Advances in Parallel Computing

About Advances in Parallel Computing

Overview

Advances in Parallel Computing is a long-running book series devoted to research and development in all aspects of parallel computing. Launched in 1990, the series publishes edited volumes that capture the state of the art in high-performance computing: architectures, system software, middleware, algorithm design, performance measurement, development tools, and the applications that push these systems to their limits. Its ISSNs are 0927-5452 (print) and 1879-808X (electronic), and its standard abbreviation is Adv. Parallel Comput.

The series occupies a distinctive niche in scientific publishing. Rather than issuing regular journal numbers on a fixed schedule, it releases carefully edited books — many of them the proceedings of the long-established ParCo (International Conference on Parallel Computing) meetings, and others commissioned thematic volumes on emerging topics such as edge computing, big-data convergence with high-performance computing, and deep learning for image processing. Because each volume is a self-contained book with its own ISBN and its own guest editors, the series can respond quickly to fast-moving technical developments, assembling authoritative treatments of subjects that would otherwise be scattered across dozens of conference proceedings.

The early volumes of the series (volumes 1 through 14) were published by Elsevier Science, and the series was overseen from the start by series editor Professor Gerhard R. Joubert, whose stewardship gave the series its consistent character and its close association with the ParCo community. More recent volumes are published by IOS Press, whose ebooks platform hosts the full run of the series with digital object identifiers for individual chapters and, in several recent cases, open-access distribution under a Creative Commons licence. This dual heritage — an Elsevier origin and an IOS Press present — explains why library catalogues and citation databases sometimes list the publisher differently depending on which volume is being described.

For researchers, the practical importance of the series is that it preserves the peer-reviewed record of a conference culture that has shaped parallel computing for more than three decades. ParCo meetings have repeatedly served as the place where new architectures were first demonstrated at scale, where programming models were debated, and where the European high-performance computing agenda was articulated. Volumes drawn from these meetings therefore function as primary historical sources as well as technical references: a volume on "Parallel Computing: On the Road to Exascale" (volume 27, 2016) documents how the community thought about the exascale transition before the first exascale machines arrived, while "Future Trends of HPC in a Disruptive Scenario" (volume 34, 2019) captures the field's anxiety and excitement as accelerators, cloud models, and new interconnects began to reorder the technology stack.

Citation databases treat the series as a book series rather than a journal, which has consequences for how it is measured and how it should be cited. It is indexed in Scopus, where metric aggregators report figures such as an SJR in the low teens (around 0.13–0.14 in recent years) and an h-index in the low twenties; these numbers describe the series' aggregate citation footprint and are not a Journal Impact Factor, which book series do not receive. Authors citing work from the series should follow the book-chapter citation pattern — chapter authors, chapter title, volume editors, volume title, series name and volume number, publisher, year, and DOI — and readers looking for a specific result should search by volume title and chapter DOI rather than by issue number, since no issues exist.

Below is a complete profile of the series: its aims and scope, publication details, editorial leadership, indexing, metrics, how its volumes come into being, a tour of notable volumes, and answers to the questions librarians and authors ask most often. Every factual claim is drawn from official publisher pages, library catalogues, or established bibliographic databases; where public information does not exist, the profile says so rather than guessing.

Aims and Scope

The series publishes research and development results on all aspects of parallel computing. Its stated topical coverage is deliberately broad, and it has remained remarkably stable across three decades of technological change. The core topics named by the series include high-speed computing architectures — grids, clusters, service-oriented architectures, and, in recent volumes, edge and cloud platforms — along with network technology, performance measurement, system software, and middleware.

A second pillar of the scope is the human-facing side of parallel computing: algorithm design, development tools, software engineering for parallel systems, and the services and applications that ultimately justify the hardware. This balance between machine and method is one of the series' defining traits. A volume on exascale computing will typically combine papers on interconnect design with papers on programming abstractions and with application case studies in fields such as computational fluid dynamics, molecular dynamics, climate modelling, and large-scale data analytics.

In recent years the scope has extended naturally into adjacent territories. Volumes have addressed the convergence of big data and high-performance computing, the use of parallel systems for deep learning workloads, intelligent systems and communication technology, and edge computing with massive parallel processing. These extensions reflect the reality that parallel computing is no longer a niche discipline but the substrate of modern computation: the same questions of decomposition, load balancing, communication overhead, and energy efficiency now arise in data centres, sensor networks, and embedded systems alike.

The series does not publish unsolicited single-author monographs in the manner of a traditional book publisher's list; its unit of publication is the edited volume, usually built around a conference or a commissioned theme. This makes its scope effectively the union of the scopes chosen by its guest editors — which is to say, the scope of the parallel computing research community itself, as expressed through its flagship meetings and through the topics its senior figures consider important enough to collect between hard covers.

