1. VIEWPOINT
Publishing computational science
Martin Peters
Why is computational science one of the most attractive areas
in scientific publishing? First of all, publishing always follows
the development of science and to readers of CSCnews it will
be obvious that computational science is a growing, interdisciplinary
area of research and hence generates a growing output of publications.
Since publications are an essential component of scientific work, the
task for a scientific publisher is to install and offer in close collabora-
tion with the scientists appropriate venues for publishing new results.
I would like to highlight three issues that are important from a pub-
lisher’s point of view.
Irreversibility: In order to start some major new publishing activ-
ity, you should be sure that you cover what is a long-lasting trend rath-
er than go into a field which will be fashionable only for a short while.
This condition, clearly, is satisfied by computational science: It is driven
by technology, more precisely, by the interaction of hardware and algo-
rithms development, which provides the basis for scientific simulations
of ever-increasing complexity. We shall not go back to the days when
parallel computing was performed by humans.
It is worthwhile remarking that in other fields the situation is not
as clear-cut. Consider mathematics for finance, for instance, which is
another attractive field for publishing. Here, unlikely as it may be, you
can imagine that an international political consensus would emerge to
implement the Tobin tax, or some other penalty on short-term finan-
cial transactions, which would wipe out the demand of the financial
industry for sophisticated mathematical methods.
The impact on education: You see it everywhere: New degrees, new
courses from graduate level
to undergraduate—even to
highschool—havebeenin-
stalled, and this trend con-
tinues. Hence, this requires
a publisher to provide ap-
propriate textbooks, and
due to interdisciplinarity
this is a challenge: The es-
tablished traditional way of
publishing textbooks subjectwise will not do the job.
Be first: Given the situation as described above, the task for a pub-
lisher is to set up appropriate publishing concepts, be they books, jour-
nals or otherwise, allowing authors to publish. It can be argued which
book actually was the first in computational science, but I believe it is
fair to say that Springer was first in offering a systematic computational
science program with the book series Lecture Notes in Computational
Science and Engineering,Texts in Computational Science and Engineering,
and the journal Computing and Visualization in Science.
I would like to mention that for me a visit to CSC in the year 1993
was crucial for learning about computational science, and then at the
ICIAM 1995 conference in Hamburg the need to act became very
clear.
What about the future? We shall further add to the publishing op-
tions in computational science, for instance, with a new book series
Monographs in Computational Science and Engineering for books of
long-term relevance. And, internally, the major organisational challenge
for Springer is to adapt to interdisciplinarity.This perestroika has start-
ed, but there is a long way to go.
Suggested reading:
Björn Engquist, Gene Golub: From Numerical Analysis
to Computational Science
Hans Petter Langtangen, Aslak Tveito: How Should We Prepare
the Students of Science and Technology for a Life in the Computer Age?
Risto M. Nieminen: From Number
Crunching to Virtual Reality: Mathematics,
Physics and Computation
The three essays all appeared in
Engquist, Schmid (editors): Mathematics
Unlimited, Springer, 2001
Computational Science: Ensuring America’s
Competitiveness, June 2005,
http://www.nitrd.gov/pitac/reports/
20050609_computational/computational.pdf
“The task for
a publisher is
to set up
appropriate
publishing
concepts.”
Martin Peters is an Executive Editor for
Mathematics and Computational Science
with Springer, and a football enthusiast. He is
stationed at Heidelberg, Germany, and can be
reached via email martin.peters@springer.com.
CSCnews 13