Network Working Group A. Mankin
Internet Draft
Expires: November 2006 S. Hayes
Ericsson
May 8, 2006
Requirements for IETF Technical Publication Service
draft-mankin-pub-req-08.txt
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Abstract
The work of the IETF is to discuss, develop, and disseminate
technical specifications to support the Internet's operation.
Technical publication is the process by which that output is
disseminated to the community at large. As such, it is important to
understand the requirements on the publication process.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction...................................................2
2. Scope..........................................................3
2.1. Stages in the Technical Specification Publication Lifetime4
3. Technical Publication Tasks and Requirements...................5
3.1. Pre-approval review or editing............................6
3.2. Preliminary Specification Availability....................6
3.3. Post-Approval Editorial Cleanup (non-Author Editing)......7
3.4. Validation of references..................................9
3.5. Validation of formal languages............................9
3.6. Insertion of Parameter Values............................10
3.7. Post Approval, Pre-Publication Technical Corrections.....10
3.8. Allocation of Permanent Stable Identifiers...............11
3.9. Document Format Conversions..............................11
3.10. Language Translation....................................12
3.11. Publication Status Tracking.............................12
3.12. Expedited Handling......................................13
3.13. Exception Handling......................................13
3.14. Notification of publication.............................14
3.15. Post Publication Corrections............................14
3.16. Indexing: maintenance of the catalog....................15
3.17. Access to Published Documents...........................15
3.18. Maintenance of a Vocabulary Document....................16
3.19. Providing Publication Statistics and Status Reports.....16
3.20. Process and Document Evolution..........................17
3.21. Tutorial and Help Services..............................17
4. Technical Publisher Performance Metrics.......................18
4.1. Post-approval timeframes.................................18
4.2. Publication Throughput...................................19
4.3. Non author changes Generated during Publication..........19
4.4. Author changes generated during publication..............20
5. IETF Implications of Technical Publication Requirements.......20
6. IANA Considerations...........................................21
7. Security Considerations.......................................21
8. Acknowledgments...............................................22
Author's Addresses...............................................22
Intellectual Property Statement..................................22
Disclaimer of Validity...........................................23
Copyright Statement..............................................23
Acknowledgment...................................................23
1. Introduction
The work of the IETF is to discuss, develop, and disseminate
technical specifications to support the Internet's operation. An
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important output of the IETF, then, is published technical
specifications. The IETF technical publisher is responsible for the
final steps in the production of the published technical
specifications. This document sets forth requirements on the duties
of the IETF technical publisher and how it interacts with the IETF in
the production of those publications.
The term "technical specification" is used here purposefully to refer
to the technical output of the IETF. This document does not engage in
the debate about whether it is expressed as RFCs or ISDs, what "is"
an RFC, how to classify them, etc. These issues are considered out
of scope.
The intention of this document is to clarify the IETF's consensus on
its requirements for its technical publication service. This
document is not a discussion of how well the RFC Editor fulfils those
requirements.
2. Scope
The scope of this document is the requirements for the technical
publication process for IETF. Requirements on a technical publisher
can be expressed in terms of both what tasks the IETF technical
publisher is responsible for and performance targets the IETF
technical publisher should meet.
This draft only addresses those documents published by the IETF
family. These include IETF documents processed by the IESG, IAB
documents, and IRTF documents processed by the IRSG. It
specifically excludes independent submissions that go directly to
the Technical Publisher. The handling of independent submissions
may well be a requirement on the technical publisher, but it is not
one associated with the IETF publication process and hence is
outside the scope of this document
The list of potential technical publication tasks was derived by
considering the tasks currently performed by the RFC editor as well
as the responsibilities of the technical publishers in other
standards organizations including 3GPP, ATIS, ETSI, IEEE, and ITU.
This requirements documents focuses on process issues in how the IETF
technical editor serves the IETF. There are related issues regarding
non-technical aspects of document content that are not addressed in
this requirements document. Issues not addressed in this document
are:
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o Policies governing the acceptable input and output document
formats (including figures, etc.),
o Policies governing the acceptable character sets
(internationalization)
o Policies governing the layout and style of published documents
o Policies governing the contents of non-technical sections
(acknowledgement sections, reference classifications, etc.)
