Editorial

Abstract

Open ideas, free knowledge

The dissemination of science, more than an opportunity, should be seen as a right for everyone to improve our society through ideas. However, excessive publication costs and predatory practices have tarnished the chances for researchers to spread their thoughts to broader audiences. Open Access publications were conceived to balance these inequities, and the Latin-American Journal of Computing (LAJC) is not an exception.
During the first semester of 2022, our Editorial Board, committed with free access to science and technology, has worked hard to offer better, free, and attractive publication opportunities to researchers worldwide. Our scope was re-structured to cover more areas in the field of computing and informatics, and our reviewer database was expanded accordingly to maximize the feedback quality that we offer to all our prospective authors. As a result, we keep moving forward towards the internationalization of our Journal, introducing in this issue interesting articles of researchers from Ecuador, Colombia, Argentina, Germany, and the United Kingdom.
We begin with an analysis of cyberthreats in virtual power plants in which a heuristic method to evaluate them is used, considering their impact in the stability and reliability of a power grid. In the field of computer forensics, methods to bypass user authentication are analyzed, reducing potential evidence loss when a computer is locked, and access credentials are unknown. Regarding enhanced methods of computer security, mobile phone sensors are evaluated for better accuracy when used for user authentication. A feed-forward neural network is used for evaluating sensors’ discriminability, stability, and reliability for active and continuous authentication. Concerning e-democracy, an e-voting system is presented using a blind signature scheme to guarantee users’ privacy and security of votes.
Finally, LAJC is one of the few journals that welcomes early research results. In this issue, a literature review of techniques for lip-reading teaching to deaf people is presented, which examines recent work combining learning methodologies and technology. Also, the engineering process to develop a personal agenda for blind people is described. This proposal fills the gap in existing mobile applications which are typically not designed for people with visual impairment, paving the road for developing more inclusive solutions using informatics.
Our audience is kindly invited to read this issue which showcase our efforts to increase the outreach of open access research, and our relentless will to maximize the impact of the work developed by our authors, regardless their geographical location.
We are humbly proud of what we have achieved so far, keeping our eyes fixed in an optimistic horizon. We reaffirm our commitment to make LAJC, a free-of-charge vessel for your ideas.
Thank you for your constant support.