Cognitive Computation

About Cognitive Computation

About Cognitive Computation

Cognitive Computation is an international, peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary scientific journal published by Springer (Springer Nature). Launched in 2009, the journal occupies a distinctive niche at the intersection of neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and artificial intelligence. It publishes original basic and applied work involving biologically inspired theoretical, computational, experimental, and integrative accounts of all aspects of natural and artificial cognitive systems.

The journal was founded to serve the emerging discipline of cognitive computation — a field that bridges the life sciences, social sciences, engineering, physical and mathematical sciences, and the humanities. Its stated mission is to provide a forum where different scientific communities can come together to discuss key issues and challenges, and to promote an interdisciplinary understanding of cognition in all its forms.

Cognitive Computation is published under the ISO 4 standard abbreviation Cogn. Comput. and is widely cited by that name. It should not be confused with similarly named journals such as Cognitive Processing, which is a separate Springer publication.

Key Facts at a Glance

Note on metrics: The journal's official Springer homepage does not currently publish a current impact factor, acceptance rate, or CiteScore figure. The 5.418 figure above is the 2020 Journal Citation Reports value cited by Wikipedia and is included for historical context only. Springer does not publish acceptance rates for this journal, so no acceptance-rate figure is given here.

Aims and Scope

The journal's aims are defined by Springer as publishing cutting-edge articles describing original basic and applied work involving biologically inspired computational accounts of all aspects of natural and artificial cognitive systems. It provides a platform for the dissemination of research, current practices, and future trends in the emerging discipline of cognitive computation.

Its main purpose is to establish a forum that brings different scientific communities together to discuss key issues and challenges, and to promote an interdisciplinary understanding of topics that include:

• Perception and sensory processing
• Action and motor control
• Attention and awareness
• Learning and memory
• Decision making
• Language processing and communication
• Reasoning and problem solving
• Consciousness aspects of cognition

The journal considers original contributions using theoretical, computational, experimental, and integrative approaches in cognitive systems. Areas of particular interest include, but are not limited to:

• Artificial intelligence and machine intelligence
• Neural networks and deep learning architectures
• Cognitive neuromorphic engineering and other hardware implementations
• Cognitive robotics
• Autonomous cognitive systems
• Neuroscience nanotechnology
• Self-organizing, swarm, and immune systems
• Complex systems and control theory
• Computational cognitive neuroscience
• Practical applications of the latest cognitive computing research

Who the Journal Serves

Springer lists the journal's audience as computational neuroscientists, computer scientists, cognitive scientists, software engineers, electronic engineers, neuromorphic engineers, systems designers, information managers, knowledge engineers, psychologists, linguists, artificial intelligence specialists, and researchers and professionals working in fields as diverse as finance, manufacturing, defense, medicine, and the sciences — both "pure" and "applied."

This broad audience reflects the journal's deliberate position as a meeting point between biology and engineering: researchers who model the brain meet researchers who build intelligent machines, and the journal exists to make that conversation rigorous and productive.

History of the Journal

2009 — Launch. Cognitive Computation was launched by Springer as a new addition to its neuroscience journals portfolio. The first issue appeared in March 2009 as Volume 1, Issue 1. In his inaugural editorial, the founding Editor-in-Chief, Professor Amir Hussain, described cognitive computation as an emerging discipline linking neurobiology, cognitive psychology, and artificial intelligence, and outlined a vision for the journal as a home for biologically inspired accounts of natural and artificial cognitive systems. The founding Advisory Board Chair was Professor John Taylor of King's College London, and the Honorary Editor-in-Chief was Professor Igor Aleksander of Imperial College London.

The journal began publication in quarterly format — four issues in 2009 — and was published in both electronic and print formats. All articles were published online first through Springer's Online First feature, making them available to the research community ahead of issue assignment.

2010–2014 — Quarterly era. Volumes 2 through 6 (2010–2014) appeared quarterly, four issues per year. During this period the journal established its identity with special issues on topics such as cognitive behavioural systems, computational creativity, and cognitive and emotional information processing. A 2013 special issue honored the memory of John Taylor, the journal's founding Advisory Board Chair, described in the issue title as "a polymath scholar."

