Unique Features of the Journal of Universal Computer Science

Having appeared as a monthly journal since 1995 with uninterrupted publications, the Journal of Universal Computer Science (J.UCS) contains over 1,200 papers (numbers are from end of 2007). In the past, J.UCS has been noted for its novel features such as multi-format publications, multi-categorized information entities, sophisticated fulltext search, typed annotations and bi-directional links [Liew, and Foo, 2001] [Krottmaier, 2002] [Dreher, Krottmaier and Maurer 2004].

To meet the expectations of J.UCS readers, highly sophisticated features such as automatic reference analysis, similarity search between documents and other features using knowledge management technology are being developed. We aim to provide a rich personalized experience for users of the journal. Facilities are now underway to allow readers and editors to ask questions such as: 'Which other resources should be read to understand this article?' and 'Who are the real experts on this topic?'. We will now focus on the unique features of J.UCS:

J.UCS covers all areas of computer science. Since papers are structured by topics, only papers in particular areas of interest need to be examined by readers, the rest can be ignored. Just use the navigational button "Articles by Topics"!

J.UCS has a reviewing system that assures rapid turn-around of papers submitted. With its current strength of over 300 high profile editors, and the number still growing, there are few areas of computer science that are not covered by some expert editors.

J.UCS was probably the first journal to allow interactivity, by posting comments on any paper. This feature which is now considered one of the basic features of Web 2.0 has been available in J.UCS already ten years before the term Web 2.0 was even coined. We encourage you to use this feature for comments and discussion: when you read an abstract, just click on the "Write a Comment" button to leave interesting information for others!

J.UCS has introduced and will continue to introduce innovative features. One of them, the "Link into the Future" provides two important types of information: (a) has one of the authors of the paper at hand published other papers in J.UCS at a later stage? (b) has the paper at issue been cited by other papers in J.UCS? Try it out! Clearly you will have a better chance to find such "Links into the Future" with papers that have been published some time back. Try for example the paper at http://www.jucs.org/jucs_2_3/government_cryptography_and_the and click here at the "Links into Future" button. You find out this way (note that the result screen may be hidden if you have several open windows) that this paper was quoted twice later in J.UCS and one of the original authors contributed two further papers to J.UCS, later. Finding future papers and citations will be extended in 2008 to include sources beyond J.UCS.

Overall, many other new features for J.UCS are under development: we will report on them in a year's time!

J.UCS thus remains a major source for scientific papers in Computer Science. We present here the information on the development of J.UCS in 2007 as compared to 2006:

	2006	2007	Increase in %
Hits	4,661,262	6,809,662	46%
Page views	1,563,291	2,732,605	75%
Kbytes retrieved	49,968,789	155,852,594	212%
No. of PDF or PS files	127,999	445,354	248%

So what does this mean? First, even when J.UCS was not free access (for most of 2006) it was quite popular. In addition, the number of page views has further increased dramatically within one year by 75%. That the number of PDF files downloaded has more than tripled indicates that now, since it became free access, readers are more often not just reading the abstracts, but are downloading the full papers afterwards.

It is more difficult to calculate how often papers are downloaded on average, simply because even now, a substantial number of the downloaded papers come from earlier issues, even from issues published as early as 1995. To be specific, in 2007 papers from vol.1 (1995) were still downloaded 22.192 times. In 2007, papers from vol. 11 (2005) were downloaded 61.383 times. Taking the number of papers in that year into account means that each paper of 2005 was (on the average) downloaded 500 times in 2007.

A rough calculation thus yields that over the years, papers are downloaded an average of more than 3.000 times each. Thus, an important consideration for potential authors; your papers will (on average) be seriously studied by some 3.000 persons (as indicated by past readership behaviour!).

References

[Dreher, Krottmaier, and Maurer 2004] Dreher, H., Krottmaier, H., and Maurer, H.: "What we Expect from Digital Libraries", Journal of Universal Computer Science Vol. 10, Issue 9 (2004), pp. 1110-1122.

[Hyperwave, 2006] Enterprise content management solution, http://hyperwave.com/e/

[J.UCS 2006] Journal of Universal Computer Science, http://www.jucs.org

[Krottmaier, 2002] Aspects of Modern Electronic Publishing Systems, PhD Thesis, Graz University of Technology, 2002 http://fiicm2pc43.tu-graz.ac.at/Teaching/theses/2002/_idb70_/hkrott_diss.pdf

[Krottmaier, 2003] Krottmaier, H.: "Links to the Future", Journal of Digital Information Management Vol. 1, No. 1 (2003), pp. 3-8

[Liew, C.L. and Foo, S. 2001] Liew, C. L., Foo, S. (2001): "Electronic Documents: What Lies Ahead?", Proc. 4th International Conference on Asian Digital Libraries (ICADL 2001),Bangalore, India, December 10-12 (2001), pp 88-105.

[Maurer 94] Maurer H. and Schmaranz K.: "J.UCS - The Next Generation in Electronic Journal Publishing", Computer Networks and ISDN Systems, Computer Networks for Research in Europe, Vol. 26 Suppl. 2, 3, (1994), 63-69.

[Maurer 2001] Maurer, H. "Beyond Digital Libraries", Global Digtial Library Development in the New Millenium (Proceedings NIT Conference), Beijing, Tsinghua University Press (2001), pp.165-173.

[Maurer, Krottmaier and Dreher 2006] Maurer, H., Krottmaier, H., and Dreher, H.: "Important Aspects of Modern Digital Libraries", Proc. ICDL, New Delhi, India (2006), pp. 843-855.