Ars Combinatoria
ISSN 0381-7032 (print), 2817-5204 (online)
Ars Combinatoria is the oldest Canadian journal of combinatorics, established in 1976, dedicated to advancing combinatorial mathematics through the publication of high-quality, peer-reviewed research papers. Over the decades, it has built a strong international reputation and continues to serve as a leading platform for significant contributions to the field.
Open Access: The journal follows the Diamond Open Access model—completely free for both authors and readers, with no article processing charges (APCs).
Publication Frequency: From 2024 onward, Ars Combinatoria publishes four issues annually—in March, June, September, and December.
Scope: Publishes research in all areas of combinatorics, including graph theory, design theory, enumeration, algebraic combinatorics, combinatorial optimization and related fields.
Indexing & Abstracting: Indexed in MathSciNet, Zentralblatt MATH, and EBSCO, ensuring wide visibility and scholarly reach.
Rapid Publication: Submissions are processed efficiently, with accepted papers published promptly in the next available issue.
Print & Online Editions: Issues are available in both print and online formats to serve a broad readership.
- Research article
- Full Text
- Ars Combinatoria
- Volume 097-A
- Pages: 15-32
- Published: 31/10/2010
We determine the full Sylow \(p\)-subgroup of the automorphism group of transitive \(k\)-ary relational structures of order \(p^2\), \(p\) a prime. We then find the full automorphism group of transitive ternary relational structures of order \(p^2\), for those values of \(p\) for which \({A_p}\) is the only doubly-transitive nonabelian simple group of degree \(p\). Finally, we determine optimal necessary and sufficient conditions for two Cayley \(k\)-ary relational structures of order \(p^2\), \(k < p\), to be isomorphic.
- Research article
- Full Text
- Ars Combinatoria
- Volume 097-A
- Pages: 3-13
- Published: 31/10/2010
Let \(G\) be a finite group, \(S\) (possibly, contains the identity element) be a subset of \(G\). The Bi-Cayley graph \(\text{BC}(G, S)\) is a bipartite graph with vertex set \(G \times \{0,1\}\) and edge set \(\{\{(g,0), (gs,1)\}, g \in G, s \in S\}\). A graph \(X\) is said to be super-edge-connected if every minimum edge cut of \(X\) is a set of edges incident with some vertex. The restricted edge connectivity \(\lambda'(X)\) of \(X\) is the minimum number of edges whose removal disconnects \(X\) into nontrivial components. A \(k\)-regular graph \(X\) is said to be optimally super-edge-connected if \(X\) is super-edge-connected and its restricted edge connectivity attains the maximum \(2k-2\). In this paper, we show that all connected Bi-Cayley graphs, except even cycles, are optimally super-edge-connected.
- Research article
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- Ars Combinatoria
- Volume 097
- Pages: 523-529
- Published: 31/10/2010
A transitive triple, \((a, b, c)\), is defined to be the set \(\{(a, b), (b, c), (a, c)\}\) of ordered pairs. A directed triple system of order \(v\), \(DTS(v)\), is a pair \((D, \beta)\), where \(D\) is a set of \(v\) points and \(\beta\) is a collection of transitive triples of pairwise distinct points of \(D\) such that any ordered pair of distinct points of \(D\) is contained in precisely one transitive triple of \(\beta\). An antiautomorphism of a directed triple system, \((D, \beta)\), is a permutation of \(D\) which maps \(\beta\) to \(\beta^{-1}\), where \(\beta^{-1} = \{(c, b, a) | (a, b, c) \in \beta\}\). In this paper, we give necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of a directed triple system of order \(v\) admitting an antiautomorphism consisting of two cycles of lengths \(M\) and \(2M\), and one fixed point.
- Research article
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- Ars Combinatoria
- Volume 097
- Pages: 511-522
- Published: 31/10/2010
A \(k\)-circuit is a directed cycle of length \(k\). In this paper, we completely solve the problem of finding maximum packings and minimum coverings of \(\lambda\)-fold complete bipartite symmetric digraphs with \(6\)-circuits.
