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Journal of Systems and Software

journal

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 9, 2026
Entity authorityQ6295981
Source-derived summary

The Journal of Systems and Software is a computer science journal in the area of software systems, established in 1979 and published by Elsevier.

Content and scope

The journal publishes research papers, state-of-the-art surveys, and practical experience reports. It includes papers covering issues of programming methodology, software engineering, and hardware/software systems. Topics include: "software systems, prototyping issues, high-level specification techniques, procedural and functional programming techniques, data-flow concepts, multiprocessing, real-time, distributed, concurrent, and telecommunications systems, software metrics, reliability models for software, performance issues, and management concerns."

Abstracting and indexing

According to the 2021 Journal Citation Reports, the Journal of Systems and Software has an impact factor of 3.514.

According to Google Scholar, the journal has an h5-index of 61, which ranks third among international publication venues in software systems, after ICSE and IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering.

Past and present editors-in-chief

John Manley and Alan Salisbury (1979–1983)

Richard E. Fairley (1984–1985)

Robert L. Glass (1986–2001)

David N. Card (2002–2008)

Hans van Vliet (2009–2017)

Paris Avgeriou and David Shepherd (2018–current)

Notable articles

A few of the most notable (downloaded) articles are:

Software defect prediction based on enhanced metaheuristic feature selection optimization and a hybrid deep neural network

A software engineering perspective on engineering machine learning systems: State of the art and challenges

MeTeaM: A method for characterizing mature software metrics teams

Awards

The journal presents awards for the Best Papers, the Most Influential Papers (MIPs), and the Editor of the Year. The journal considers all Best Paper awards given in the same year as equally worthy (i.e., not implying any ordering). The Most Influential Paper awards are determined based on citation impact (via Google Scholar) and download metrics over a ten-year window.

2025

Best Paper Awards

Ly, D. et al. (2025).

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Journal of Systems and Software” is journal. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Journal, Systems and Software, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1979, 2021, 1983, 1984—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1979-01-01. For this dossier, Journal, Systems and Software is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “journal” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6295981. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1979, 2021, 1983 and 1984.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Journal of Systems and Software”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Journal of Systems and Software primary sources, Journal of Systems and Software archive and Journal research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Journal of Systems and Software”?
  2. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
  3. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Journal of Systems and Software” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.