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Organize a Recommendation Track Transition

This Guidebook is the collected wisdom of the W3C Group Chairs and other collaborators.

About This Document

This resource describes the internal W3C Technical Report publication processes. A companion document provides more information about roles involved in these processes and interactions with the W3C Communications Team. A comparison of requirements across all document types is available.

Steps for Transition to First Public Working Group Note

W3C follows the steps described below for transition to a First Public Working Group Note. These steps are grouped by theme. They are not strictly ordered; in practice, some steps are completed in parallel. For instance, groups often manage the transition request/meeting steps in parallel with the publication request steps.

Transition request

• The Team Contact reviews the (Team-only) pre-publication steps.
• The Chair sends a transition request to the Domain Lead(s) responsible for the group(s) publishing the document, cc'ing w3t-comm@w3.org and chairs@w3.org.
• The Domain Lead(s) approve the transition request. A Domain Lead MAY ask another Domain Lead (or the CEO or Director) to take responsibility for approving the transition request.

Publication and Transition Planning

• The Document Contact prepares the document in accordance with pubrules and develops a proposed publication schedule, taking into account possible publishing moratoria. The title page date is chosen based on the anticipated publication schedule. Note: Director approval is required for some namespace URIs; see URIs for W3C Namespaces for details.
• Before sending the publication request, the Document Contact SHOULD install the document in its final location. The Document Contact MAY request publication of a document that is not yet installed at its final location, but in this case MUST provide installation instructions to the Webmaster.
• Note: We instituted a temporary publication policy change beginning 31 March 2009. Publications will take place Tuesdays and Thursdays; only one day's notice is required. To ensure that Webmaster and Communications Team resources are available for publication, at least one day (temporarily, instead of five days in general) prior to the anticipated publication date the Document Contact sends a publication request to the Webmaster at webreq@w3.org, optionally cc'ing w3c-archive@w3.org (which has a Member-visible archive).

Mailing List Preparation

• The Team Contact ensures that there is a mailing list with a public archive available for comments; use the mailing list request form.

Publication and Transition Announcement

• The Webmaster completes publication and notifies the Chair and Team Contact of publication, cc'ing webreq@w3.org and w3t-comm@w3.org.
• In order to facilitate peer review, once the document has been published, the Chair sends a transition announcement to chairs@w3.org and the group's public mailing list.

Transition request

The message subject line and body SHOULD identify this as a "transition request"; see above for where to send the request. A First Public Working Group Note transition request MUST include:

1. Document title, URIs, estimated publication date
2. The document Abstract and Status sections, either by reference (e.g., the URI to the document) or direct inclusion.

The goal of the transition request is to secure an archived record of the Domain Lead(s)' approval of the title, and shortname. In the past, shortnames have been changed between versions, and documents have been split and merged between versions. A conservative approach is to treat a merged or split document like a first publication.

The Team Contact(s) generally present the new draft for the entire W3C Team as soon as possible after the transition request (and possibly before Domain Lead approval). The length of the presentation varies (from "more than a lightning talk" to a Project Review) depending on the technical or political complexity of the specification.

Record of the decision to request the transition

• The request SHOULD include a link to the meeting minutes or email announcing the group's decision to request the transition.

Publication Request

A publication request is an assertion from the Document Contact that the document satisfies the pubrules requirements. The subject line and body SHOULD identify this as a "publication request"; see above for where to send the request. A publication request MUST include the following information.

1. Document title and URI(s). Document URI requirements are described in Publication Rules.
2. A single sentence description of the specification (for communication purposes on the "current status" pages). The sentence may be taken from the abstract.
3. A proposed publication schedule.
4. Record of approval of the transition request.

Scheduling Publication

The Document Contact negotiates a publication date with the Webmaster. Each publication request SHOULD propose a publication date, which SHOULD be at least five days later. The title page date SHOULD be the same as, or shortly before, the proposed publication date. If the request does not include a proposed publication date, the Webmaster MAY consider the title page date as the proposed publication date.

If it becomes apparent that a publication date will be well after a title page date, the Webmaster SHOULD ask the Document Contact to resubmit a revised document with a more current title page date.

When scheduling publication, please note that publishing "blackouts" occur at the end of the calendar year and around certain W3C events such as AC meetings and All-Group meetings. The Communications Team announces these publishing moratoria with approximately six months notice. The announcements are linked from the Chairs' Guidebook.

Publication

In order to ensure publication standards, upon receiving a publication request the Webmaster SHALL make a best effort to verify that the document satisfies the pubrules requirements except for the accessibility requirements of section 1.6. The Webmaster SHALL publish the document (cf. the Webmaster's guide) if the following conditions have been met:

1. The publication request is complete, and
2. The document satisfies the pubrules requirements verified by the Webmaster.

Otherwise the Webmaster SHALL NOT publish. In this case, the Webmaster SHALL provide details to the person who sent the request about which requirements have not been satisfied.

The Webmaster SHALL NOT publish the document until the date on the title page or later. The Webmaster publishes the document by updating the appropriate technical report index and updating the latest version link, and then announcing publication as described above.

Transition Announcement

A First Public Working Group Note transition announcement MUST include the following information :

1. That this is a First Public Working Group Note transition announcement.
2. Document title, URIs.
3. Instructions for providing feedback.
4. A reference to the group's transition request.