The ''Journal of Combinatorial Theory'', Series A and Series B, are mathematical journals specializing in

combinatorics Combinatorics is an area of mathematics primarily concerned with counting, both as a means and as an end to obtaining results, and certain properties of finite structures. It is closely related to many other areas of mathematics and has many ...

and related areas. They are published by

Elsevier Elsevier ( ) is a Dutch academic publishing company specializing in scientific, technical, and medical content. Its products include journals such as ''The Lancet'', ''Cell (journal), Cell'', the ScienceDirect collection of electronic journals, ...

. ''Series A'' is concerned primarily with

structure A structure is an arrangement and organization of interrelated elements in a material object or system, or the object or system so organized. Material structures include man-made objects such as buildings and machines and natural objects such as ...

design A design is the concept or proposal for an object, process, or system. The word ''design'' refers to something that is or has been intentionally created by a thinking agent, and is sometimes used to refer to the inherent nature of something ...

s, and applications of combinatorics. ''Series B'' is concerned primarily with

graph Graph may refer to: Mathematics *Graph (discrete mathematics), a structure made of vertices and edges **Graph theory, the study of such graphs and their properties *Graph (topology), a topological space resembling a graph in the sense of discret ...

and

matroid theory In combinatorics, a matroid is a structure that abstracts and generalizes the notion of linear independence in vector spaces. There are many equivalent ways to define a matroid Axiomatic system, axiomatically, the most significant being in terms ...

. The two series are two of the leading journals in the field and are widely known as ''JCTA'' and ''JCTB''. The journal was founded in 1966 by Frank Harary and

Gian-Carlo Rota Gian-Carlo Rota (April 27, 1932 – April 18, 1999) was an Italian-American mathematician and philosopher. He spent most of his career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he worked in combinatorics, functional analysis, proba ...

.They are acknowledged on the journals' title pages and Web sites. Se
Editorial board of JCTAEditorial board of JCTB
Originally there was only one journal, which was split into two parts in 1971 as the field grew rapidly. In 2020, most of the editorial board of ''JCTA'' resigned to form a new,

open access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which nominally copyrightable publications are delivered to readers free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 de ...

journal ''Combinatorial Theory''. The new journal aims to be a continuation of ''JCTA'' independently from Elsevier. It published its first issue in December 2021.

Influential articles

Influential articles that appeared in the journal include Katona's elegant proof of the Erdős–Ko–Rado theorem and a series of papers spanning over 500 pages, appearing from 1983 to 2004, by Neil Robertson and Paul D. Seymour on the topic of graph minors, which together constitute the proof of the graph minors theorem. Two articles proving Kneser's conjecture, the first by

László Lovász László Lovász (; born March 9, 1948) is a Hungarian mathematician and professor emeritus at Eötvös Loránd University, best known for his work in combinatorics, for which he was awarded the 2021 Abel Prize jointly with Avi Wigderson. He ...

and the other by Imre Bárány, appeared back-to-back in the same issue of the journal.

References

{{reflist Combinatorics journals Academic journals established in 1966 Elsevier academic journals English-language journals