- Research article
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- Ars Combinatoria
- Volume 097
- Pages: 507-510
- Published: 31/10/2010
Until now, all known simple \(t-(v, k, \lambda)\) designs with \(t \geq 6\) have \(\lambda \geq 4\). On the other hand, P. J. Cameron and C. E. Praeger showed that there are no flag-transitive simple \(7-(v, k, \lambda)\) designs. In the present paper, we considered the flag-transitive simple \(6-(v, k, \lambda)\) designs and proved that there are no non-trivial flag-transitive simple \(6-(v, k, \lambda)\) designs with \(\lambda \leq 5\).
- Research article
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- Ars Combinatoria
- Volume 097
- Pages: 497-505
- Published: 31/10/2010
In \(1972\), Erdős, Faber, and Lovász made the now famous conjecture: If a graph \(G\) consists of \(n\) copies of the complete graph \(K_n\), such that any two copies have at most one common vertex (such graphs are called EFL graphs), then \(G\) is \(n\)-colorable. In this paper, we show that the conjecture is true for two different classes of EFL graphs. Furthermore, a new shorter proof of the conjecture is given for a third class of EFL graphs.
- Research article
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- Ars Combinatoria
- Volume 097
- Pages: 479-495
- Published: 31/10/2010
The edge set of \(K_n\) cannot be decomposed into edge-disjoint octagons (or \(8\)-cycles) when \(n \not\equiv 1 \pmod{16}\). We consider the problem of removing edges from the edge set of \(K_n\) so that the remaining graph can be decomposed into edge-disjoint octagons. This paper gives the solution of finding maximum packings of complete graphs with edge-disjoint octagons and the minimum leaves are given.
- Research article
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- Ars Combinatoria
- Volume 097
- Pages: 471-477
- Published: 31/10/2010
In this paper, we introduced the notion of symmetric \(f\) bi-derivations on lattices and investigated some related properties. We characterized the distributive lattice by symmetric \(f\) bi-derivations.
- Research article
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- Ars Combinatoria
- Volume 097
- Pages: 457-469
- Published: 31/10/2010
In \(1990\), Anderson et al. \([1]\) generalized the competition graph of a digraph to the competition multigraph of a digraph and defined the multicompetition number of a multigraph. The competition multigraph \(CM(D)\) of a digraph \(D = (V, A)\) is the multigraph \(M = (V, E’)\) where two vertices of \(V\) are joined by \(k\) parallel edges if and only if they have exactly \(\ell\) common preys in \(D\). The multicompetition number \(k^*(M)\) of the multigraph \(M\) is the minimum number \(p\) such that \(M \cup I_p\) is the competition multigraph of an acyclic digraph, where \(I_k\) is a set of \(p\) isolated vertices. In this paper, we study the multicompetition numbers for some multigraphs and generalize some results provided by Kim and Roberts \([9]\), and by Zhao and He \([18]\) on general competition graphs, respectively.
- Research article
- Full Text
- Ars Combinatoria
- Volume 097
- Pages: 443-456
- Published: 31/10/2010
Frank Harary contributed numerous questions to a variety of topics in graph theory. One of his favourite topics was the Reconstruction Problem, which, in its first issue in \(1977\), the Journal of Graph Theory described as the major unsolved problem in the field. Together with Plantholt, Frank Harary initiated the study of reconstruction numbers of graphs. We shall here present a survey of some of the work done on reconstruction numbers, focusing mainly on the questions which this work leaves open.
Call for papers
- Proceedings of International Conference on Discrete Mathematics (ICDM 2025) – Submissions are closed
- Proceedings of International Conference on Graph Theory and its Applications (ICGTA 2026)
- Special Issue of Ars Combinatoria on Graph Theory and its Applications (ICGTA 2025)
- MWTA 2025 – Proceedings in Ars Combinatoria




