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.

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

J.UCS Consortium

As of January 2012, J.UCS is run by a consortium consisting of nine research organisations, listed in what follows in alphabetical order:

• Austrian Competence Center for Knowledge Management, Graz, Austria, represented by Professor Dr. Stefanie Lindstaedt
• Faculty of Informatics, University of Passau, Germany, represented by Professor Dr. Michael Granitzer
• Galileo University, Guatemala City, Guatemala; Contact person: Rocael Hernández
• Graz University of Technology, Graz, Austria, represented by Dozent Dr. Christian Guetl who also acts as Managing Editor
• Institute for Information Systems, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany, represented by Professor Dr. Matthias Jarke
• L3S Research Center Hannover, Hannover, Germany, represented by Professor Dr. Tilo Balke
• Mohammad Ali Jinnah University, Islamabad, Pakistan, represented by Dr. Muhammad Tanvir Afzal
• National University, San Diego, USA, represented by Professor Dr. Peter Serdiukov
• Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, Kuching, Malaysia, represented by Dean Professor Dr. Narayanan Kulathuramaiyer

The editorial team is headed by Dana Kaiser (dkaiser@iicm.edu).

For more details concerning the J.UCS Consortium have a look at http://www.jucs.org/jucs_info/aims/jucs_consortium_agreement.html.

If you and your organization are interested in joining the J.UCS Consortium, please contact the Managing Editor, Christian Guetl, at Christian.Guetl@iicm.tu-graz.ac.at.

J.UCS Supporters

J.UCS acknowledges the support of Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (ZBW, "Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaf").

Board of Editors

Applications for membership in J.UCS editorial board are generally accepted on a basis of referral only.

External Reviewers

J.UCS would like to thank external reviewers for their support and help with the evaluation of submissions to our journal.

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.

Submissions

Publishing papers in J.UCS has a number of advantages compared to publications in traditional media:

• The duration of the evaluation process depends entirely on the quality of the submission. From past experience, excellent and innovative papers written in flawless English in an area that is mainstream can pass the evaluation process in less than 4 months. However, if the reviewers demand a revision and hence the authors have to send an improved version followed by a second round of reviews, the evaluation time may be easily twice as much.
• 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.
• Locating a J.UCS article is easy: all papers can be searched by titles, authors and keywords or accessed directly by the table of contents, by their categorization according to the ACM Computer Clasiffication System and by DOI (digital object identifier).
• J.UCS does not charge any submission or publication fees. The decisive criterion for a possible publication is the scientific quality of the submitted article.

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

Printed publications

A number of special issues as well as the printed archive editions of volumes 3 to 14 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.

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.