Dear IFAC Friends and Colleagues,
IFAC’s youngest one is just about two years old
by now. That’s certainly quite a gap to its seven
older siblings. I am of course talking about the
newest addition to the IFAC Journal collection:
IFAC Journal of Systems and Control. After
about two years, I wanted to know how our
newest addition is doing, and I had the chance
to question the Editor in Chief, Bob Bitmead.
You might know Bob from conferences, where
he often wears a deep red hat when he seeks
to be found. A concept he implemented after
a first test at the IFAC World Congress in Mu-
nich in 1987. No wonder, hence, that the new
Journal has this distinct red color (which you
can see in the picture with the overview of IFAC
Journals). To quote Bob on the question who
chose the red color: “I suppose the result is not
so much that I had a say in this but that I in-
sisted”. But now back to the Journal:
Frank Allgöwer: Bob, you’re the first Editor-
in-Chief of the Journal, raising and fostering it
from the very beginning. So, how is your ‘baby’
doing?
Bob Bitmead: The “baby” is doing well and
growing strongly but is still not sleeping at night
and making an occasional mess. We have delib-
erately chosen a path to establishing the Jour-
nal as a place of high repute and good read-
ership. By focusing on the readership first, we
have been quite selective and put good effort
into identifying the best papers and into trying
to improve them during the revision and edit-
ing phase. This is a labor-intensive process but
reflects in the papers appearing in the Journal.
Frank Allgöwer: Tell me, why should I choose to
submit my latest research results in the Journal
of Systems and Control and not to any of the
other IFAC journals?
Bob Bitmead: The Journal has a scope which is
as broad as IFAC’s. Indeed, it was established
to provide the coverage that the other journals
in the IFAC stable — turning from baby to horse
analogies — could struggle with. The papers
that we accept are quite broad and frequently
describe integrative aspects of control, where
the methodology needs to accommodate the
application domain. In the most recent edi-
tion, there is a paper dealing with ecosystem
analysis and its application for maize produc-
tion. Papers in medical applications and envi-
ronmental systems also have appeared. When
these broad application domains are coupled
with the underlying control theory, we see new
possibilities emerge.
So, we are very interested in the latest innova-
tive research. If your latest results fit this mould
then we would be eager to see your paper and,
assuming it fits, it would benefit from associa-
tion with this different wide-ranging type of re-
search and application.
FA: Are there - apart from quality - any restric-
tions on the content of potential articles?
Bob: Clearly relevance is critical and should be
included under the umbrella of quality. In the
scope of the Journal, I was careful to articulate
its reliance on papers providing “generalizable,
extensible and transferable innovations” in con-
trol theory and applications.
Frank Allgöwer: Well, this certainly sounds very
interesting. I will keep following the Journal
with its broad spectrum of topics, looking for
high quality papers in different fields, curiously
waiting what the next interesting article I stum-
ble upon in JSC is about. And thanks, Bob, for
your answers, and your overall commitment to
JSC!
With best regards from Stuttgart,
Frank Allgöwer