It is realized that the above policies are also an important aspect
in determining the final published product from IETF. These policies
are likely to evolve as part of the ongoing IETF dialog. The IETF
technical publisher must be part of the discussions of these policies
and be prepared to implement and facilitate policy changes as they
are determined by IETF consensus. This requirement is captured under
the discussion of process and document evolution.
2.1. Stages in the Technical Specification Publication Lifetime
Figure 1 below provides a useful summary of where technical
publication falls in the current lifetime of a document in the IETF.
This figure shows a working group document and the review includes an
IETF Last Call (LC). The lifetime is very similar for AD-sponsored
IETF documents, such as documents that update IETF protocols where
there is no longer a working group, or documents on interdisciplinary
topics.
| Author | WGLC | IESG, | | IANA,
Actors | or | AD | Shepherd, | A | Tech
| Editor | IETF LC | Editor, | P | Publisher,
| | IANA | WG | P | input from
| | IESG | | R | authors, et al
| | | | O |
Actions | Creation | | Resolution | V | non-author
| and | Formal | of all | A | editing,
| Editing | Reviewing | reviews | L | other
| | | | | publication
|---------------| |---------------------| |----------------|
In WG Out of WG Post-Approval
Figure 1: Stages of a Working Group Document
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Note that in some cases a single submission may actually consist of
multiple source documents (supporting files, code, etc.).
3. Technical Publication Tasks and Requirements
Standards development organizations all have technical publication as
part of their process. However, the boundaries between what is done
by the technical committees and the technical publisher vary.
The following are potential tasks of a technical publisher. The
following list was derived after analyzing the technical publication
policies of the IETF and other standards development organizations.
For each of these tasks we discuss its relevance to IETF and how it
is realized within the IETF processes. Based upon this information
we derive requirements on the IETF technical editor:
1. Pre-approval review or editing
2. Preliminary specification availability
3. Post-approval editorial cleanup
4. Validation of references
5. Validation of formal languages
6. Insertion of parameter values
7. Post approval, pre-publication corrections
8. Allocation of permanent stable identifiers
9. Document format conversions
10.Language translation
11.Publication status tracking
12.Expedited handling
13.Exception handling
14.Notification of publication
15.Post-publication corrections (errata)
16.Indexing: maintenance of the catalog
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17.Access to published documents
18.Maintenance of a vocabulary document
19.Providing publication statistics and status reports
20.Process and document evolution
21.Tutorial and help services
3.1. Pre-approval review or editing
Task Description: In many cases the technical publisher may provide a
review or editing service to improve document quality prior to the
approval of a document. This review process would normally address
issues such as grammar, spelling, formatting, adherence to pre-
approval boilerplate, document structure, proper use of keywords (RFC
2119), etc.
The primary advantage of pre-approval review is that review of the
changes is handled as part of the regular review and approval
process.
Discussion: Pre-approval review is not part of the normal process
flow with the IETF but this concept has been explored in the early
copy editing experiment. Early feedback from the experiment has been
promising, however, the effectiveness of early copy-editing is still
being evaluated.
Derived Requirements:
o Req-PREEDIT-1: The IETF technical publisher should perform an
editorial review of documents before WG last call and provide
feedback to the authors to improve quality of the documents. This
review should strive to maintain consistency in appearance with
previously published documents.
3.2. Preliminary Specification Availability
Task Description: Some standards organizations require their
publisher to make available a preliminary version of a document (with
appropriate caveats) to make the information available to the
industry as early as possible. This document is provided "as is"
after the approval. This document is withdrawn once the final
document is published.
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Discussion: This is not required. A final approved version is
available as a draft. If publication can take more than 6 months, it
may be necessary to take measures to ensure the draft version remains
available.