2015 onwards — Bimonthly schedule. From Volume 7 (2015), the journal moved to a bimonthly rhythm with six issues per year (February, April, June, August, October, December), reflecting growth in submissions and in the field itself. Volumes 8 through 17 maintained this six-issue pattern.

2016–2022 — Special issues mature. Notable special issues during this period included advances in brain-inspired cognitive systems, sentic computing, neural signal processing, computational intelligence for big data analytics, cognitive multimodal data mining, and deep learning for clinical and healthcare applications. The 2022 volume included a special issue marking "A Decade of Sentic Computing," underlining the journal's long-running association with that research community.

2025 — Open access transition announced. On 5 August 2025, Springer Nature announced that Cognitive Computation would become a fully open access journal in 2026. From January 2026, the journal publishes only open access articles, with content freely available to readers worldwide.

2026 — Fully open access. In January 2026, the journal confirmed the transition was complete. Volume 18 (2026) is the first volume published entirely as open access, with Issue 1 appearing in December 2026.

Editorial Leadership

The journal was founded by Professor Amir Hussain, who served as its founding Editor-in-Chief. Hussain is a cognitive scientist and Chair Professor of Artificial Intelligence at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, and previously held professorships at Edinburgh Napier University and the University of Stirling in the United Kingdom. He founded the journal at the interface of neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and AI, and remains identified across his institutional biographies as the founding Editor-in-Chief of Springer's Cognitive Computation. He is also the founding editor-in-chief of two Springer book series: Socio-Affective Computing and SpringerBriefs in Cognitive Computation (also titled Cognitive Computation Trends).

The journal's editorial structure includes several layers:

• Honorary Editor: Professor Igor Aleksander (Imperial College London), a pioneer of neural network research in the United Kingdom.
• Advisory Board: An international panel including leading figures such as Professor Shun-Ichi Amari (RIKEN Center for Brain Science), Professor James L. McClelland (Stanford University), Professor Bernard Widrow (Stanford University), Professor Rodney Douglas (ETH Zurich), Professor Derong Liu (Chinese Academy of Sciences), Professor Tieniu Tan (Chinese Academy of Sciences), Professor DeLiang Wang (The Ohio State University), and Professor Marios Polycarpou (University of Cyprus).
• Editorial Board: A large international board of associate-level editors drawn from universities and research institutions across the United States, United Kingdom, China, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Singapore, Australia, Canada, Japan, and beyond. Notable members include Professor Jürgen Schmidhuber (University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland), Professor Erik Cambria (Nanyang Technological University), Professor Hussein Abbass (UNSW Sydney), Professor Francisco Herrera (Universidad de Granada), Professor Dacheng Tao (University of Technology Sydney), Professor Stefan Wermter (Universität Hamburg), and Professor Ron Sun (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute).

Special Sections and Their Editors

The journal maintains dedicated special sections, each with its own editorial leadership:

• Sentic Computing — Section Editor: Professor Erik Cambria (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore). Sentic computing is the multidisciplinary field that studies emotion and sentiment in human-computer interaction, and the journal has been one of its principal publication venues, including a 2022 special issue marking a decade of the field.
• Big Data Analytics — Senior Editor: Professor Asim Roy (Arizona State University); Co-Editors: Professor Kaizhu Huang (Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University) and Professor Mufti Mahmud (Nottingham Trent University).
• Cognitive and Social Decision Making (CSDM) — Section Editors: Professor JingTao Yao and Professor Yiyu Yao (both University of Regina, Canada).

The journal also lists an Associate Editor, Cosimo Ieracitano of the University of Naples Federico II.

Open Access Model and Article Processing Charges

Since January 2026, Cognitive Computation is a fully open access journal. This means all articles are freely available to readers worldwide, with no subscription charges or registration barriers. Springer Nature states that the transition reflects its commitment to open research, while enabling authors to comply with funder and institutional open access requirements.

Springer Nature notes the following benefits of open access publishing, based on its portfolio-wide data:

• Open access articles receive approximately 1.6 times more citations than non-open access articles across all subjects.
• Open access articles are downloaded approximately 4 times more.
• Open access articles attract approximately 2.5 times more Altmetric attention, including about 1.9 times more news mentions and 1.2 times more policy mentions.

