ACM Computing Classification System

The ACM Computing Classification System is a subject classification system for computer science devised by the Association for Computing Machinery. The system is comparable to the Mathematics Subject Classification in scope, aims and structure, being used by the various ACM journals to organise subjects by area.

History

The system has gone through six revisions, the first version being published in 1964, and revised versions appearing in 1982, 1983, 1987, 1991, and the now current version in 1998.

Structure

The ACM Computing Classification System is hierarchically structured in four levels: three outer levels, coded by capital letters and numbers, and an uncoded fourth level of subject descriptors. Thus, for example, one branch of the hierarchy contains

I. Computing Methodologies, which contains:

I.2 Artificial Intelligence, which contains:

I.2.4 Knowledge representation formalisms and methods, which contains:

Temporal logic.

Each top-level category has two standard subcategories: "general", coded with a "0", and "miscellaneous", coded with a "m". For instance, I.0 denotes the "general" subcategory of Computing Methodologies, while I.m denotes its miscellaneous subcategory. Several subtopics are listed as uncoded subject descriptors in these standard subcategories.

See also

Computer Science portal

• arXiv, a preprint server that uses a somewhat different subdivision of topics in its computer science subject areas but also allows papers to be classified using the ACM system

References

• Coulter, Neal (1997), "ACM's computing classification system reflects changing times", Communications of the ACM (New York, NY, USA: ACM) 40 (12): 111–112, DOI:10.1145/265563.265579 .
• Wierzbicki, Neal; French, James; Glinert, Ephraim; Horton, Thomas; Mead, Nancy; Rada, Roy; Ralston, Anthony; Rodkin, Craig et al. (1998), "Computing Classification System 1998: Current Status and Future Maintenance Report of the CCS Update Committee", Computing Reviews (New York, NY, USA: ACM): 1–5, http://www.acm.org/about/class/ccsup.pdf .
• Mirkin, Boris; Nascimento, Susana; Pereira, Luis Moniz (2008), "Representing a Computer Science Research Organization on the ACM Computing Classification System", in Eklund, Peter; Haemmerlé, Ollivier, Supplementary Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Conceptual Structures (ICCS-2008), CEUR Workshop Proceedings, 354, RWTH Aachen University, pp. 57–65, http://ftp.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/Publications/CEUR-WS/Vol-354/p19.pdf .

External links

• ACM Computing Classification System is the homepage of the system, including links to three complete versions of the system, for 1964 [1], 1991 [2], and the current 1998 version [3]
• XML version of the ACM Computing Classification System version 1998
• The ACM Computing Research Repository uses a classification scheme that is much coarser than the ACM subject classification, and does not cover all areas of CS, but is intended to better cover active areas of research. In addition, papers in this repository are classified according to the ACM subject classification.

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