SoSyM reflections: the 2021 "state of the journal" report

The inaugural issue of eachSoSyMvolume-year is usually written during a time of personal and professional reflection. Over the past 12months, researchers fromall disciplines continued to experience the need for flexibility as the COVID-19 pandemic extended its impact across the globe throughmany variants. This has forced us all to adapt in many ways such that the idea of “virtual everything” permeates our daily discussions. The software and systems modeling community continued to thrive and exhibited a great degree of flexibility and increased production in the overall research output, despite the limitations for in-person collaborations. In fact, for many years, the first issue of each SoSyM volume-year has reported growth in submissions and other important metrics. The same is true for the 2021 publication year of SoSyM. The journal continues a positive and healthy trajectory in the increased number of submissions and an impact factor that ranks SoSyM among the top publication venues for software engineering. The following sections report on various statistics and general updates about SoSyM that occurred over 2021. We invite all authors to continue submitting their contributions to SoSyM, and we are always available to correspond regarding questions about the suitability of an idea or potential submission. We wish you all of the best for a productive and satisfying year of research and personal growth in 2022!


202Summary statistics
The six SoSyM issues published in 2021 contained 40 Regular papers, 32 Special Section papers, 5 Theme Section papers, 4 Expert Voices, 6 Guest Editorials, and 1 Erratum. In total, 2197 pages were published in volume 20. This is a 38% increase compared to the previous year and continues to represent the commitment by our publisher (Springer) in reducing the time to publication by processing papers expeditiously after acceptance. We are grateful to Elizabeth Dziubela, our Springer liaison, for her helpful efforts in assisting us with the expansion.
We are excited to report that the 2-year impact factor (IF) for SoSyM remains very respectable at 1.910 (previously at 1.876 in 2020 and 2.66 in the record year of 2019). The 5-year IF increased to 2.074 (from 1.915 last year). Furthermore, the h-5 Google Scholar ranking places SoSyM at #14 among all conferences and journals related to software engineering and programming languages. Further rankings can be found at https://www.sosym.org/.
We have observed that modeling continues to develop in overall maturity across the core domains of Software Engineering and Information Systems. Additionally, there is a growing interest in SoSyM among researchers who focus on model-based/model-driven activities in a wider area of software and systems engineering. This includes man-made systems, such as cars, airplanes, cell phones, and health care devices, but also existing systems from nature, which include biological systems, chemical structures and interactions, and of course complex physical or medical activities in various areas. Thus, it was natural that the number of submissions increased in 2021 over previous years. Over the past year, SoSyM received 420 submissions-more than 50 additional submissions compared to 2020 and the largest number for any year in our history. Also, the number of downloads increased again. At the end of 2020, there were 179,555 downloaded SoSyM articles during the calendar year. Comparatively, the final 2021 yearly download total was 197,730.
The acceptance rate increased in 2021 to 34.9% which seems to be coming from the fact that SoSyM has a strong reputation and the number of low-quality papers submitted has considerably decreased. Unfortunately, the average time from submission to the final decision (accept or reject) has also increased to 170 days (146 days in 2020). It remains a challenge for our Editors to identify reviewers amid a community that has the specific expertise in areas covered by SoSyM and the increased submissions are starting to exhibit new challenges in the decision time.

SoSyM's 10-year most influential paper awards
When a research community matures, it is often interesting to take a look back through history to observe what contributions had the most impact and what topics emerged as most prominent over specific periods of time. Our collaboration with the MODELS conference has provided an opportunity for us to honor the authors of the most influential papers in our community. Each year, SoSyM identifies the two papers (from the Regular and Theme Section areas) that had the most impact over the past decade since their publication. The selection is based on the ISI citation index among papers published in SoSyM since 2010. The following two papers were presented virtually at MODELS 2021, and each author received an award certificate. We congratulate the authors for these "Most Influential" papers of SoSyM over the past decade.
The SoSyM 2021 "10-year most influential Regular paper award" was given to: The SoSyM 2021 "10-year most influential Theme Section paper award" was given to:

SoSyM's journal-first papers at MODELS 2021
The collaboration between SoSyM and the MODELS conference continued with the organization of the SoSyM "Journal-First" option. This collaboration enables authors of recent SoSyM papers to present their work across the core conference sessions at MODELS. Through this collaboration, SoSyM authors have the opportunity to reach a broader audience to present their work. This includes research talks that explore more depth through analytical and empirical evidence than found in a typical MODELS conference paper. At MODELS 2021, a record number of "SoSyM First" papers were presented (30 papers We are grateful for his assistance and wish him all of the best in his new professional endeavors.

Reviewers in 2021
A strong research community depends on the efforts of volunteers who help serve as reviewers. The software and systems modeling community has always risen to the request for help from SoSyM. We appreciate all of the help that the reviewers provided in service to the modeling community! We would also like to offer special recognition to the following reviewers, who were recommended as the SoSyM Best Reviewers of 2021, based on the technical depth and feedback provided to authors over the past year-congratulations! Each of the following reviewers received a certificate of recognition: Thais Batista, Edouard Batot, Dinesh Batra, Stef-Jean-Sebastien Sottet, Thomas Springer, Emmanouela

Contents of this issue
This issue also includes a special Expert Voice article, with the thought provoking title, "Models: The fourth dimension of computer science-Towards studies of models and modelling," contributed by Bernhard Thalheim. Bernhard is a long-time member of our community, and his paper contains many insights and action points for your consideration. We strongly recommend his paper for your consideration and reflection on the role of modeling in computer science. The contents of this issue are as follows: Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecomm ons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Funding Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.
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