J.UCS

J.UCS - The Journal of Universal Computer Science - is a high-quality electronic publication that deals with all aspects of computer science. J.UCS has been appearing monthly since 1995 and is thus one of the oldest electronic journals with uninterrupted publication since its foundation.

J.UCS is published by Graz University of Technology, Austria, and Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, Malasia, with the support of Know-Center, Austria and the University of Applied Sciences, Austria. Papers submitted to J.UCS are refereed by members of the editorial board. This board contains some of the most renowned specialists in their areas of expertise. In this way, both the high standard of the published papers as well as a broad spectrum of publications is guaranteed.

J.UCS is lead by a three person team of editors-in-chief, Hermann Maurer, Graz University of Technology, Austria who also acts as the managing editor, Narayanan Kulathuramaiyer, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS), Malaysia and Klaus Tochtermann, KNOW Center, Graz, Austria and supported by editorial assistant Dana Kaiser.

ISSN 0948-695x
Online Edition: ISSN 0948-6968

Board of Editors

In order to guarantee a constant 'universality' of published papers and to keep up with the swift developments in the area of computer science, J.UCS encourages all interested experts to apply for a membership in the J.UCS Board of Editors.

If your qualifications meet the following profile of a member of the editorial board, please send your CV and publication list to Hermann Maurer at hmaurer@iicm.edu or request further information at the same address.

Editorial Board Profile:

• a senior position at a university (Associate Professor with tenure as minimum)
• the applicant must have a minimum of 10 refereed publications in internationally recognized and well-known English language journals

Naturally, you can resign from the editorial board any time you want, without specifying a reason. All editors are also listed in the annual archive printed edition of J.UCS.

Impact Factor

The impact factor of J.UCS is 0.669, the 5-year impact factor 0.788 (2010). In comparison, in 2009, the impact factor of the journal was 0.488, the 5-year impact factor 0.484. We thank the authors and the members of our editorial board for making this important increase possible.

Open access

It is a great pleasure to inform our readers, authors, editors and subscribers that three organisations in Graz, Austria, headed by Graz University of Technology, and supported by the KNOW-Center and University of Applied Sciences (CAMPUS '02) have decided to support the Open Access Initiative for scientific literature: the three organisations will cover the costs of running J.UCS (and its younger sister journals J.UKM and J.USTL) in the future. At the present moment, we are also negotiating with two further institutions: if these negotiations are successful, we will be able to include further journals in the initiative). This means that volume 13 and all back-issues (by now some 1.500 contributions) will be accessible to everyone free of charge as of November 1, 2006. The same applies to J.UKM and J.USTL. We are convinced that open access will make J.UCS will even more attractive than it already is: a high-quality, peer-reviewed journal published monthly in an electronic edition and annually in printed form. (The latter will still have to be paid for since the printing costs and postage must be covered by the sale.)

Printed publications

A number of special issues as well as the printed archive editions of volumes 3 to 10 are also avaible in print and can be ordered directly from our office. To do so, fill in a print-out of the order form (Pdf, Word) and fax it to H. Maurer at +43-316-873-5699. Prices are inclusive of packing and postage. Delivery time is about 2 weeks, depending on the country of destination. You will received an invoice upon delivery.

Submissions

Publishing papers in J.UCS has a number of advantages compared to publications in traditional media: (i) the time span between submission and publication is much shorter in most cases than in printed media (about 6 to 8 months on the average), (ii) the number of pages as well as the number of papers published in each issue can be varied considerably and according to the need of the authors and the topics of the issues, (iii) the location of published paper is easy: in J.UCS, all papers can be searched by titles, authors and keywords or accessed directly by the table of contents and by their categorization according to the ACM Computer Clasiffication System. Details concerning submission can be obtained at the URL http://www.jucs.org/jucs_info/submissions, refereeing procedure and editorial policy can be found at http://www.jucs.org/jucs_info/submit/refereeing_procedure.html. Articles can be submitted through the web submission form at http://www.jucs.org/jucs_info/submit/submitform.html.

There are four categories of papers in J.UCS:

(a) Research contributions: This is the rule, and the majority of papers will be in this area.
Papers of this category will be accepted only if they contain innovative results. The length of the paper must also be taken into account. A short paper is acceptable with fewer innovative results than a longer paper. Research contributions should not be combined with more "survey type" material than is necessary for the paper. Note that research contribution can be reports of projects, if the project has resulted in sufficiently many clearly stated innovations or new results.

(b) Notes: Short research contributions with usually a single but interesting new idea, result or innovation.

(c) Surveys: Usually longer papers, do usually not contain any or much original research but are judged on whether they are well written and give an unbiased and complete survey of the topic at issue.

(d) Papers on J.UCS: These are papers that explain improvements or changes in J.UCS. In this case they may or may not contain novel material. They should be judged on whether they are well-written and understandable and whether the innovative features and changes in J.UCS -something one can usually try out and test- are indeed of interest to at least some parts of the J.UCS community.

Special Issues

After several years with an increasing number of published special issues, the editorial team has decided to change the publishing policy as of January 2010. In order to raise the impact factor of the journal, the emphasis will be made on the publication of regular submissions which have been peer-reviewed by the members of the J.UCS editorial board. A higher impact factor is imperative for further funding of the journal.

However, there is a possibility to publish a small selection of papers collected and reviewed by a guest editor in a regular issue, provided they have also been reviewed by two members of the J.UCS editorial board after the review process by the guest editor. The guest editor can also write a few words of introduction to the selected papers. If you are interested in this possibility, please contact us at jucs_ref@iicm.tu-graz.ac.at

Annotations

All papers published in J.UCS can be annotated - this feature makes it possible to attach comments, criticisms, cross references, links etc. to the papers. We invite all readers to indeed make use of this possibility! To annotate just click the 'Write a comment' button on the abstract page of a paper. You can now enter your comments. To read a comment, just click on the 'Read comments' button. Each time a comment has been added to a paper, the corresponding author receives an automatic notification and can thus respond to the comment, if desired.

Please notice that the annontations can be posted by all readers, hence J.UCS disclaims responsibility for the contents of the annotations.