Dear Readers:

Here is the last issue of this year's J.UCS, completing volume 6. I am sure you will find the mix of papers in this issue interesting.

The year 2000 was a good one for J.UCS: with over 1200 pages and a number of special issues the journal is continuing to grow in popularity. In addition, a number of important decisions for the future of J.UCS have been taken: as of 2001, J.UCS will not only get a "facelift", but also a number of new functions are going to be implemented. I will report on this in detail in the news pages at http://www.jucs.org/jucs_news in January.

The increased effort put into J.UCS has become possible because of a massive research grant by the Austrian government: it has allowed the creation of a new research center for Knowledge Management called KNOW. J.UCS will be, as of 2001, "A publication of the KNOW Center in cooperation with Springer Pub. Co.". All of the administrative effort has now been moved from Springer to KNOW and the IICM Institute in Graz, Austria (including invoicing), yet PR etc. remains with Springer. I am happy to report that this also means that the volumes of J.UCS that have not appeared in print, sofar, will become available now rapidly, one by one.

Please don't forget to renew your subscrition and to encourage others to also subscribe. For just US $100.- a full campus license for J.UCS (US $ 200.- for a company site license) is available: we do hope that here will soon be hundreds of universities making use of this very good deal. As much as I ask you to continue to support J.UCS by subscribing, by encouraging colleagues to submit papers or to do so yourselves, this is also the time to thank the contributors, the editors of special issues, all members of the editorial board that have helped in the often tedious reviewing process, Springer, the editors-in-chief Professors Calude and Salomaa, and the J.UCS team at my institute.

With best wishes for 2001,

Cordially,