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
Publication of an
Ordinary
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.
- Publication 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.
Note:
If the publication is the result
of returning a document to a Working Group for further work, the Team Contact
alerts the W3C Communications Team by sending to w3t-comm@w3.org a draft
announcement for the Membership (required by
section 6.1.1 of the Process) that explains why the document was
returned for further work.
- Publication
-
Note: Instructions for publication of
an Ordinary
Working Group Note
are included for convenience even though
this is not a Recommendation
Track transition as defined in the W3C Process.
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.
- Document title and URI(s). Document URI requirements are described
in Publication Rules.
-
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.
- A proposed publication schedule.
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.
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:
- The publication request is complete, and
- 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.
Page owned and process managed by
Philippe Le Hégaret and Ralph Swick on behalf of the W3C Director.
Coralie Mercier, editor
This document has been constructed by merging information from
several "How to" documents created by Dan Connolly, Al Gilman, and
others. A filter is applied to
the document source to provide
transition-specific views.
Last modified: $Date: 2017/01/12 10:06:02 $ by $Author: denis $