<p>Among general-purpose theory conferences (not counting those that specialize in one subarea or another), the most common ranking I have seen is:</p>
<ol>
<li>JACM</li>
<li>SICOMP</li>
<li>A large equivalence class</li>
<li>IPL</li>
</ol>
<p>That said, I feel like I need to provide all kinds of disclaimers on this:</p>
<ul>
<li>As with any strength-ranking system, I am hesitant to give rankings at all, because they encourage lazily evaluating papers on the strength of their venue rather than the strength of their results.  I have seen excellent papers at all levels of this ranking.  But I also recognize the value in making sure new members of the community don't have to guess at this.</li>
<li>This is very subjective.  Many will disagree with this ranking, or perhaps have a finer-grained separation of the equivalence class than me (and I hope those people will chime in).  The community ranking may also change with time.</li>
<li>IPL in particular tends to play a different role than the other journals, so it's not really fair to call it the &quot;weakest.&quot;  It's often used as a home for quick notes, or short results that perhaps don't occupy a full paper, but which can still be a great service to the community to write down.  These are often nice papers to read.  More than any other journal, it's common to see an IPL paper that did not have a corresponding conference version.</li>
<li>Some journal editions are special editions that take the best papers from some particular conference.  These tend to be particularly strong editions, and they follow the associated conference ranking more than the journal ranking.</li>
<li>There are important considerations for journal submissions that have nothing to do with ranking.  One is that journals tend to have different turnaround times. Another is that some try to bias against submitting to Elsevier-run journals, and towards submitting to open access journals (shoutout to TheoretiCS - I recently had a good experience with their review process).</li>
</ul>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-12-07T19:38:22.857Z
I think Theory of Computing and maybe now also TheoretiCS are on par with SICOMP. Maybe also JCSS (at least it used to be, maybe slightly diminished but I still think of it as significantly stronger than Theoretical Computer Science). Agree about JACM and IPL (esp your comments about IPL, that it's not really fair to "rank" it this way). I also think of the Springer journal computational complexity as pretty strong, maybe in between SICOMP and TCS. TCS being representative of the "large equivalence class"
Joshua Grochow
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-12-07T20:46:49.650Z
Thanks - that is helpful nuance!
GMB
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-12-08T02:04:06.757Z
TCS is pretty broad so depending on sub-speciality people submit strong papers to journals outside the standard ones. Computational geometers submit to DCG, combinatorial optimization people submit to Math of OR and Math Programming etc.
Chandra Chekuri
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-12-08T05:47:46.903Z
As an algorithms person I would rank ACM TALG at the third place after JACM and SICOMP. The bar for TALG seems similar to SODA, while to me it seems that (almost?) all other journals in this "large equivalence class" publish papers clearly below SODA level.
Laakeri
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-12-09T07:51:07.367Z
For algorithm, dou you think what is rank of ALgorithmica, less than TALG? tcs? In graph theory, some people think Algorithmica is very good journal, but i don't know people in Algorithm community how to evaluate it.@Laakeri
Yuhang Bai
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-12-07T17:14:18.013Z
2024-12-07T17:14:18.013Z
GMB
<p>I’m a PhD student specializing in graph algorithms, and while I’m familiar with the journals in the graph theory community, I have less exposure to the top journals in theoretical computer science (TCS). I know that conferences are often highly regarded in TCS (e.g., STOC, FOCS, SODA), but I’m interested in understanding how journals or conferences are ranked within the TCS field, particularly in comparison to the way journals are ranked in graph theory.</p>
<p>For instance, in the graph theory community, the ranking might look something like this:</p>
<p>A: JCTB, Comb., JCTA</p>
<p>A-: J. Graph Theory, CPC, RSA, Eur. J. Comb.</p>
<p>B+: SIAM J. Discrete Math.</p>
<p>B: DM, etc.</p>
<p>How does the ranking of theoretical computer science journals compare? I understand that conferences like STOC, FOCS, and SODA are particularly prominent, but I’m curious about the journals or conferences landscape.</p>
<p>Remark:I noticed that TCS is very broad and different subfields may have different preferences, so I am particularly interested in algorithms or discrete algorithms.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-12-07T14:43:49.667Z
You can take a look at the CORE ranking.
Bartosz Bednarczyk
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-12-07T15:10:09.500Z
This website only has confercences, and the ratings are rather rough. I would rather know the ranks in people's minds, rather than simply relying on a single piece of data.
Yuhang Bai
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-12-08T17:49:51.627Z
Here is the link for core for journals. https://portal.core.edu.au/jnl-ranks/
Bartosz Bednarczyk
<soft-question><conferences><journals>
How are theoretical computer science journals ranked within the community?
Yuhang Bai
# How are theoretical computer science journals ranked within the community?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2024-12-07)

