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Organize a Technical Report Transition (2015 Process)

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 Recommendation

Once the Process Document requirements for the transition to Recommendation have been satisfied (see section 6.6 ), W3C follows the steps described below to complete the transition. 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.

Note: If your specification involves an Internet Media Type, before the transition to Recommendation, see also How to Register an Internet Media Type for a W3C Specification for information about how the W3C liaisons to the IETF track the registration process.

Transition request

• The Team Contact reviews the (Team-only) pre-publication steps.
• At least one week prior to an expected meeting with the Director, the Team Contact sends a transition request to the Director (and anyone working with the Director on transitions): timbl@w3.org, ralph@w3.org, cc'ing plh@w3.org, w3t-comm@w3.org, . We recommend explicitly addressing the expected reviewer(s) by name in the body of the message.
• The Team Contact organizes a transition meeting with the Director to discuss the request. Note: When Advisory Committee review indicates unambiguous support, the Director may waive the need for a telephone call.
• The Director approves 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. If a document to be published consists of more than one HTML file (i.e., there are style sheets, schemas, etc.), all materials MUST be made available to the Webmaster from a single directory (which may include subdirectories).
• 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). See below for details about scheduling a publication, and specifically requirements about advance notice to the Webmaster.

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.
• The Team Contact sends a draft transition announcement to the Communications Team at w3t-comm@w3.org.

Publication and Transition Announcement

• After coordination with the Communications Team on the transition announcement timing (especially those accompanied by press releases; see more about interactions with the Communications Team), the Webmaster completes publication and notifies the person who sent the request, cc'ing webreq@w3.org and w3t-comm@w3.org. Publication SHOULD precede the transition announcement by only a small amount of time.
• The W3C Communications Team sends a transition announcement to w3c-ac-members@w3.org and chairs@w3.org and on the W3C home page.

Transition request

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

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

Furthermore, the transition request provides evidence that the group has satisfied the transition requirements. The questions and observations in the subsections below provide examples of what SHOULD be in the transition request to help the Director assess whether the group has satisfied the transition requirements. The transition request SHOULD be organized so that it serves as the basis for the agenda of the meeting with the Director.

Changes

• The group must provide public documentation of all substantive changes to the technical report since the previous publication. Include, for example, a link to a change log where important changes are highlighted. If there have been substantive changes to the document since the previous transition (except for the removal of feature at risk), the Working Group must republish the document at an earlier status.
• The group should provide public documentation of changes that are not substantive.

Requirements satisfied

• The group should report which, if any, of the Working Group's requirements for this document have changed since the previous step. Are any requirements previously satisfied no longer satisfied? Are any requirements previously unsatisfied now satisfied?

Dependencies met (or not)

• The group should report any changes in dependencies with other groups.
• Does this specification have any normative references to W3C specifications that are not yet Note: In general, documents do not advance to Recommendation with normative references to W3C specifications that are not yet Recommendations. See Normative References Guidelines.

Wide Review

• Was there review from Advisory Committee representatives?

Issues addressed

• The group must formally address all issues raised about the document since the previous maturity level.
• Include a link to an issues list that indicates that the Group has been responsive to reviewers who have raised issues since the previous transition. The Director's expectations are that, as a document advances, the Working Group will keep an increasingly precise record of how it has formally addressed each issue. The Director is responsible for addressing those issues raised by the Advisory Committee during a Proposed Recommendation and Proposed Edited Recommendation review period. Typically the Director consults with the group. Per the Process Document, section 6.2.3, the Director MAY respond to the reviewer after the close of the Proposed Recommendation review period (e.g., in the announcement of the transition to Recommendation). For substantive issues, especially substantive or serious technical issues the Team Contact should endeavor to understand the reviewer's issues and try to resolve them before sending the Director a request to advance to Recommendation. The request to advance to Recommendation should document the success or failure of these negotiations.
• For changes in the issues list since the previous transition:
  • Highlight issues where the Group has declined to make a change, with rationale. See also Clarification: tables summarizing review Tim Berners-Lee (Tue, Feb 15 2000).
  • Highlight issues where the Group has not satisfied a reviewer and has either not yet responded to the reviewer, or the reviewer has not yet acknowledged the Group's decision.
  • Show, without highlighting:
    • Issues where the Working Group has accepted a proposed change.
    • Issues where the Working Group has clarified the specification to the satisfaction of the reviewer.

