The Past and Future of IEEE Transactions on Services Computing: A Retrospective

In our continuing series for the Computer Society's 80th anniversary, the current and past Editors-in-Chief (EIC) of IEEE Transactions on Services Computing discuss their terms serving as EIC, how the journal has evolved, and where it will head next.

For 80 years, the IEEE Computer Society has advanced computing for the benefit of humanity, and IEEE Transactions on Services Computing (TSC) has promoted research that fostered breakthroughs and advancement, shaping the world of cloud computing, edge services, AI-driven services and more, essentially creating the foundation for the computing infrastructure of today.

Building the Future, One Issue at a Time

As the flagship journal of the services computing community, TSC publishes high-quality research on the principles, architectures, and technologies that enable computing functionality to be delivered as interoperable, dynamic, distributed services. Its mission is to advance the scientific foundations and engineering practices of service-oriented systems across the computing stack, spanning topics such as service composition, cloud and edge services, cyber-physical services, trustworthy service infrastructures, and emerging paradigms including AI-enabled, Quantum, and data-centric services.

This perspective article reflects on the evolution of TSC through the experiences of its editors-in-chief and situates the journal within the broader trajectory of computer science. As the IEEE Computer Society celebrates its 80th anniversary, the article positions TSC as both a record of this transformation and a guide for future research directions in services computing. Since its founding in 2008, TSC has documented the development of service computing from early work on service-oriented architectures, discovery, and composition, through the rise of cloud and virtualization technologies, to contemporary research on edge computing, AI-driven services, and distributed digital infrastructures. The article provides a chronological account of the journal’s development, highlighting how successive editorial tenures have shaped its scientific scope and strengthened its role as a reference venue for the community. In doing so, it also illustrates how the service paradigm has become central to modern computing systems, where complex applications are increasingly constructed from dynamically orchestrated services spanning cloud, edge, and cyber-physical environments.

Explore the Article

• L. Zhang et al., "Editorial: TSC Celebrates IEEE Computer Society's 80th Anniversary" in IEEE Transactions on Services Computing, vol. 19, no. 03, pp. 1728-1730, May-June 2026, doi: 10.1109/TSC.2026.3690372.

About TSC

IEEE Transactions on Services Computing is a peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the software, algorithmic, and mathematical foundations of services innovation. Its scope spans Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), Web Services, Business Process Integration, and Services Operations and Management.

IEEE Computer Society 80th Anniversary

Read more stories from this series to see how Computer Society has developed over the years, what its members and volunteers have accomplished, and how it continues to contribute to this day.