I’m a PhD student specializing in graph algorithms, and while I’m familiar with the journals in the graph theory community, I have less exposure to the top journals in theoretical computer science (TCS). I know that conferences are often highly regarded in TCS (e.g., STOC, FOCS, SODA), but I’m interested in understanding how journals or conferences are ranked within the TCS field, particularly in comparison to the way journals are ranked in graph theory.

For instance, in the graph theory community, the ranking might look something like this:

A: JCTB, Comb., JCTA

A-: J. Graph Theory, CPC, RSA, Eur. J. Comb.

B+: SIAM J. Discrete Math.

B: DM, etc.

How does the ranking of theoretical computer science journals compare? I understand that conferences like STOC, FOCS, and SODA are particularly prominent, but I’m curious about the journals or conferences landscape.

Remark:I noticed that TCS is very broad and different subfields may have different preferences, so I am particularly interested in algorithms or discrete algorithms.

**Tags:** soft-question, conferences, journals
> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: You can take a look at the CORE ranking.  
> **username_0**: This website only has confercences, and the ratings are rather rough. I would rather know the ranks in people's minds, rather than simply relying on a single piece of data.  
> **username_1**: Here is the link for core for journals. https://portal.core.edu.au/jnl-ranks/  

---

## 1 answers

### Answer by username_2 on 2024-12-07. Score: 5

Among general-purpose theory conferences (not counting those that specialize in one subarea or another), the most common ranking I have seen is:

1. JACM
2. SICOMP
3. A large equivalence class
4. IPL

That said, I feel like I need to provide all kinds of disclaimers on this:

* As with any strength-ranking system, I am hesitant to give rankings at all, because they encourage lazily evaluating papers on the strength of their venue rather than the strength of their results. I have seen excellent papers at all levels of this ranking. But I also recognize the value in making sure new members of the community don't have to guess at this.
* This is very subjective. Many will disagree with this ranking, or perhaps have a finer-grained separation of the equivalence class than me (and I hope those people will chime in). The community ranking may also change with time.
* IPL in particular tends to play a different role than the other journals, so it's not really fair to call it the "weakest." It's often used as a home for quick notes, or short results that perhaps don't occupy a full paper, but which can still be a great service to the community to write down. These are often nice papers to read. More than any other journal, it's common to see an IPL paper that did not have a corresponding conference version.
* Some journal editions are special editions that take the best papers from some particular conference. These tend to be particularly strong editions, and they follow the associated conference ranking more than the journal ranking.
* There are important considerations for journal submissions that have nothing to do with ranking. One is that journals tend to have different turnaround times. Another is that some try to bias against submitting to Elsevier-run journals, and towards submitting to open access journals (shoutout to TheoretiCS - I recently had a good experience with their review process).

> **Comments:**
> **username_3**: I think Theory of Computing and maybe now also TheoretiCS are on par with SICOMP. Maybe also JCSS (at least it used to be, maybe slightly diminished but I still think of it as significantly stronger than Theoretical Computer Science). Agree about JACM and IPL (esp your comments about IPL, that it's not really fair to "rank" it this way). I also think of the Springer journal computational complexity as pretty strong, maybe in between SICOMP and TCS. TCS being representative of the "large equivalence class"  
> **username_2**: Thanks - that is helpful nuance!  
> **username_4**: TCS is pretty broad so depending on sub-speciality people submit strong papers to journals outside the standard ones. Computational geometers submit to DCG, combinatorial optimization people submit to Math of OR and Math Programming etc.  
> **username_5**: As an algorithms person I would rank ACM TALG at the third place after JACM and SICOMP. The bar for TALG seems similar to SODA, while to me it seems that (almost?) all other journals in this "large equivalence class" publish papers clearly below SODA level.  
> **username_0**: For algorithm, dou you think what is rank of ALgorithmica, less than TALG? tcs? In graph theory, some people think Algorithmica is very good journal, but i don't know people in Algorithm community how to evaluate it.@Laakeri  

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