Formal Objections

• The group must provide public documentation of any Formal Objections. For each Objection, is there a public record of the decision, the objection, and attempts to satisfy the reviewer?

Implementation

• The group should provide information about implementations known to the Working Group. See the definition of implementation experience in section 6.2.4 of the Process.

Patent disclosures

• Has anything changed on the patent disclosure page since the previous transition? Have there been any incomplete or problematic disclosures?
• If the group is not using IPP: Does the disclosure page conform to the patent policy requirements?

Transition Meeting with the Director

For a Recommendation transition, the convention is to hold a transition meeting attended by:

• The Team contact(s)
• The Project Manager (or someone appointed by him), who generally chairs the meeting.
• Those assigned by the Director to manage transitions.
• The Director should be invited to attend the meeting if the transition involves contentious issues such as IPR, technical or other concerns.

The Team Contact is responsible for the execution of the following (under the supervision of the Project Manager):

1. Scheduling the meeting. To allow chairs of WGs with dependencies and other commenters time to review the treatment of review comments in the disposition of comments document, the transition request MUST be sent a minimum of seven days prior to the transition meeting.
2. Reserving a teleconference bridge.
3. Choosing a scribe prior to the meeting.
4. Ensuring that the meeting record is distributed to the participants. The meeting record (typically a link to an IRC log) must include the decision, and should highlight all recommendations. The meeting record should be sent to all participants attendees, and MUST be cc'ed to w3t-archive@w3.org.

Sample agenda

Administrative

1. Is everyone here?
2. Confirmation of Chair, Scribe
3. Are any changes required to the agenda?

Review of the transition request

In particular, review those items highlighted as requiring the Director's attention.

Decision

The Director assesses whether the W3C Process has been followed and whether there is sufficient consensus to support the transition request. In most cases the decision to make the transition is made during the teleconference. However the decision could take up to two weeks if any difficult issues arise during the meeting. The Director may delegate the W3C decision; see Team processes for TR publications.

Next steps

1. If the decision is negative: how do we repair the problem? what happens next? who does what? Note: If documents have been copied to /TR space, please remove them.
2. If the decision is positive: how do we announce this decision? when? what is the plan and schedule for any communications opportunities, including Member testimonials? any action items from this meeting?

Some reasons for declining a transition request

• There have been substantive changes since the previous transition. In this case, the document is returned to the Working Group for further work.
• The Director is not satisfied with how the Working Group has addressed issues.
• The Working Group has issued a transition request despite a Formal Objection and the Director is not satisfied with the Working Group's rationale.

Per section 6.1.1 of the Process, "The Director must inform the Advisory Committee and Working Group Chairs when a Working Group's request for a specification to advance in maturity level is declined and the specification is returned to a Working Group for further work."

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. One or two sentences of description of the specification (for communication purposes on the "current status" pages). The sentence may be taken from the abstract. As an example, see status section for specifications related to mobile web authoring. These status pages, as their name suggests, let the community know about relationships among close specifications, what to use and not to use, how things fit together, etc. Contact the Comm Team with questions at w3t-comm@w3.org. Note: The Webmaster may also ask the Document Contact for assistance in categorizing the specification in an existing (or new) group on the TR page.
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. If the request does not include a proposed publication date, the Webmaster MAY consider the title page date as the proposed publication date.

As of 2 March 2010 (cf. the announcement to chairs) the Webmaster publishes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Regarding advance notice:

• if the checker reports issues that are confusing, please send the publication request no later than 3 business days prior to the desired publication date and in the request explicitly state which issues require Webmaster attention.
• otherwise, please send the publication request no later than 1 business day prior to the publication date (and 2 days is even better).

If the Webmaster finds errors during the publication process, he will endeavor to publish on the desired date, but he MAY also postpone publication to the next available publication date in order to resolve issues. In general, it will not be necessary to change the title page date of a document that is published a couple of days later than planned. 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 Recommendation transition announcement MUST include the following information:

1. That this is a Recommendation transition announcement.
2. Document title, URIs.
3. A paragraph introducing the work, usually the Abstract.
4. Indication, in general terms, of level of support of Membership. Note: As a policy, the Team does not announce detailed results (i.e., numbers of reviews) of a Proposed Recommendation review to the Membership or Public, except for information regarding formal objections.
5. Information about any Formal Objections.
6. Any additional information for companion document(s).

Please use the Team-only transition announcement template as a starting point.