Derived Requirements: none
3.3. Post-Approval Editorial Cleanup (non-Author Editing)
Task Description: Most technical publishers do an editorial review to
ensure the quality of published documents. Typically this may
address issues such as grammar, spelling, readability, formatting,
adherence to boilerplate, document structure, proper use of keywords,
etc. Since any proposed changes occur after approval, a review and
signoff mechanism must usually be established to ensure that the
required changes are truly editorial. Since such changes occur
outside of the normal approval process, it is desirable that such
changes are minimized. Most standards organizations target "light"
editing due to the dangers of changing agreed text.
Discussion: Within IETF, the RFC Editor does post approval cleanup
review and editing. The ambition level for cleanup can vary from:
o Corrections to errors only,
o Light rewriting,
o Significant editing of documents with less skillful WG editors,
and minimal editing when the WG editors were skilled,
o Rewriting of all documents to the dictates of a style manual
At times in the past year, stylistic editing has resulted in a
substantial number of changes in many documents. These changes must
then be vetted by all the authors followed by subsequent rounds of
author acceptance and re-vetting. This can add up to a substantial
delay in the publication process which must be weighed against the
incremental gain in communication improvement accomplished by the
cleanup.
Changes to improve readability (or possibly even grammar) can end up
inadvertently affecting consensus wording or technical meaning. Note
that pre-approval editing to some extent avoids this problem.
In specific instances it may be necessary to require that text be
published "verbatim" even if doing so introduces what is perceived as
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poor readability or stylistic inconsistency. Examples of this
include:
- "Boilerplate" agreed on in an IETF working group to apply to all
instances of derivative works (e.g., IANA registration documents,
MIBs, etc.)
- Text referring to other organizations' work - which has been
carefully phrased and arranged with representatives of that other
organization to deal with some politically sensitive issue.
If pre-approval editing or review is done it may be possible to
greatly reduce or even eliminate entirely the post-approval editing
task. Pre-approval editing is generally more efficient since a
separate change control process is not required.
Derived Requirements:
o Req-POSTEDIT-1 - The IETF technical publisher should review the
document for grammar, spelling, formatting, alignment with
boilerplate, document structure, proper use of keywords, etc. The
review should strive to maintain consistency in appearance with
previously published documents.
o Req-POSTEDIT-2 - All changes made to post-approval documents
should be tracked and the changes must be signed off on by the
appropriate technical representatives as defined in the IETF
processes.
o Req-POSTEDIT-3 - The IETF Technical editor should refrain from
stylistic changes that introduce a substantial review load but
only provides incremental increase in the clarity of the
specification. Specific guidelines on the types of changes
allowed may be further specified, but ultimately restraint in
editing must be imposed by the IETF technical publisher. Changes
for stylistic consistency should be done only when there are major
problems with the quality of the document.
o Req-POSTEDIT-4 - The IETF Technical editor should refrain from
changes to improve readability that may change technical and
consensus wording. Specific guidelines on the types of changes
allowed may be further specified, but ultimately restraint in
editing must be imposed by the IETF technical publisher.
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o Req-POSTEDIT-5 - In specific instances, where some or all of
document text is the result of a careful negotiation of
contributions (within or between working groups, reviewers,
etc.), the IESG or IAB or IRSG will require that the publisher
publish that text verbatim. It is the expectation of the IETF
community that this will not be done often.
3.4. Validation of references
Task Description: Most standards organizations require that normative
references be publicly available. Some technical publishers verify
the validity and availability of references (included referenced
clauses and figures). Although some editorial clean-up of references
may be obvious, the issue becomes more severe when reference links
are broken, are not publicly available, or refer to obsoleted
documents. Such faults may be viewed as a post-approval fault found
in the document. Most publishers have the ability to put a document
on hold awaiting the publication of a reference expected to be
available soon.
Discussion: The RFC Editor may put a document on hold waiting for the
availability of other IETF documents. Incorrect references are
handled like any other fault detected in the editorial review.
Derived Requirements:
o Req-REFVAL-1 - The IETF technical publisher should ensure that
references within specifications are available.
o Req-REFVAL-2 - The IETF technical publisher should delay
publication until all required IETF references are ready for
publication.
