Dear Readers,
I am delighted to have completed my first year as the Editor-in-chief of Connection Science. At the beginning of the year, we revised our aims and scope to give greater relevance to current research efforts in cognitive science and artificial intelligence in the journal. In particular, we re-dedicated the journal to “to exploring the convergence of the analytic and synthetic sciences of mind” whilst retaining our focus on “connectionist, probabilistic, dynamical, and evolutionary approaches, that explore distributed adaptive computation and emergent order”. Submissions to the journal have been healthy although it is taking some time for the change in focus to feed through. I would therefore strongly encourage potential authors to read carefully the aims and scope when considering a submission. The areas in which we are interested are broad, however, it is not our intention to compete with more mainstream journals in domains such as machine learning, fuzzy logic, and evolutionary computation. Instead, our goal for Connection Science is to re-kindle the strong link to biological cognition and computation that has been the core interest of the journal since it was originally founded.
Several events in 2014 are worth briefly reporting.
First, the journal hosted a re-launch party at the 50th anniversary convention of the UK Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour (AISB) at Goldsmiths, University of London, 1–4 April. As a long-standing member of AISB, I was very pleased that we were able to use this prestigious and historic event to mark the next phase in the development of Connection Science. British AI has a long and distinguished history some of which has been reflected in the pages of our journal, and this was a wonderful opportunity to renew links with the UK AI and cognitive science community. Discussions with AISB, following the launch event, have led to a closer relationship being forged between the journal and the society. Specifically, all individual members of AISB now have a free personal subscription to Connection Science as part of their AISB membership. We hope that this will not only boost the readership of the journal but also lead to manuscript submissions that reflect the shared ethos of the AISB and our journal. We also intend to publish future special issues that reflect symposia from the annual AISB convention. To mark this new relationship, Berndt “Bertie” Müller, the current chair of AISB, has agreed to become an associate editor of our journal and has authored a short editorial piece to present the society's view on our future collaboration.
Second, Connection Science hosted a reception at Living Machines 2014 (LM2014), the third International Conference on Biomimetics and Biohybrid Systems, that took place at the Leonardo da Vinci Museum in Milan, Italy, 29 July–2 August. As a co-founder of the LM conference series, I was very keen to develop links with Connection Science. Both the journal and the conference are supported by the Convergent Science Network (http://csnetwork.eu), and this relationship will help us to build a broader international readership for our journal as well as promote the submission of manuscripts that address the topic of creating life-like synthetic systems such as biomimetic robots. LM2015 will be hosted in Barcelona next summer and we hope to have a presence there in order to further strengthen these ties.
I would like to conclude this short editorial by thanking all of the staff at Taylor and Francis, and particularly Paul Naish, our managing editor, for their support and help throughout the year. This assistance has made it easier than I had expected to take over the Editor-in-chief role and has allowed me to focus on the challenge of generating interesting and cutting edge content for the journal, knowing that the practicalities of generating high-quality printed and electronic copy would be taken care of. I would also like to thank our authors, our editorial board, and all the reviewers who have contributed time and effort to ensure that the ideas, results, and discussion provided in our journal are significant, and reported in an accurate, trustworthy, and accessible manner.
For 2015 we already have some high-quality content in the production pipeline, but we could always use more. Please consider submitting your manuscripts to the journal and feel free to contact me directly if you have specific proposals for new review articles or special issues.