Editorial: Ten years of swarm intelligence

This issue marks an important achievement for the swarm intelligence research community: ten years have passed by since the first edition of its flagship journal. During this period, the journal has reported on many of the most compelling innovations and rigorous studies in our field, and has become an essential reference. The success of the journal is attributable to the whole field as it has grown and matured, but equally it also stems from what might be termed “the life of the journal”. In this short editorial, I describe three aspects of the journal’s life that might interest our readers: statistics on its visibility, acceptance rate, and throughput; its peer review procedures; and the selection and periodic updating of its editorship that helps ensure it is fair and responsive to changes in our field.

Journal statistics. At the time of writing this editorial, 780 manuscripts have been submitted to the journal. This corresponds to an average of approximately 6.5 submitted manuscripts per month. In total, 124 articles have been accepted for publication. A rapid computation shows that the journal is very competitive: only approximately 16% of the submitted manuscripts end up being accepted for publication. Swarm Intelligence is listed in Thomason Reuters’ Journal Citation Reports since 2012, and its most recent impact factor is of 2.577. The review process has been quite efficient, with an average of three reviews per submitted manuscript, an average time to first decision of 46 days, an average time to rejection of 55 days, and an average time to final acceptance of 255 days.¹

Peer review procedures. As noted above, the journal is very selective in the papers it publishes while at the same time maintaining a good performance in delivering timely decisions to authors. The peer review procedures that achieve this employ a standard hierarchy of filters for originality, significance and rigour via the editors and peer reviewers (as well as anti-plagiarism software). The journal may in many cases reject a paper even though it has promising aspects if it falls below the high standards expected (though authors of such papers may, at the journal’s discretion, be encouraged to submit a completely rewritten manuscript). As the field has grown, we have naturally seen our editorial procedures come under greater and greater pressure, and we monitor and make changes accordingly. Some significant recent changes to our processes can be found online² and should be read by all prospective authors.

Selection of associate editors and editorial board members. The work flow described above is the shared responsibility of the editor-in-chief, the associate editors and the editorial board members. It is therefore important that all these people are carefully selected. The editor-in-chief directly appoints associate editors to cover the different areas that compose swarm intelligence research. The editorial board is chosen via a process of nomination and voting that takes place online. Editorial board members are appointed for a period of six years, except when the appointment is a renewal of an ending membership, in which case the renewed appointment is for three years. Every three years the board will be asked to nominate and then vote for new members. The new editorial board will be voted selecting members from the set that includes nominees and members whose appointment is about to expire.

I wish to conclude by thanking all the current and previous associate editors as well as the members of the editorial board, the innumerable referees, and the authors: all together we have made of Swarm Intelligence an essential reference for our research field. I look forward to another ten years!