The ACM Computing Classification System is a subject classification system for computer science

Computer science

Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...

 devised by the Association for Computing Machinery

Association for Computing Machinery

The Association for Computing Machinery is a learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 as the world's first scientific and educational computing society. Its membership is more than 92,000 as of 2009...

. The system is comparable to the Mathematics Subject Classification

Mathematics Subject Classification

The Mathematics Subject Classification is an alphanumerical classification scheme collaboratively produced by staff of and based on the coverage of the two major mathematical reviewing databases, Mathematical Reviews and Zentralblatt MATH...

 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

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...

, which contains:

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

Temporal logic

Temporal logic

In logic, the term temporal logic is used to describe any system of rules and symbolism for representing, and reasoning about, propositions qualified in terms of time. In a temporal logic we can then express statements like "I am always hungry", "I will eventually be hungry", or "I will be hungry...

.

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.

External links

• ACM Computing Classification System is the homepage of the system, including links to three complete versions of the system, for 1964 http://www.acm.org/class/1964/, 1991 http://www.acm.org/class/class91-toc, and the current 1998 version http://www.acm.org/class/1998/overview.html
• 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.