Computer communications: Present status and future challenges

I wish you all a Happy New Year! As I introduce you to the 2014 first issue of Computer Communications (COMCOM), I am very pleased to provide you with some great news about the journal. The acceptance to the COMCOM journal has been ever competitive. In 2013, less than 12% of the submissions has been accepted for publication while, at the same time, the journal impact factor continues to increase: the last impact factor is 1.079, and the 5-year Impact Factor is 1.227. After five years, as Editor-in-chief of the journal, I am very pleased of the results achieved by the journal. The journal has attained the objectives established five years ago: increasing the journal quality and visibility, and making it a reference journal for researchers working on next generation networks and technologies, future Internet, mobile and ubiquitous networking, green networking, social networking, etc. In these five years the journal Impact Factor is more than doubled: from 0.391 (2008) to 1.079 (2013), while the acceptance rate dropped from 39% to 12%. Furthermore, the large number of submissions (more than 1000 submissions per year), well distributed among the main geographical areas (40% Europe, 25% Asia, and 22% USA and Canada), and with an interesting increase of the number of submissions from Middle East (about 7% in 2013), clearly indicates that the journal is a reference forum for the worldwide community of researchers working on computer and communication networks. The journal statistics clearly indicate that the competition to publish in Computer Communications is very high, and only the highest quality papers are accepted for publication in this journal. Therefore, I wish to take this opportunity to give some advices to the journal contributors in order to submit manuscripts that will have a high chance to be accepted for publication in Computer Communications. A key element for a successful submission is the topic of the manuscript. COMCOM submissions should address hot topics in the computer- and communication-network field, showing a clear progress beyond the state of the art. On the other hand, contributions presenting variations of known concepts, or addressing outdated topics, or topics that are marginal with respect to the journal scope (and for which better publishing venues exist), will be, almost surely, rejected. To guide the journal contributors to prepare manuscripts suitable for publication in Computer Communications, hereafter, with the help of the journal area editors, I have identified a set of topics that we would like to be addressed by the manuscripts submitted to Computer Communications during 2014.