Dr. Xin-She Yang received his DPhil in Applied Mathematics from the University of Oxford, then worked at Leeds University and Cambridge University for a few years, and now is a Senior Research Scientist at National Physical Laboratory. Xin-She Yang is also a Distinguished Professor of Shaanxi Province at Xi'an Engineering University, and a Guest Professor at Shandong University and Harbin Engineering University. He has authored a dozen books with Wiley, World Scientific, Dunedin Academic and Springer, and published more than 110 papers.Xin-She Yang is the Editor-in-Chief of Int. J. Mathematical Modeling and Numerical Optimization (IJMMNO, Inderscience), serves as an editorial board member of several international journals, including Elsevier's Journal of Computational Science (JoCS), IJAI, SJI and IJBIC, and the editor of OCP Science book series. He is also vice chair of the IEEE CIS task force. Xin-She Yang is also an Honorary Fellow of Australia Institute of High Energetic Materials. In addition to his interests in mathematical modeling, computational mathematics and optimization, he is also enthusiastic about artificial intelligence and met heuristic algorithms, and thus have developed some nature-inspired algorithms such as Firefly Algorithm and Cuckoo Search. He is the recipient of 1996 Garside Scholar Award of Oxford University. He has been on program committees of over 25 international conferences such as ICCS'10, MIC'09, EA'09, Meta'10, BIOMA'10, ICAART'10, and WCE'10, and acted as program co-chair of COMS'10, COMS'11 and ITBI'10. His research on cuckoo search has been highlighted in the media, including Science Daily (May 2010) and Scientific Computing (June 2010). Xin-She Yang has given many invited talks at over a dozen universities

Dr. Xin-She Yang  major research interests focus on Applied Mathematics and Mathematical Modeling, Computational Mathematics,Engineering Design, Optimization, Nature-Inspired Algorithms, Swarm Intelligence and Metaheuristics.

1. What makes an article top quality? 

Response: Novelty and new ideas that can provide new ways of thinking and problem-solving in an academic article makes it a top quality contribution.

2. Do you think that journals determine research trends?  

Response: Partly. The research trends are determined by key questions that are important to a field, and a reputable journal can help to promote such key research and thus may affect the trend indirectly.

3. What makes a good position paper?  

Response: Something that can provide a timely update of the new research.

4. What are the qualities you look for in an article? 

Response: Novelty, new ideas, new applications that are important, not incremental minor research.

5. Can you give us a broad indication of the types of themes a scientific journal should cover?  

Response: It all depends on the subject areas and the scope of the journal. The current scopes and aims of the journal seem right.

6. What sorts of research methods and frameworks do you expect people to use, and how will they balance conceptual and applied research?  

Response: Rigorous, analytical and try to solve key problems. New ideas/methods and new applications should be equally important.

7. How would you describe the journal’s mission and editorial objectives to our readers? 

Response: The main mission of a journal is to provide a trustable and timely platform to exchange new ideas and reflect the current trends. The editorial objectives are to ensure the quality of the accepted papers and make sure a good coverage of the current research achievements.

8. If you could be granted dream articles, what would they be on? 

Response: They should be able to provide new ways of thinking and new methods for solving real-world problems effectively and efficiently.

9. Are there any particular areas which you would like to see, or expect to see, collaborate?  

Response: More algorithms, methods and applications with mathematical and analytical rigor.

10. How does the research published percolate through to practitioners? 

Response: By access, downloads and citations.

11. How can a publisher ensure the authors/readers a rigorous peer review and quality control?  

Response: Through peer-review process, and ideally double-blind reviews.

12. What makes an article top quality? 

Response: New applications and new approaches from other disciplines.

13. What do you see as the merits of journals, as opposed to book series, as a means of scholarly communications? 

Response: Journals should publish timely updates of new research, and it’s a very important part of academic establishments.

14. How do you differentiate Journal of Computer Engineering and Information Technology with other journals in the field? 

Response: The journal starts to show its presence in the community and the quality is very important. Realistically, it may take a few years to establish itself as an important player in the field.