About the Journal

Focus and Scope

The Electronic Journal of Combinatorics (E-JC) is a fully-refereed electronic journal with very high standards, publishing papers of substantial content and interest in all branches of discrete mathematics, including combinatorics, graph theory, and algorithms for combinatorial problems. We also publish high quality survey articles, including surveys that are periodically updated.

Peer Review Process

All published papers are refereed to the highest standard, to ensure that they are original, correct and substantial.  The median time from submission to publication is 6 months. Please do not send queries about the progress of your paper if it has been under consideration for less than 6 months.

Publication Frequency

E-JC publishes one regular volume per year (divided into issues), but occasionally special issues are also published. Papers are published as soon as they are accepted.

Open Access Policy

E-JC is free for both authors and readers. By making research freely available, E-JC supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

Publication of individual authors' work by the Electronic Journal of Combinatorics does not constitute endorsement of the policies of any government or other agencies.

The Editorial Process

  1. The Managing Editor assigns your paper to one of the Editors-in-Chief.
  2. If your paper appears potentially acceptable, the Editor-in-Chief will send it to one or more referees. In some cases, several rounds of refereeing may be required and you may be asked to make changes. This step can take from days to months, depending on the referees.
  3. If your paper still appears potentially acceptable when the refereeing process is complete, the Editor-in-Chief will ask the committee of all Editors-in-Chief to consider your paper and make a final decision on whether to accept it or not.
  4. If your paper is accepted, you will be asked to provide a new version in the format of the journal (see the Author Guidelines). At this stage, source files in LaTeX and any supplementary files (e.g. figures) must be submitted.
  5. A managing editor will allocate your paper a number and may make further minor formatting changes. Your paper will then be published approximately 2-4 weeks after you provided your final version. You will not be specifically notified when it is published, though you can choose to be notified of all papers that we publish.

Conference Papers

Proceedings of conferences sometimes include short versions (sometimes called extended abstracts and sometimes mandatory for a conference) of a longer, more detailed paper. In order for such a longer paper to be published in E-JC, the following must hold:

(i) The E-JC paper must cite the shorter version in the references, and state that the E-JC paper is an extended version of the shorter paper/extended abstract.

(ii) The omitted details in the shorter version must be substantial, and not so straightforward that an interested reader could readily fill them in.

(iii) The E-JC paper must be complete (as if the shorter version did not exist) and satisfy the usual high standards of E-JC for interest and results.

Note: The Electronic Journal of Combinatorics no longer publishes full conference proceedings.

Ownership

The Electronic Journal of Combinatorics is owned by its Editorial Board and Editorial Team.

Conflict of Interest Policy for Referees

Except in unusual circumstances, the Electronic Journal of Combinatorics 
does not use referees who have too close a relationship with authors. 
A potential referee is asked to disclose any of the following relationships 
to the editor-in-chief in charge.

  1. She/He and one of the authors are related or in a personal relationship.
  2. She/He has a joint research grant with one of the authors, or is applying for or is considering applying for such a grant.
  3. She/He is collaborating with one of the authors on a topic closely related to the topic of the paper.
  4. One of the authors is a former or current research student of her/him.
  5. One of the authors works in the same department as her/him.
  6. One of the authors is a former PhD or postdoctoral supervisor of her/him.

Resubmission of a rejected paper

A paper previously rejected by E-JC may be resubmitted only under very special circumstances. The author should consult with the editor-in-chief who rejected the paper before resubmission. If the editor-in-chief agrees then, when resubmitting, in the box labelled "Comments for the Editor", the author should say that the paper was rejected by (name of the editor-in-chief) so that the paper is assigned appropriately.

Thanks

The Electronic Journal of Combinatorics, as a free web-based mathematics journal, relies on the generosity of many people and institutions for its operation. We have no income and no paid employees.

Our papers are carefully reviewed by anonymous referees who give generously of their time and their expertise. We gratefully acknowledge their essential contributions.

The web site of the Journal is hosted by the School of Computing at the Australian National University, and was previously hosted by the Department of Mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania. We thank both these institutions for generously supplying disk space, server capacity, and valuable technical advice.

Journal History

The Electronic Journal of Combinatorics (E-JC) was founded in 1994 by Herbert Wilf of the University of Pennsylvania and Neil Calkin of the Georgia Institute of Technology. E-JC was one of the first journals to be delivered by the World Wide Web, one of the first totally free mathematics journals, and one of the first journals to leave copyright with authors.

From 1997 to 2009, an annual edition of E-JC was published in print by International Press under the name Journal of Combinatorics. That name is now in use by a new journal which has no connection to us.

A Note on Journal Rankings

In 2010, as part of the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) initiative, the Australian Research Council (ARC) published a ranking of over 10,000 academic journals. The possible ranks were A* (top 5%), A (next 15%), B (next 30%), and C (remaining 50%). The Australian Mathematical Society was commissioned by the ARC to recommend a ranking of mathematics journals. The Electronic Journal of Combinatorics was given a rank of A by The Australian Mathematical Society, but, due to an administrative error, the ARC published it as C. In 2011, the ARC abandoned journal ranking without revising the original list.

However, a number of other countries have taken the 2010 ARC list and used it without change. If your country is looking at doing the same, it would be worth drawing attention to this anomaly. The Australian Mathematical Society rankings for mathematical journals,  showing the original and correct rank of A, can be found on this page.