3.5. Validation of formal languages
Task Description: If the Specification contains a formal language
section (such as a MIB), the technical publisher may be required to
validate this using a tool.
Discussion: The RFC Editor validates sections of a document
containing MIBs, ABNF, XML, and possibly other formal languages.
Derived Requirements:
o Req-FORMALVAL-1 - The IETF technical publisher should validate
sections of documents containing formal languages. In particular
ASN.1, ABNF, and XML should be verified using appropriate tools.
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3.6. Insertion of Parameter Values
Task Description: The Technical Publisher is expected to work with
IANA (or possibly other organizations maintaining registries) to
populate protocol parameters when required prior to publication. The
population of these parameters should not require technical expertise
by the technical publisher.
Discussion: Within IETF, IANA normally does its allocations as an
early step in the technical publication.
Derived Requirements:
o Req-PARAMEDIT-1 - The IETF technical publisher should work with
IANA in the population of required parameter values into
documents.
3.7. Post Approval, Pre-Publication Technical Corrections
Task Description: Regardless of efforts to minimize their occurrence,
it is always possible that technical flaws will be discovered in the
window between document approval and publication. The technical
publisher may be requested to incorporate technical changes into the
document prior to publication. Such changes necessitate a review and
sign-off procedure. Another option is to disallow such corrections
and treat them as you would post-publication errata. Note that this
task is distinct from post approval changes that might originate due
to editorial review because they originate from outside the technical
publisher. For severe flaws, it should always be possible to
withdraw the document from the publication queue.
Discussion: IETF allows minor technical corrections during the
publication process. This should ideally be a rare occurrence.
Since any changes introduced during the post-approval phase can lead
to publication delays it is important that only changes with
technical merit be permitted. In particular stylistic changes should
be discouraged. IETF processes must be in place to vet changes
proposed by the author, but this is not specifically a requirement on
the technical publisher.
The interaction between the authors and the technical publisher must
be sufficiently well policed that untracked and unapproved changes
cannot be introduced by the author or other parties.
Derived Requirements:
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o Req-POSTCORR-1 - The IETF technical publisher should permit the
incorporation of technical changes detected after approval, but
pre publication.
o Req-POSTCORR-2 - The IETF technical publisher should only allow
post approval technical changes which have been approved by the
appropriate IETF party (often the document shepherd, but
sometimes, by referral, the IESG).
o Req-POSTCORR-3 - The publisher should alert the IESG (or IAB or
IRSG) when it feels that a requested change is unreasonable.
Further processing of the draft should be suspended pending a
response by the IESG (or IAB or IRSG) on how to proceed.
o Req-POSTCORR-4 - The IETF technical publisher should ensure that
any source documents associated with a publication are also
updated in concert with their associated specifications.
3.8. Allocation of Permanent Stable Identifiers
Task Description: For a document to be referenced, it must have a
unique permanent identifier. In some standards organization, it is
the technical publisher that generates this identifier. In other
cases the identifier may be allocated earlier in the process.
Discussion: Currently, the RFC Editor allocates these numbers when
the document is near the end of the publication process. Having
identifiers allocated early was considered, but a definite need could
not be established.
Derived Requirements:
o Req-PERMID-1 - The IETF technical publisher should allocate stable
identifiers as part of the publication process.
o Req-PERMID-2 - The IETF technical publisher should assign
additional permanent identifiers associated with various classes
of documents as directed by the IETF.
3.9. Document Format Conversions
Task Description: The technical publisher is responsible for
converting the documents into one or more output formats (text, pdf,
ps, etc.). In some standards organizations, the technical publisher
may be required to accept input documents in various formats and
produce a homogeneous set of output documents.
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Discussion: Currently, the RFC Editor accepts input as an ascii text
file (supplemented by xml if available). The documents are published
as ascii text, postscript, and pdf files.
