Schemas play an important and versatile role in symbolic computation. For general problem solving, schemas can be used to capture and codify knowledge that represents recognised successful processes and solutions, which can be repeatedly used for constructing sub-processes with smaller search spaces for sub-solutions, and so on. In particular, they have made significant contributions to areas like theorem proving and program synthesis by formulating more efficient proof or synthesis strategies that are amenable to automation, and by producing better-engineered solutions overall.; Nowadays, the most successful approaches to automation in these areas are schema-guided, and we believe that such approaches have the potential to be equally successful for automated reasoning and software engineering in general.
The aim of this special issue of the Journal of Symbolic Computation is to furnish a collection of seminal work on schemas in diverse areas of symbolic computation, with a view to encouraging future work and at the same time providing a sound starting point for it.
We solicit papers on all aspects and all kinds of schemas that are relevant to symbolic computation. Schemas could represent any artifacts or processes. For example, in automated reasoning and software engineering, they could correspond to strategies or templates for proofs, programs, algorithms, specifications, synthesis, transformation, etc. We also welcome alternative approaches or terminologies, such as patterns, frameworks, skeletons, clichés, plans, etc., provided there is some (potential for) automation.
Whatever the chosen form or terminology, however, authors must address at least the following points:
Papers may be submitted to any guest editor (see addresses below). They must be prepared by using the JSC LaTeX style file, which can be obtained from ftp://ftp.udel.edu/pub/jsc (North-America) or from ftp://ftp.risc.uni-linz.ac.at/pub/jsc (Europe).
Although there is no restriction on length, we would prefer shorter papers to longer ones, for the sake of greater diversity and more thorough reviewing. Authors are therefore encouraged to be as concise as possible, and to limit their papers to 30 pages.
Electronic submissions are encouraged, and may be sent as one email (MIME attachments are allowed). The message should contain (i) the abstract in ASCII and (ii) the whole paper in Postscript. The Postscript form must be interpretable by Ghostscript, and must use standard fonts, or include the necessary fonts. Authors who cannot meet these requirements should submit 5 hard copies by post instead.
All submitted papers will be refereed according to the usual JSC refereeing process.
To aid planning and organisation, we would appreciate an email or a letter of intent to submit a paper (including author information, a tentative title and abstract, and an estimated number of pages) as early as possible.
| Submission of papers: | 15 September 1998 |
| Notification of acceptance/rejection: | 15 March 1999 |
| Delivery of camera-ready copies: | 15 April 1999 |
| Publication of special issue: | 1999 |