The ''Journal of Combinatorial Theory'', Series A and Series B, are

mathematical journal In academic publishing, a scientific journal is a periodical publication intended to further the progress of science, usually by reporting new research. Content Articles in scientific journals are mostly written by active scientists such as s ...

s specializing in combinatorics 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'', the ScienceDirect collection of electronic journals, '' Trends'', th ...

. ''Series A'' is concerned primarily with structures,

design A design is a plan or specification for the construction of an object or system or for the implementation of an activity or process or the result of that plan or specification in the form of a prototype, product, or process. The verb ''to design'' ...

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 discre ...

and

matroid theory In combinatorics, a branch of mathematics, 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 axiomatically, the most significant being ...

. 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 Frank Harary (March 11, 1921 – January 4, 2005) was an American mathematician, who specialized in graph theory. He was widely recognized as one of the "fathers" of modern graph theory. Harary was a master of clear exposition and, together with ...

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. An electronic, open access journal,
Combinatorial Theory
', was announced in 2020. The new journal aims to be a continuation of ''JCTA'' independently from Elsevier. Most of the editorial board of ''JCTA'' resigned at the end of 2020, and part of them transitioned to ''Combinatorial Theory''. 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 Neil Robertson (born 11 February 1982) is an Australian professional snooker player who is a former world champion and former world number one. The only Australian to have won a ranking event, he is also the only player from outside the United ...

and Paul D. Seymour on the topic of graph minors, which together constitute the proof of the

graph minors theorem 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 discr ...

. 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 wa ...

and the other by

Imre Bárány Imre Bárány (Mátyásföld, Budapest, 7 December 1947) is a Hungarian mathematician, working in combinatorics and discrete geometry. He works at the Rényi Mathematical Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and has a part-time app ...

, appeared back-to-back in the same issue of the journal.

References

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