Dear Readers:

After a record year 2003 with more contributions and papers than ever, the growth of and interest in J.UCS is steadily continuing. We have an annual increase of some 100% in both monthly site-hits and pages visited. Just to give you one example: in March 2003 we had 46.025 pages visited, but in January 2004, only 10 months later, a stunning 105.310 pages. The increasing popularity of J.UCS is also reflected in a continued improvement of its "scientific impact factor".

Thus, I trust you will not only enjoy reading this issue, but I can also ask you to realize and point out to your friends and colleagues that J.UCS is becoming a very serious source for computer science publications. Can I ask you to check whether your university library/department is already subscribing to J.UCS? If not, this is the time to do so: for very little money (see http://www.jucs.org/jucs_subscription.html) everyone, staff and students of your university or organisation can get access to ten volumes of J.UCS, i.e. to a substantial digital library.

Let me mention that Graz University of Technology, encouraged by the success of J.UCS, is in the process of building a huge digital library portal for most academic areas (not just computer science). This portal will also be the basis of one of the most sophisticated access mechanisms to electronic journals elsewhere, and to a powerful e-Learning environment. If you are interested in joining the thus emerging network of digital libraries and e-Learning materials in a very collaborative and communicative setting, do send me a note!

Cordially,
Hermann Maurer