The ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications and Applications (TOMCCAP) is an ACM multidisciplinary, archival, scholarly journal in the general field of multimedia and applications, which started operating in January 2004. It is the prime ACM journal in the field. Multimedia is now a mature area, having evolved over approximately 20 years. The term “media” traditionally referred to entities such as audio, video, text, images, graphics, animation. New media will be added in the future, including virtual reality, holography, haptics, eSmell, eTaste, eThought, …. The term “multimedia” has now been accepted to mean documents composed of at least two correlated media. The correlation could be temporal, spatial or semantic. Applications now appear in many fields such as entertainment, publishing, advertising, banking, insurance, e-commerce, travel, medical, defense, training, geographical information systems, weather and many others.
 
TOMCCAP is soliciting paper submissions on all aspects of multimedia, as defined above, including systems, devices, signal processing and coding, graphics, databases, retrieval, networking and applications. Papers on single media (audio, video, animation, haptics,..), their processing, networking  and applications are also welcome. However, papers covering a single algorithm or aspect of one specific kind of media only (like e.g. image compression algorithms) are likely to be rejected.

Of special interest are papers on the following three major challenges: (i) new authoring tools that make authoring complex multimedia as easy as using a word processor or a drawing program, (ii) applications that make interactions with remote people and environments nearly the same as interactions with local people and environments and (iii) multimedia systems that make capturing, storing, finding, and using digital media an everyday occurrence in our computing environment. Papers on new integrated media, including virtual reality, haptics, holography, eSmell, eTaste, eThought are also highly encouraged.

The transactions consists primarily of research papers. This is an archival journal and it is intended that the papers will have lasting importance and value over time. In general, papers whose primary focus is on particular multimedia products will not be included.

The journal accepts publications in the three general subfields of multimedia computing, communications, and applications, each consisting of various areas of research. Note that this is not an exclusive list: other topics in these fields (computing, communications, applications) are also accepted.

    multimedia computing (research on systems support)
        I/O devices
        OS requirements
        storage systems
        multimedia data abstractions
        continuous media representations
        media coding and processing
        multimodal human-centered computing
        media content security and rights management
    multimedia communications (research on computer networks support)
        real-time protocols
        network resource allocation
        multicast and group communication protocols
        broadband multimedia
        wireless multimedia
        multimedia streaming
    multimedia applications (research on tools and applications)
        databases
        distributed collaboration
        video conferencing
        3D virtual environments and tele-presence
        content authoring
        content search
        webcasting
        multimedia-based teaching & learning
        multi-player games
        Internet television
        multimodal affective computing