A New Beginning for JVLC

We proclaim a new beginning for the Journal of Visual Language and Computing, which is intended to be a forum for researchers, practitioners and developers to exchange ideas and research results, for the advancement of visual languages, visual computing and sentient multimedia systems. Sentient systems are distributed systems capable of actively interacting with the environment by gathering, processing, interpreting, storing and retrieving multimedia information originated from sensors, robots, actuators, websites and other information sources. In order for sentient systems to function efficiently and effectively, visual languages and visual computing play an important role.

The original Journal of Visual Languages and Computing was founded in 1980 by me. Together with Dr. Stefano Levialdi, we served as the Founding Co-Editors of JVLC and established JVLC as a high quality, first rate research journal.

In 2015 I founded the Journal of Visual Languages and Sentient Systems (VLSS) to encompass the new research area of sentient systems. In 2019 the publisher of JVLC decided not to continue the publication of JVLC. To continue the tradition of JVLC and incorporate the new research area of sentient systems, but to avoid any possible conflicts, I obtained the permission from this publisher to rename the Journal of Visual Languages and Sentient Systems and publish the journal under a slightly different name, i.e., Journal of Visual Language and Computing. KSI Research Inc., which is a non-profit tax exempt company founded by me to conduct scientific research, organize conferences and publish academic journals and books, became the publisher of the new JVLC.

Although the name change from Visual Languages and Computing to Visual Language and Computing is dictated by necessity, it also connotes a new beginning. The plural form of visual languages suggests unity through diversity. The singular form of visual language suggest diversity through unity, which is consistent with the spirit of merging JVLC and VLSS. In our world, we have witnessed the rapid growth of Internet and sensor-based systems. Thus it is now possible to model the entire world, or at least a significant portion of the world. At the same time the deterioration of the global environment and the depletion of resources call for a deeper understanding of our world by modeling and simulation. Visual languages and visualization will play a very important role in human's efforts to model the world and run simulation experiments, in order to deal with the problems mentioned above. Thus JVLC has both a new beginning and also an urgent mission.

Shi-Kuo Chang, Editor-in-Chief, JVLC