Derived Requirements:
o Req-DOCCONVERT-1 - The IETF technical publisher should accept as
input ascii text files and publish documents as ascii text files,
postscript files, and pdf files.
o Req-DOCCONVERT-2 - The technical publisher should accept
supplemental source files that may contain information such as:
code, formal descriptions (XML, ASN.1, etc.) graphics, data
files, etc.
3.10. Language Translation
Task Description: Some standards organizations require publication of
documents in multiple languages. This translation is the
responsibility of the technical publisher.
Discussion: IETF specifications are published only in English.
Derived Requirements: none
3.11. Publication Status Tracking
Task Description: The technical publisher should have the ability to
provide status information on the status of a document. This may
involve developing a process model or a checklist and providing
information on a document's state, outstanding issues, and
responsibility tokens. Depending on the need for transparency, this
information may need to be available online and continuously updated.
Discussion: The RFC Editor currently provides status information via
the RFC editor queue. Each document is attributed a status (AUTH48,
RFC-EDITOR, IANA, ISR, etc.) Items may stay on the queue for a long
time without changing status. This status tracking information is
not integrated with the IESG tracking tools. Within the IETF, the
PROTO team is considering requirements for marking the token-holder
accurately during long waiting periods, and others are looking into
improved notification tools. Requirements on the IETF technical
publisher for improved status integration and visibility could be met
by collaborations with these efforts, or by providing public access
to email logs regarding publications, or by some other proposal.
Derived Requirements:
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o Req-STATUSTRK-1 - The IETF technical publisher should provide
state information for each document in the publication process.
o Req-STATUSTRK-2 - The IETF technical publisher should integrate
its state information with the IETF tools to provide end-to-end
status tracking of documents. IETF documents should be able to
move seamlessly from the IETF tracking system into the technical
publication tracking system.
o Req-STATUSTRK-3 - The IETF technical publisher should provide
external visibility of not only the fact that a document is in an
extended waiting period, but also the token-holder and
circumstances of the wait.
3.12. Expedited Handling
Task Description: In some cases (such as when the documents are
needed by another standards body), it should be possible for the
approving organization to request expedited publication of a
document. Ideally, this should not skip any of the publication
steps, but allocates it higher priority in the work queue to ensure
earlier publication than normal. Expedited publication should be
used sparingly since as with any priority scheme, overuse will negate
its benefits.
Discussion: The fast-tracking procedure is used to expedite
publication of a document at the request of the IESG. Fast-tracking
is generally employed when an external organization has a looming
publication deadline and a need to reference a document currently in
the RFC editors queue. Having short publication times would likely
reduce the need for fast-tracking.
Since fast tracking is disruptive to the workflow it is recommended
that expedited handling be phased out as soon as alternative ways of
achieving timely publication are in place.
Derived Requirements:
o Req-EXPEDITE-1 - The IETF technical publisher shall expedite the
processing of specific documents at the request of the IESG.
3.13. Exception Handling
Task Description: It should be possible for various reasons for a
document to be withdrawn from publication or the publication put on
hold. Reasons for this could be due to an appeals process, detection
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of a serious technical flaw, or determination that the document is
unsuitable for publication.
Discussion: For various reasons a document can be withdrawn before
publication.
Derived Requirements:
o Req-EXCEPTIONS-1 - The IETF technical publisher should permit
documents to be withdrawn from publication at the direction of the
IETF.
o Req-EXCEPTIONS-2 - The IETF technical publisher should permit
documents to be put on hold awaiting the outcome of an appeal.
3.14. Notification of publication
Task Description: The technical publisher should provide a mechanism
for alerting the community at large of the availability of published
documents.
Discussion: The RFC Editor notifies of document publication on the
rfc-dist and ietf-announce mailing lists.
o Req-PUBNOTIFY-1 - The IETF technical publisher should announce the
availability of published documents.
3.15. Post Publication Corrections
Task Description: If corrections are identified after publication,
the technical publisher should be able to publish errata that can be
linked with the original document.
Discussion: The RFC Editor maintains a list of errata. Pointers to
relevant errata are presented as output from the RFC Editor search
engine.
