Refereeing Procedure

J.UCS is published in 12 monthly issues. Research contributions and in depth surveys from all areas of computer science are welcome.

Submissions are 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. after 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 accepted. The authors are notified about the status of their submission within 3 weeks. If we fail to find the required number of reviewers, the submission is withdrawn and the authors are free to submit their paper to another journal of their choice.

Attention:

Because of the great number of submissions that J.UCS has received during the last three months, the duration of the refereeing process is at the present moment at least 8 months. Authors are kindly requested to consider this upon submission.

Categories of papers:

(a) Research contributions: This is the rule, and the majority of papers will be in this area. Papers should 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.

Editorial Policy

The submissions are evaluated according to the following criteria:

1. Accept as is.
   A few lines why the paper is accepted are optional and are forwarded to the authors.
2. Accept with minor revisions. A review of the revised version is not necessary.
   The reviewer lists minor modifications such as corrections of typos, missing references, etc.
3. A major revision of the paper is required. The revised version will be reviewed  by at least one reviewer of the original version.
   The reviewer lists the proposed changes.
4. Reject.
   The reviewer states the reasons for the rejection of the paper.
5. The reviewer evaluates the scientific contribution or other general merits of the submission (depending on the category of the paper) on a scale of 0 to 10 (0= reject under all circumstances, 5 very doubtful acceptance, 10= excellent, accept under all circumstances).

Evaluation Scale

Attention: Papers which receive an average of 7 and lower in the first round of evaluation will be rejected. In this case, no revision is possible. Only papers with an average score of 7 and higher and with no score lower than 6 will be admitted to a possible second review round.

0 = absolute reject
1 = very strong recommendation to reject
2 = very weak paper, strong recommendation to reject
3= weak paper, recommendation to reject
4= recommend rejection, but can live with acceptance if grade-average is 6 or higher
5= doubtful accept, suggest to accept only if there are clearly better votes by others
6= accept this paper, it is ok, but not ground breaking
7= accept this very solid paper
8 =strong recommendation to accept this paper
9= very strong recommendation to accept, paper contains very good material
10= absolute accept