Pattern Analysis and Applications

Edited by:
  • S. Singh
>Springer. 4/yr. £156 plus postage

Pattern recognition has been under investigation for more than 30 years. This interdisciplinary subject has a lot of interesting technical applications, for example in image processing, robotics and multimedia systems. A number of different journals cover pattern recognition in general and in the context of different specialized disciplines, such as computer vision, neural networks, cognitive science and machine learning.

Within this growing body of literature, the new journal Pattern Analysis and Applications tries to focus in particular on novel techniques and industrial applications of pattern recognition. Additionally, it wants to offer a forum for the publication of benchmark studies and comparisons of different methods. Each issue contains four to six original articles (without length constraints), one or two book reviews and a calendar of conferences and workshops on related topics. Abstracts are accessible through the Internet.

The issues so far have provided a good balance of contributions from laboratories in different nations, and between articles about theory and about applications. A number of articles that compared and evaluated different methods seemed to me to be particularly useful. With turn-around times between four and seven months, it is definitively among the fastest-publishing journals in the field.

The quality of the contributed articles has been variable but reasonable — though it seems that many authors do not contribute their most influential work. Pattern Analysis and Applications will only be able to fulfil its aim to become one of the leading journals in the field if more authors are willing to provide articles of central general relevance. A subscription can be recommended, in particular for institutions that are working on applied aspects of pattern recognition.