Derived Requirements:
o Req-ERRATA-1 - The IETF technical publisher should maintain errata
for published documents.
o Req-ERRATA-2 - The IETF technical publisher should provide
information on relevant errata as part of the information
associated with a RFC.
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3.16. Indexing: maintenance of the catalog
Task Description: The technical publisher normally provides and
maintains the master catalog of publications of that organization.
As the publishers of the organization's output, the technical
publisher is expected to be the definitive source of publications and
maintainer of the database of published documents. This also
includes the cataloging and storage of meta-information associated
with documents such as its history, status (updated, obsoleted,
etc.), document categories (standard, draft standard, bcp, individual
submission etc.)
Discussion: The RFC Editor maintains the catalog. The RFC editor is
also responsible for the permanent archival of specifications. Meta
information associated with an RFC should also be maintained. Since
this is the definitive archive, sufficient security should be in
place to prevent tampering with approved documents.
o Req-INDEX-1 - The IETF technical publisher should maintain the
index of all IETF published documents.
o Req-INDEX-2 - The IETF technical publisher should provide the
permanent archive for published documents.
o Req-INDEX-3 - Meta information associated with a published
document must be stored and updated as its status changes.
o Req-INDEX-4 - The archive must be sufficiently secure to prevent
the modification of published documents by external parties.
o Req-INDEX-5 - The IETF technical publisher should provide the
permanent archive of any source documents associated with a
published specification.
o Req-INDEX-6 - The IETF can indicate to the publisher that it
should change the status of a document (e.g., to Historical) and
this should be reflected in the index.
o Req-INDEX-7 - The IETF can indicate to the publisher that it
should purge a document from the index. This should remove all
traces of the document.
3.17. Access to Published Documents
Task Description: The technical publisher should facilitate access to
the documents published. It is assumed that the technical publisher
will provide online tools to search for and find information within
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the archive of published documents. These access tools should
facilitate understanding the state of the document (identification of
replacement or updated documents, linkage to pertinent errata)
Discussion: Documents and status may be accessed via the RFC Editor's
web page
Derived Requirements:
o Req-PUBACCESS-1 - The IETF technical publisher should provide
search tools for finding published documents
o Req-PUBACCESS-2 - The IETF technical publisher tool should return
relevant meta information associated with a published document
(e.g., category of document, type of standard (if standards
track), obsoleted by or updated by information, associated errata)
o Req-PUBACCESS-3 - The IETF Technical Publication search tools
should be integrated with the IETF search tools.
3.18. Maintenance of a Vocabulary Document
Task Description: Some standards organizations require the technical
publisher to maintain a publicly available vocabulary document or
database containing common terms and acronyms. The goal is provide
consistency of terminology between documents.
Discussion: The RFC Editor does not maintain a public document or
database of terms or acronyms.
Derived Requirements: none
3.19. Providing Publication Statistics and Status Reports
Task Description: The technical publisher may be required to
periodically or continuously measure their performance. In many
standards organizations performance targets are set in terms of
timeliness, throughput, etc.
Discussion: The IETF technical publisher currently provides monthly
statistics on arrivals and completions of documents by category. In
addition a status report is provided at each IETF meeting.
Derived Requirements:
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o Req-STATS-1 - The IETF technical publisher should provide monthly
statistics on average queue times and documents processed sorted
by category of document. The presentation should provide a
historical context to identify trends (see Req-THROUGHPUT-3).
o Req-STATS-2 - The IETF technical publisher should provide periodic
status reports to the IETF meetings to apprise the community of
their work and performance.
3.20. Process and Document Evolution
Task Description: The guidelines and rules for an organization's
publication output will change over time. New sections will be added
to documents, styles and conventions will change, boilerplate will be
changed, etc. Similarly, the specific processes for publication of a
specification will change. The technical publisher is expected to be
involved in these discussions and accommodate these changes as
required.
Discussion: Over time, the IETF consensus on what should be in a
published document has changed. Processes interfacing with the
publisher have also changed. Such changes are likely to continue in
the future. The RFC editor has been involved in such discussions and
provided guides, policies, faqs, etc. to document the current
expectations on published documents.
