Member → The Art of Consensus →

Organize a Technical Report Transition (2005 Process)

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

About This Document

As of 4 August 2016, this document has been superseded by a newer version.

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 (or Team Contact) 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. We recommend explicitly addressing the Domain Lead by name in the body of the message. Note: For the TAG, no First Public Working Draft transition request is required; the request is assumed to be approved by the Director, who Chairs the TAG.
• The Domain Lead(s) approve the transition request. A Domain Lead MAY ask another Domain Lead (or the Director or someone assigned by the 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. 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.

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, and 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. 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. Whether the only change since the previous Last Call (if any) is that text has been deleted; If so, W3C can skip the Patent Policy Exclusion (see the Patent Policy FAQ).
5. 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 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.