All papers in this issue have a twist to them that is typical for J.UCS: the first (by Banach et al) was submitted early this year: through the electronic refereeing process many changes in contents and presentations were made, resulting now in a substantial expose, substantial to an extent that it might not have been able to publish it in an ordinary printed journal. The other three papers stand out due to the very rapid turn-around time. In particular, Tomek's paper (the fourth) was only received in mid- June: yet, using electronic refereeing two "accept that paper" reports were in, still in time for the June issue.

As pleasant as it is that time from submission to publication is sometimes very short, this does not happen that often: unfortunately, the bottle-neck is still the refereeing process: since this is a voluntary job with little recognition, refereeing never receives very high priority. And with the amount of things all of us have to do refereeing takes often longer than it should. I write this paragraph for three reasons: first, as apology to authors who have been waiting for referees' reports for quite a while... I can't do more than send out reminders after some time has elapsed; second, as message to referees and particular the 170 editors of J.UCS: you are not getting that many papers a year, so please be so kind to review those you get as fast as possible; third, since we are trying a novel way of reaching the "right" referees: I intend to report on this as soon as we have the first concrete experiences (probably in the August or September issue).

Enough for now. Have a good summer (or winter, if you are "down under"),

Cheers,

Hermann Maurer
email: hmaurer@iicm.tu-graz.ac.at