Derived Requirements:
o Req-PROCESSCHG-1 - The IETF technical publisher should participate
in the discussions of changes to author guidelines and publication
process changes.
o Req-PROCESSCHG-2 - The IETF technical publisher should
participate in and support process experiments involving the
technical publication process.
3.21. Tutorial and Help Services
Task Description: The technical publisher may be required to provide
tutorials, mentoring, help-desks, online tools, etc. to facilitate
smooth interaction with the technical publisher and IETF community
awareness of document guidelines, procedures, etc. In many
organizations the publisher maintains a style manual giving explicit
guidance to authors on how to write a specification.
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Discussion: Guidelines are provided to the authors on how to write a
RFC as well as occasional tutorial presentations. The RFC Editor
provides a help desk at IETF meetings.
Derived Requirements:
o Req-PUBHELP-1 - The IETF technical publisher should provide and
maintain documentation giving guidance to authors on the layout,
structure, expectations, etc. required to develop documents
suitable for publication. The technical publisher should follow
IETF guidance in specifying documentation guidelines.
o Req-PUBHELP-2 - The IETF technical publisher should provide
tutorials to the IETF community to educate authors on the
processes and expectations of the IETF technical publisher.
o Req-PUBHELP-3 - The IETF technical publisher shall provide a
contact e-mail address and correspond as required to progress the
publication work. The publisher should address queries from both
inside and outside of the IETF community.
4. Technical Publisher Performance Metrics
A Technical Publisher is typically measured not only on what they do
but how well they perform the tasks. Here are some metrics that
could apply to the IETF technical publisher.
1. Post-approval timelines
2. Publication throughput
3. Non author changes generated during publication
4. Author changes generated during publication
4.1. Post-approval timeframes
Metric Description: This is a statistical measure of the time from
entry into the RFC editor queue (via IESG approval, individual
submission, etc.) until the documents are published. The statistics
should be separated by categories of documents. It may be desirable
to also provide statistics along the distribution curve (90%
completed within x weeks, 95% completed within y weeks, etc.)
Discussion: Long publication times create both internal and external
difficulties. Internal difficulties include the migration of authors
to other activities and the accumulation of tempting post-approval
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fixes to be added to the document. External difficulties include the
inability of other standards organizations to reference IETF
publications for lack of a RFC number.
Derived Requirements:
o Req-TIMEFRAMES-1 - The consensus of the IETF community is that an
average publication time of under a month is desirable. It is
understood that in some cases there will be delays outside of the
publisher's control. The actual performance targets and metrics
are expected to be determined as part of the contract negotiation
process.
o Req-TIMEFRAMES-2 - The consensus of the IETF community is that
the time required for a pre-publication review should be under 10
days. The actual performance targets and metrics are expected to
be determined as part of the contract negotiation process.
4.2. Publication Throughput
Metric Description: The count of documents published during a given
time period. Some publishers also provide the data in terms of pages
produced. The counts should be separated by categories of documents.
Discussion: The RFC currently provides monthly statistics on the
arrival and completion of documents onto the RFC queue. This is
sorted by category of document.
Derived Requirements:
o Req-THROUGHPUT-1 - The IETF technical publisher should provide
monthly reports giving RFC queue arrivals, completions, and
documents on the queue sorted by document source of the document
(IAB, IESG, individual submission)
o Req-THROUGHPUT-2 - The IETF technical publisher should indicate
the number of documents in each state at the end of each month
sorted by document source category.
o Req-THROUGHPUT-3 - Although minor variations are expected, there
should be no long term growth trend in the length of the
publication queue.
4.3. Non author changes Generated during Publication
Metric Description: To judge the effectiveness of the editorial
review and comment resolution, it is useful to provide aggregate
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statistics on post approval changes generated (separated by type of
error) as well as the resolution of the comments (% rejected)
Discussion: To understand trends in the types of errors occurring and
how editing effort is being expended, it is useful to gather
aggregate statistics on the types of errors being uncovered by the
editors.