Publication Details

A note on the publisher history is warranted because it is a common source of confusion. Library records for the early volumes name Elsevier Science of Amsterdam as publisher; records for volumes from roughly the mid-2000s onward name IOS Press. The ISSN itself has remained constant across this transition, which is why the print ISSN 0927-5452 appears in both Elsevier-era and IOS Press-era catalogue entries. When citing the series, authors should name the publisher of the specific volume they used, not the series' current publisher, and librarians cataloguing the run should expect the imprint to change at the boundary between the two eras.

Editorial Leadership

The series has been guided throughout its life by Professor Gerhard R. Joubert as series editor. His long tenure is unusual in academic publishing and has given the series a continuity of editorial judgement that readers can feel across decades: the same insistence on rigorous peer review, the same openness to both theoretical and applied contributions, and the same close relationship with the ParCo conference community.

Individual volumes are edited by guest editors — typically the programme chairs or organising committees of the originating conference, or invited experts for thematic volumes. Recent examples illustrate the calibre of these teams: volume 36, Parallel Computing: Technology Trends (2020), was edited by Ian Foster, Gerhard R. Joubert, Luděk Kučera, Wolfgang E. Nagel, and Frans Peters; volume 34, Future Trends of HPC in a Disruptive Scenario (2019), by Lucio Grandinetti, Gerhard R. Joubert, Kristel Michielsen, Seyedeh Leili Mirtaheri, Michela Taufer, and Rio Yokota; and volume 32, Parallel Computing is Everywhere (2018), by Sanzio Bassini, Marco Danelutto, Patrizio Dazzi, Gerhard R. Joubert, and Frans Peters. The recurring presence of the series editor alongside rotating guest editors provides both freshness of perspective and consistency of standards.

For prospective contributors, the editorial structure matters because there is no standing editorial board to which a manuscript can be submitted directly. Chapters enter the series through the call for papers of the conference or workshop behind a forthcoming volume, or by invitation from a volume's guest editors. The peer review applied to these chapters follows the standards of the originating event, with the series editor providing an additional layer of oversight.

Indexing and Abstracting

The series is indexed in Scopus, which is the principal abstracting and indexing service covering it. Scopus coverage underpins the citation metrics reported for the series and is the reason its volumes and chapters are discoverable through the major academic search engines. Chapters are also individually registered with Crossref through their DOIs, so chapter-level metadata — titles, authors, abstracts, and references — propagates to discovery services that consume Crossref data.

Because many volumes are conference proceedings, chapters additionally appear in computer-science bibliographic databases such as DBLP, which indexes the ParCo proceedings volumes in detail. University library catalogues worldwide hold the print and electronic volumes, and the IOS Press ebooks platform provides a single point of access to the recent run with full tables of contents. Google Scholar indexes the chapters, which is significant in a field where Scholar is often the first discovery tool researchers reach for.

Readers should be aware of one cataloguing subtlety: some databases classify individual volumes as books and others as serials, so the same volume can appear under slightly different publication-type labels depending on the database. Searching by ISSN (0927-5452) or by series title is the most reliable way to gather the complete run.

Metrics and Citation Standing

As a book series, Advances in Parallel Computing does not receive a Journal Impact Factor from Clarivate's Journal Citation Reports; the Impact Factor is a journal-level metric and is not computed for edited-volume series. Any "impact factor" figure attached to the series by a third-party website is either a mislabelled CiteScore-style calculation or a fabrication, and should be treated with scepticism.

What can be measured legitimately is the series' footprint in Scopus. Metric aggregators drawing on Scopus data report an SJR (SCImago Journal Rank) for the series in the region of 0.13–0.14 in recent years, placing it in the fourth quartile of the "Computer Science (miscellaneous)" category, and an h-index in the low twenties (22 in the most recent aggregator snapshots). These figures describe the aggregate citation performance of the series' chapters; they are modest in absolute terms, which is normal for proceedings-heavy book series, where citations accrue to individual chapters over long periods rather than concentrating in a two-year window.

For authors deciding where to publish, these metrics are less informative than the series' real currency: visibility within the parallel computing community and the permanence of the record. A chapter in a ParCo proceedings volume in this series is read by the researchers who define the field's agenda, is archived with a persistent DOI, and continues to be cited for a decade or more — a longevity that journal articles in fast-moving subfields do not always achieve.

How Volumes Come Into Being

Understanding the series requires understanding its production model, which differs fundamentally from that of a journal. There is no rolling submission system and no volume schedule announced years in advance. Instead, a volume begins when a conference is held — most often a ParCo meeting — or when the series editor commissions a thematic collection on a subject of current importance.