Article processing charge. An APC applies to each article accepted for publication. The current APC for Cognitive Computation, as published on the journal's official "How to publish with us" page, is £2,190.00 GBP / $3,090.00 USD / €2,490.00 EUR. The APC price is determined from the date on which the article is accepted for publication and is subject to VAT or local taxes where applicable.

Waivers and discounts. Springer Nature offers APC waivers and discounts for articles published in its fully open access journals whose corresponding authors are based in the world's lowest-income countries. Requests for discretionary APC waivers or discounts from other authors are considered case by case and may be granted in cases of financial need. Applications for discretionary waivers must be made at the point of manuscript submission; requests made during review or after acceptance cannot be considered. Authors may also be covered by institutional open access agreements — Springer Nature maintains a portal where authors can check whether their institution participates and whether this journal is included.

Licences. Open access articles in the journal are published under Creative Commons licences, and authors retain copyright of their articles. Cognitive Computation articles are published under either a CC BY (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International) licence or a CC BY-NC-ND (Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 4.0 International) licence.

Abstracting and Indexing

The journal is abstracted and indexed in a wide range of databases. According to the official journal homepage, these include:

• Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE)
• Scopus
• EI Compendex
• DBLP
• INSPEC
• PsycINFO
• SCImago
• Current Contents / Engineering, Computing and Technology
• EBSCO
• ProQuest
• Google Scholar
• Dimensions
• CNKI and CNPIEC
• Japanese Science and Technology Agency (JST)
• ANVUR, Baidu, CLOCKSS, Portico, OCLC WorldCat Discovery Service, Ovid Discovery, TD Net Discovery Service, Wanfang, eLibrary.ru, Meta, Naver, and the Chinese Academy of Medical Science (CAMS)

Inclusion in the Science Citation Index Expanded and Scopus means the journal is covered by the major citation databases used for research evaluation worldwide.

Publication Schedule and Volumes

The journal currently publishes bimonthly, with six issues per year. Recent volumes have appeared on a February–December cycle, with issues in February, April, June, August, October, and December.

• Volumes 1–6 (2009–2014): quarterly publication, four issues per year.
• Volumes 7–17 (2015–2025): bimonthly publication, six issues per year.
• Volume 18 (2026): the first volume published entirely as open access; Issue 1 listed for December 2026.

Special issues and special sections have been a recurring feature throughout the journal's history. Examples include special issues on sentic computing, neural signal processing, advances in brain-inspired cognitive systems, computational intelligence for big data analytics, cognitive multimodal data mining, non-iterative learning approaches, brain-inspired cognitive systems (BICS), cognitively inspired computing for knowledge discovery, deep learning for clinical and healthcare applications, and — in 2013 — a memorial issue for the journal's founding Advisory Board Chair, John Taylor.

What the Journal Publishes

Cognitive Computation welcomes original research articles, review articles, and special-issue contributions. Its submission guidelines describe the journal as committed to high standards of presentation and invite authors to contact the editor to discuss the suitability of topics.

Typical topics covered in the journal include:

• Biologically inspired neural network architectures and learning algorithms
• Cognitive modeling and simulation of perception, attention, memory, and reasoning
• Neuromorphic computing and cognitive hardware implementations
• Cognitive robotics and autonomous cognitive systems
• Emotion, sentiment, and affective computing (sentic computing)
• Natural language processing grounded in cognitive principles
• Swarm intelligence, self-organizing systems, and immune-inspired computation
• Brain-inspired systems for healthcare, industry, and social applications
• Computational creativity, intelligence, and autonomy
• Cognitive decision making and social cognition

The journal's back catalogue reflects the growth of these fields over more than a decade and a half, from the early quarterly volumes focused on foundational cognitive architectures to recent volumes covering deep learning for clinical applications and cognitively inspired big data analytics.

Related Springer Publications

Cognitive Computation sits within a broader family of Springer publications stewarded by the same founding editor:

• SpringerBriefs in Cognitive Computation — a book series of concise, high-quality publications covering cutting-edge research and practical applications across the multidisciplinary fields of cognitive computation. Series editor: Amir Hussain.
• Socio-Affective Computing — a Springer book series also founded and edited by Amir Hussain, covering sentiment, emotion, and social computing topics closely related to the journal's sentic computing section.