Derived Requirements:
o Req-EDITCHGSTATS-1 - The IETF technical publisher should provide
monthly statistics on the types of editorial corrections being
found during reviews as well as the percent of corrections which
are rejected by the authors.
4.4. Author changes generated during publication
Metric Description: To judge the stability of documents during the
publication process it is desirable to provide aggregate statistics
on the number and type of changes introduced by the authors after
document approval. This category also includes changes made by Area
Directors or other persons (outside of the technical publisher)
empowered to make changes.
Discussion: This provides a measure of the stability of the documents
and can indicate if the delays in publication are leading to
excessive changes in the documents.
Derived Requirements:
o Req-AUTHCHGSTATS-1 - The IETF technical publisher should provide
monthly statistics on author (or other persons outside of the
technical publisher empowered to make changes) requested changes
to documents under publication.
5. IETF Implications of Technical Publication Requirements
Requirements on technical publication process have so far been stated
in terms of requirements on the technical publisher. However it must
be recognized that many of these requirements have implications on
the processes and tools within the IETF itself. It is anticipated
that these processes will be documented in companion documents which
will be generated by various bodies within the IETF.
The following is a list of potential issues that should be addressed
within the IETF based on the requirements applied to the technical
publisher:
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o Pre- vs Post-Approval Editing: If emphasis switches from post-
approval editing to pre-approval editing, then IETF processes must
be adapted to make use of this service. The processes for post-
approval editing can also be streamlined.
o Post Approval Editorial Cleanup: IETF must define under what
conditions the publisher should be instructed to bypass or
minimize post approval editing.
o Approval of post-approval, pre-publication technical corrections:
Since the technical publisher can only accept approved changes, it
must be clear who is allowed to approve technical changes. This
process within the IETF needs to be decided and documented.
o Allocation of Permanent Stable Identifiers: IETF needs to clearly
identify the naming/numbering schemes and classes of documents to
which those names and numbers apply. Furthermore, the
responsibility for allocation of those names/numbers needs to be
identified.
o Expedited Handling: If publication timelines can be reduced
sufficiently, then expedited handling may no longer be needed.
o Post Publication Corrections: Appropriate processes must be
defined with the IETF to ensure that errata is appropriately
vetted and authorized.
o Indexing: Appropriate processes must be defined within the IETF
to decide and inform the technical publisher of status changes to
published documents as the result of an appeal, legal action, or
some other procedural action.
6. IANA Considerations
Any new requirements that result from this discussion need to be
reviewed by IANA and the IETF to understand to what extent, if any,
the work flow of the documents through IANA are affected.
Interactions with IANA on parameter validation is discussed in
section 3.6.
7. Security Considerations
There is a tussle between the sought-for improvements in readability
and the specific language that has often been negotiated carefully
for the security content of IETF documents. As with other text,
extreme caution is needed in modifying any text in the security
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considerations. This issue is assumed to have been dealt with under
the section 3.3.
The processes for the publication of documents must prevent the
introduction of unapproved changes (see section 3.7). Since the IETF
publisher maintains the index of publications, sufficient security
must be in place to prevent these published documents from being
changed by external parties (see section 3.16)
8. Acknowledgments
Bert Wijnen has provided input on the early copy edit experiment and
made useful comments throughout the document. Leslie Daigle has
contributed strongly to this text. Thanks to Steve Barclay, John
Meredith, Yvette Ho Sang, and Sami Trabulsi for discussions of the
publication practices of ATIS, ETSI, IEEE, and ITU. Other
acknowledgements to date: a discussion on the wg chairs mailing list,
Henning Schulzrinne, Henrik Levkowetz.
Author's Addresses
Allison Mankin
Washington, DC
USA
Phone: +1 301 728 7199
Email: mankin@psg.com
URI: http://www.psg.com/~mankin/
Stephen Hayes
Ericsson
3634 Long Prairie Rd.
Ste 108-125
Flower Mound, TX 75022
USA
Phone: +1 469 360 8500
Email: stephen.hayes@ericsson.com
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