This issue contains three interesting contributions from three different fields and one very unusual additional one: a paper that should be seen as the start of an attempt to set up a high quality forum for negative results (FNR) suggested by Lutz Prechelt from Germany.

The main idea of this is to establish, for the first time in the scientific literature (at least as far as we are aware of) a forum to publish the results of undertakings that did not succeed. Lutz Prechelt argues convincingly why such a forum could help the scientific community: by avoiding that many people follow the same wrong track, by showing what was learnt on the way of trying to achieve something that was not achievable in the fashion expected, etc. You better read the full paper to convince yourself if Prechelt's explanation sounds too mysterious:

"The current publication climate in Computer Science has some properties that unnecessarily hamper our scientific progress. Therefore, beginning with this issue, J.UCS starts the ``Forum for Negative Results'' (FNR), intended to be a partial remedy to this problem. See the respective announcement and article in this issue for the What, Why, and How."

If you have any comments on FNR, please do not hesitate to attach them as annotations to the paper: you can do this easily, just read the simple description at the URL http://www.iicm.edu/jucs_annotations. Basically, you only need a username and a password (you get them immediately by filling out the simple form on http://www.iicm.edu/jucs/register.html). Once you have a username/password you just have to click at the "ANNOTATE" button on the page you want to add the comments to. Give it a try!

All the best,

Hermann Maurer, Managing Editor
Graz University of Technology, Graz / Austria
email: hmaurer@iicm.edu