Submission Guidance for Authors

Authors considering Cognitive Computation should note the following practical points, all drawn from the journal's official Springer pages:

• Manuscript preparation: Authors should follow Springer's manuscript guidelines and avoid common preparation mistakes as described in the journal's submission guidelines. The journal emphasizes high standards of presentation.
• Scope fit: The journal invites authors to contact the editor to discuss the suitability of topics before submitting — useful given the journal's distinctive interdisciplinary remit.
• Open access: All new articles are published open access. Authors should budget for the APC (£2,190 / $3,090 / €2,490) or check eligibility for institutional coverage or waivers.
• Licensing choice: Authors publish under CC BY or CC BY-NC-ND and retain copyright.
• Special sections: Authors working in sentic computing, big data analytics, or cognitive and social decision making may consider the dedicated sections, each with its own editorial team.
• Indexing visibility: Articles benefit from indexing in SCIE, Scopus, EI Compendex, and the other databases listed above.

Note: Springer does not publish an acceptance rate for Cognitive Computation, so no such figure can be reported here. Review timelines are likewise not published on the journal's homepage; authors should consult the journal's submission system or contact the editorial office for current estimates.

Why Cognitive Computation Matters

Cognitive Computation matters because it is one of the few journals that explicitly treats the brain as both the object of study and the model for engineering. Rather than sitting entirely within neuroscience, psychology, or computer science, it was founded on the proposition — articulated in its inaugural 2009 editorial — that cognitive computation is itself a discipline: one that links neurobiology, cognitive psychology, and artificial intelligence.

This positioning has given the journal a durable role in several research communities. For computational neuroscientists, it offers a venue that values biological plausibility. For AI researchers, it offers a venue that values inspiration from natural cognitive systems. For engineers, it offers a venue for cognitive robotics, neuromorphic hardware, and practical applications. And for the sentic computing community, it has been a principal home, hosting special issues and a dedicated section over more than a decade.

The 2026 transition to full open access marks a significant new chapter, removing paywalls from the journal's future content and widening its readership to anyone with an internet connection — consistent with the journal's founding goal of bringing different scientific communities together.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Cognitive Computation an open access journal?

Yes. As of January 2026, Cognitive Computation is a fully open access journal — all new articles are published open access and are freely available to readers worldwide.

What is the APC for Cognitive Computation?

The current article processing charge, published on the journal's official page, is £2,190.00 GBP / $3,090.00 USD / €2,490.00 EUR per accepted article, subject to VAT or local taxes where applicable. Waivers and discounts are available in defined circumstances.

What is the impact factor of Cognitive Computation?

The journal's official Springer homepage does not currently display an impact factor. The Journal Citation Reports listed an impact factor of 5.418 for the year 2020 (as cited by Wikipedia). No current figure is officially published on the publisher's site, so treat older figures as historical only.

Who is the Editor-in-Chief of Cognitive Computation?

The journal's founding Editor-in-Chief is Professor Amir Hussain, a cognitive scientist and Chair Professor of Artificial Intelligence at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (previously at Edinburgh Napier University and the University of Stirling, UK). The Honorary Editor is Professor Igor Aleksander of Imperial College London.

How often is Cognitive Computation published?

The journal is published bimonthly — six issues per year. It was published quarterly (four issues per year) from its 2009 launch through 2014.

What are the ISSNs of Cognitive Computation?

The print ISSN is 1866-9956 and the electronic ISSN is 1866-9964.

Is Cognitive Computation indexed in Scopus and Web of Science?

Yes. The journal is indexed in Scopus and in the Science Citation Index Expanded (part of the Web of Science Core Collection), as well as EI Compendex, DBLP, INSPEC, PsycINFO, SCImago, and other databases.

What types of articles does the journal accept?

The journal considers original basic and applied research articles describing biologically inspired computational accounts of natural and artificial cognitive systems, spanning theoretical, computational, experimental, and integrative studies. It also runs special sections on sentic computing, big data analytics, and cognitive and social decision making.

Where is the official journal homepage?

The official journal homepage is hosted by Springer Nature at link.springer.com/journal/12559, where readers can browse volumes and issues, the editorial board, submission guidelines, and open access policies.