The editors-in-chief are deeply saddened to announce the passing away of Professor Sheng Yu, a supportive member of the J.UCS editorial board. Read Arto Salomaa's obituary.

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.

Impact Factor Increase

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 authors and members of our editorial board for making this important increase possible.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

In 2008, a significant new addition to the J.UCS publishing system was made: each published article and issue has been assigned a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) which can be found above the abstracts. We thankfully acknowledge the support and help of the staff of the library of the Graz University of Technology for accomplishing the gargantuan task of registering all published papers.

J.UCS Folder

You are cordially invited to download a new information folder about J.UCS which you can freely distribute.

Open access

We are convinced that open access has made J.UCS a very attractive journal: a high-quality, peer-reviewed journal published 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.)

External Reviewers

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

Submissions

J.UCS accepts submission from all areas of computer science. The submitted article must be an original contribution and may not be submitted to or already have been published in another journal. Furthermore, the article has to be a self-contained entity, i.e. the paper can be understood without knowledge of any previous articles published in J.UCS or elsewhere.

Submissions will only be dealt with if

1. The paper is formatted according to the J.UCS guide lines (see http://www.jucs.org/ujs/jucs/info/submissions/style_guide.html)
2. The submitted paper is written in flawless English. Since J.UCS is an open access, no-cost journal, no copy-editing can be done by J.UCS staff.
3. We have received a copyright transfer statement for the paper. You can either upload an electronic version of the copyright transfer statement via web together with your paper or you can fax us the signed copyright transfer statement to +43 316 873 5699

The copyright transfer statement can be downloaded from http://www.jucs.org/ujs/jucs/info/submissions/copyright.html.

The submission is sent to the members of the J.UCS editorial board. If at least three reviewers sign up for a review of the paper, the submission is admitted to the evaluation process. The authors are notified about the status of their submission within approximately 4 weeks. If we fail to find the required number of reviewers, the authors are notified and can submit their paper to another journal of their choice after the notification.

Archive edition 2009

Congratulations!

J.UCS congratulates one of its founding fathers and Managing Editor through the last 17 years, Hermann Maurer, to his 70th birthday!

Read the laudatio published in the Festschrift "Rainbow of Computer Science, Dedicated to Hermann Maurer on the Occasion of His 70th Birthday" edited by the members of the J.UCS editorial board and former Editors-in-Chief, Cristian S. Calude, Grzegorz Rozenberg and Arto Salomaa.

January 2012