''Formal Aspects of Computing'' (''FAC'') is a

peer-reviewed Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work ( peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer review ...

Gold

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 published by

Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional membe ...

(ACM) and BCS (the British Computer Society, the Chartered Institute for IT). The journal is closely associated wit
Formal Methods Europe

Origins

A comment from Christopher Strachey inspired the journal:

"Much of the practical work done in computing, both in software and hardware design, could be better because the people who do it need to understand the fundamental design principles of their work clearly. Most abstract mathematical and theoretical work is sterile because it has no point of contact with real computing."

Strachey called for an end to the ''artificial and injurious'' separation of practical and theoretical work in programming.

History

''Formal Aspects of Computing'' was founded in 1989 by the BCS in an initiative led by John Cooke, Dan Simpson, and Cliff Jones, all of whom were members of the BCS Formal Aspects of Computing specialist group. Cliff Jones was the founding editor, and Springer was the initial publisher. Cliff Jones was editor-in-chief from 1989 to 2007.

Jim Woodcock James Charles Paul Woodcock is a British computer scientist. Woodcock gained his PhD from the University of Liverpool. Until 2001 he was Professor of Software Engineering at the Oxford University Computing Laboratory, where he was also a Fello ...

is the current EIC, having taken over in 2007.

Research contributions

''Formal Aspects of Computing'' publishes contributions at the junction of theory and practice. The principal aim of ''FAC'' is to promote the growth of computing science, show its relation to practice, and stimulate applications of appropriate formalisms to practical problems. One significant challenge is to show how a range of formal models can be related to each other. In particular, the scope of ''Formal Aspects of Computing'' includes, * Well-founded notations for the description and specification of systems. * Methods for verifiable system design. * Elucidation of fundamental computational concepts and models. * Approaches to fault-tolerant design. * Verification tools and theorem proving. * State-exploration tools and model checking. * Formal semantics for widely used notations and methods. * Formal approaches to requirements analysis.
Jim Woodcock
is the current

editor-in-chief An editor-in-chief (EIC), also known as lead editor or chief editor, is a publication's editorial leader who has final responsibility for its operations and policies. The editor-in-chief heads all departments of the organization and is held accoun ...

. According to the ''

Journal Citation Reports ''Journal Citation Reports'' (''JCR'') is an annual publication by Clarivate. It has been integrated with the Web of Science and is accessed from the Web of Science Core Collection. It provides information about academic journals in the natur ...

'', the journal has a 2023

impact factor The impact factor (IF) or journal impact factor (JIF) of an academic journal is a type of journal ranking. Journals with higher impact factor values are considered more prestigious or important within their field. The Impact Factor of a journa ...

of 1.4.

Other contributions

The journal welcomes contributions in addition to research papers. These include the following. * Special issues FAC welcomes proposals for special issues from leading members of the formal methods community. Appropriate proposals include: ** Conferences and workshops Revised collections of papers. ** Thematic topics include collections of papers dedicated to hot topics in formal methods, usually with an open call for papers. * State-of-the-art reports In-depth, scholarly analyses of essential research areas. * History of ideas The history of ideas traces the origin and development of formal methods and their tools. It examines various mechanisations, their relation, the intellectual resources used, and the further ideas inspired by the work. *

Book reviews A book review is a form of literary criticism in which a book is merely described (summary review) or analyzed based on content, style, and merit. A book review may be a primary source, an opinion piece, a summary review, or a scholarly view. B ...

This includes critical reviews of formal methods, research monographs and teaching textbooks. * Obituaries Obituaries usually describe and celebrate the lives of the most successful researchers, in our case, through seminal contributions to formal methods. We also encourage celebrating people who have contributed to our subject in more ordinary ways, such as through innovative teaching, writing textbooks, developing software tools, pursuing outreach and continuing education, and applying our tools and techniques in industry.

Origins

History

Research contributions

Other contributions

See also

References

External links