Dear Readers:

Here is the May issue of vol.4 of J.UCS with five very interesting papers: I am sure you will enjoy reading them.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all contributors, editors, guest editors of special issues, all readers, Springer Heidelberg, all the support staff, and my co-editors-in-chief for helping make J.UCS what it is. Please keep supporting J.UCS!

I am happy to be able to report that our efforts show strong signs of success: J.UCS will continue to grow with your help into a major publication. In a recent meeting with Springer Heidelberg it was decided that J.UCS volumes 1 - 4 (i.e. 1995 - 1998) will remain free of charge on our server in Graz (http://www.iicm.edu/jucs ), that the volumes 1- 6 (i.e. 1995 - 2000) will be made available for any institution that runs a WWW server of type Hyperwave for a total of only US $ 200.- ( and for US $ 100.- per year, afterwards ). I feel that 6 years of a high-quality journal for two hundred dollars is quite a deal, and I hope that many of you will make use of this forthcoming offer. The WWW server Hyperwave (http://www.hyperwave.com) is free of charge for universities; and a growing number of other big organisations are running Hyperwave, anyway. For those who don't want to run Hyperwave, a "DLP" (Digital Library Plugin) based on Hyperwave for other servers is in the planning stage. J.UCS will also be available for a yearly subscription fee of US $100.- on Springer's LINK server starting in 1999 (http://link.springer.de or http://link.springer-ny.com ). B.T.W., abstracts of the papers in J.UCS are already available freely on that server right now. Also, Springer will continue to publish an archive edition (printed version of J.UCS plus CD-ROM). Note that the nice archive editions for both 1995 and 1996 have appeared and can be ordered like any other book ( for a price of DM 298.-). Members of the Editorial Board of J.UCS enjoy a special rate of DM 120.- if they order the volume directly through Dr. H. Woessner at woessner@springer.de . In 1999, the amount of interactivity available within J.UCS will be once more increased and more widely advertised: after all, J.UCS is the only big electronic journal that allows group- and private annotations and links, yet few readers seem to be even aware of this feature. Have you tried them out?

All counted, we have come a long way since the pilot issue in 1994. Due to the number of papers to be reviewed we are planning to expand our editorial board further: if you are interested in actively participating in J.UCS, willing to review some 2 - 4 papers per year, willing to encourage persons to submit high quality manuscripts once in a while (including some of your own?), and if you are recognized in your field as leading scientist, please let me know: send your areas of exptertise and your CV to hmaurer@iicm.edu The editors-in-chief will then determine if in your areas of expertise further help is needed. Note that it is intended to keep the editorial-board of J.UCS balanced in every way including geographic location and scientific area.

Enough for now,

Cordially,