Editorial

As computer-aided engineering (CAE) environments become the core tool used by every kind of professional engineer in design, assessment, optimization, and control, then the underlying computational mathematics and process modelling components that form the basis of CAE software also continue to grow in importance. As the Editor of Applied Mathematical Modelling since 1984, I have observed the developments in computational mathematics and software as they impact upon process modelling and the subsequent CAE environments. The continued growth in all aspects of numerical modelling is confirmed by the fact that AMM’s editors have continued to receive a large number of original, good quality, relevant contributions each year. Indeed, the submission rates of good quality papers to AMM have virtually doubled since the mid- 1980s. This is in spite of the fact that

l the journal has become more focused on engineering and environmental systems since 1984;

l several other journals have recently concentrated their attention on numerical mod- elling and simulation, even though AMM was the first journal in this area.

Butterworths, as the Publisher, and I, as the Editor, have always been of the opinion that if AMM is to serve its community effectively, then rapid publication of papers is of the essence. In order to fulfill this obligation over the past year or so, the Publisher has substantially increased the size of each issue. It became obvious, however, that if AMM were to continue to meet the increased demand of authors, then further action was required. The result is that, beginning with this issue, AMM is being published monthly.

The move from bimonthly to monthly has distinct benefits for both author and reader:

l An author will normally expect to see his or her paper in print within four months of acceptance by the Editor.

l The reader will see about 60 percent more contributions in AMM than prior to 1988.

We have tried to encourage contributions from a wide range of cognate disciplines. In particular, I recently have encouraged those who provide software tools for modellers to contribute and I am very pleased to see an increased flow of articles on software engineering environments, parallel computer systems, expert systems, and graphics, as well as the more conventional contributions on models, their validation, and appli- cation.

The journal is a victim of its own success-long may it be so!

Mark Cross Editor

2 Appl. Math. Modelling, 1989, Vol. 13, January