic, algebraic, and geometric computing applications. It is one of the oldest scientific journals specifically dedicated to mathematical algorithms and their implementation in software, and has been published since March 1975 by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).
The journal is described as follows on the TOMS Homepage of the ACM Digital Library page:
ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software (TOMS) documents the theoretical underpinnings of numeric, symbolic, algebraic, and geometric computing applications. It focuses on analysis and construction of algorithms and programs, and the interaction of programs and architecture. Algorithms documented in TOMS are available as the Collected Algorithms of the ACM at calgo.acm.org.
The purpose of the journal was laid out by its founding editor, John Rice, in the inaugural issue.[1] The decision to found the journal came out of the 1970 Mathematical Software Symposium at Purdue University, also organized by Rice, who then negotiated with both SIAM and the ACM regarding its publication.[2]
The journal publishes two kinds of articles: Regular research papers that advance the development of algorithms and software for mathematical computing, and "algorithms papers" that describe a specific implementation of an algorithm and that are accompanied by the source code for this algorithm. Algorithms described in the transactions are generally published in the Collected Algorithms of the ACM (CALGO).[3][4] Algorithms published since 1975 (and some earlier ones) are all still available.
Originally, in a policy that long predated the arrival of open source software, authors publishing in ACM TOMS were "required to transfer the copyright to ACM upon acceptance of the algorithm for publication", [5] and ACM subsequently distributed the software under the ACM Software License Agreement, which is free of charge for noncommercial use only.[6] The original intent was to make the software available to as broad an audience as possible, in the same spirit as open source software later codified in open source software licenses. Strictly speaking, this means that ACM TOMS software is not Free and open-source software according to The Free Software Definition or The Open Source Definition. The restriction for licensing was lifted in the mid-2010s and authors can now distribute software under whatever open source license they choose; the authors also retain copyright to the software so published.
References
- ^ "Inaugural issue". ACM.org. Retrieved January 17, 2021.
- ^ Boisvert, Ronald F. (2000). "Mathematical software: past, present, and future". Mathematics and Computers in Simulation. 54 (4–5): 227–241. arXiv:cs/0004004. doi:10.1016/S0378-4754(00)00185-3.
- ^ "Collected Algorithms of the ACM". ACM.org. Retrieved January 17, 2021.
- ^ "TOMS Algorithms Policy". ACM.org. Retrieved January 17, 2021.
- ^ "TOMS Algorithms Policy". ACM.org. Retrieved January 17, 2021.
- ^ "Software Copyright Notice". ACM.org. Retrieved February 6, 2018.