For conference volumes, the path is: researchers submit papers to the conference; the programme committee peer-reviews them; accepted papers are presented; and a selection of the presented work, revised in light of discussion, is assembled by the guest editors into the volume. The series editor reviews the assembled volume before publication. For thematic volumes, such as Advances in Edge Computing (volume 35, 2020) or Deep Learning for Image Processing Applications, the guest editors issue a call for chapters, review submissions, and curate the collection.

This model has a direct implication for anyone who wants to contribute: watch the ParCo conference announcements and the IOS Press series page rather than looking for a "submit manuscript" button. Chapters cannot be submitted to the series in the abstract; they must belong to a volume that is actually being assembled. The corollary is that acceptance into the originating conference is the effective acceptance decision, and the volume's peer-review standard is the conference's standard.

Notable Volumes

A tour of selected volumes shows how the series has tracked the field's evolution. The early Elsevier-era volumes established the template: collections on parallel architectures and algorithms that served the community through the 1990s. High Speed and Large Scale Scientific Computing (volume 18, 2009), edited by Wolfgang Gentzsch, Lucio Grandinetti, and Gerhard Joubert, captured the grid-computing era, when European infrastructure projects were linking supercomputing centres into continent-scale resources.

The 2010s volumes document the many-core and exascale transitions. Applications, Tools and Techniques on the Road to Exascale Computing (volume 22, 2012) and Parallel Computing: On the Road to Exascale (volume 27, 2016, from ParCo 2015) bracket the period when exascale moved from aspiration to funded programme. Parallel Computing is Everywhere (volume 32, 2018, from ParCo 2017) took its title from the observation that parallelism had escaped the supercomputing centre and entered every layer of the technology stack.

The most recent run reflects the field's diversification. Big Data and HPC: Ecosystem and Convergence (volume 33, 2018) addressed the merging of two previously distinct communities; Future Trends of HPC in a Disruptive Scenario (volume 34, 2019) confronted accelerators, novel interconnects, and changing programming models; Advances in Edge Computing: Massive Parallel Processing and Applications (volume 35, 2020) extended the series' reach to the network edge; Parallel Computing: Technology Trends (volume 36, 2020, from ParCo 2019 in Prague) was published open access, making the community's self-assessment freely available; and volumes 37 and 38 (2020–2021) moved into intelligent systems and smart computing, signalling that the series intends to follow parallel computing wherever it goes next.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Advances in Parallel Computing a journal?

No. It is an edited-volume book series. It has ISSNs (as serials do) and is tracked by Scopus, but it publishes books — usually conference proceedings or thematic collections — not journal issues, and it has no Journal Impact Factor.

Who publishes the series now?

Recent volumes are published by IOS Press. Volumes 1–14 were published by Elsevier Science. Always cite the publisher of the specific volume you are referencing.

How can I publish a chapter in the series?

Chapters enter through the conferences behind the volumes (primarily ParCo) or through calls for chapters issued by guest editors of thematic volumes. There is no direct manuscript submission route to the series itself.

Are volumes peer reviewed?

Yes. Conference-derived volumes inherit the peer review of the originating conference's programme committee, and the series editor provides additional oversight of the assembled volume.

Is there an article processing charge?

No. The series does not levy article processing charges; it is not an open-access journal. Some recent volumes are published open access at the publisher's or editors' initiative (for example, volume 36 under CC BY-NC 4.0).

How should I cite a chapter?

Use the book-chapter format: chapter authors, chapter title, "In" followed by the volume editors and volume title, the series name Advances in Parallel Computing with volume number, publisher, year, pages, and the chapter DOI (format 10.3233/APC...).

Where can I access the volumes?

Recent volumes are available through the IOS Press ebooks platform, which hosts tables of contents and, for open-access volumes, full text. Print volumes are held by university libraries worldwide; earlier volumes are available through academic booksellers and library consortia.

Does the series have an impact factor?

No. Book series do not receive Journal Impact Factors. Scopus-based indicators (SJR around 0.13–0.14, h-index around 22 in recent aggregator snapshots) describe its aggregate citation footprint and should not be confused with an Impact Factor.

Sources and Further Reading

• IOS Press ebooks — Advances in Parallel Computing series page (tables of contents for recent volumes)
• Scopus / SciJournal and Resurchify metric profiles for the series (SJR, h-index, coverage history)
• Queen's University Belfast research portal — volume 27 chapter records (ISSN confirmation)
• University of Tartu SciCloud publication list — volume 22 records (series history)
• ORCID / Florida International University records — 2008 volume chapter records (ISSN 0927-5452)