Editorial IFAC's Educational Role
WITH this issue, Automatica embarks on a somewhat broader mission than it has previously. The issue contains a report of an IFAC Workshop held in Dresden in March 1971 and of the papers presented and discussed at that meeting. In the same way that education is not a "technical subject", these papers devoted to the subject are not "technical" papers. The decision to publish them is an indication that the Editorial Board and Editorial Staff of Automatica and the IFAC Education Committee feel that Automatica should accurately reflect IFAC activities in general, not only those which are "'technical" in nature. To be sure, these "nontechnical" contributions will make up only a small part of the journal, but nevertheless, they should be of interest to the readers. Brief descriptions of these papers may be found, as usual, in the "About This and Future Issues" section following.
Because of the nature of the educational subjects, as well as other nontechnical subjects which may be of interest to IFAC, it seems that it may be approprime to consider a different format for presenting certain educational aspects of these subjects. Consultation among various people in the IFAC organization have resulted in a proposal that a new feature of Automatica be considered. This would be an occasionally published section called "Opinions" and would involve "correspondence-like-items", communications more oriented toward statements of opinion and subjective information rather than the usual technical statements of fact which will continue to form the main contents of Automatica.