One document matched: draft-mankin-pub-req-02.txt
Differences from draft-mankin-pub-req-01.txt
Network Working Group A. Mankin
Internet Draft Shinkuro, Inc
Expires: July 2006 S. Hayes
Ericsson
January 12, 2006
Requirements for IETF Technical Publication Service
draft-mankin-pub-req-02.txt
Status of this Memo
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Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2006). All Rights Reserved.
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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Conventions used in this document
Requirements are designated as either current requirements (Current Req-xx) to
indicate requirements that seem to currently exist and potential requirements
(Potential Req-xx) to indicate requirements that are speculative.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction.............................................................3
2. Scope....................................................................3
2.1. Stages in the Technical Specification Publication Lifetime..........4
3. Technical Publication Tasks and Requirements.............................4
3.1. Pre-approval review or editing......................................6
3.2. Preliminary Specification Availability..............................6
3.3. Post-Approval Editorial Cleanup (non-Author Editing)................6
3.4. Validation of references............................................8
3.5. Validation of formal languages......................................8
3.6. Assignment of Parameter Values......................................8
3.7. Post Approval, Pre-Publication Technical Corrections................9
3.8. Allocation of Permanent Stable Identifiers..........................9
3.9. Document Format Conversions........................................10
3.10. Language Translation..............................................10
3.11. Publication Status Tracking.......................................11
3.12. Expedited Handling................................................11
3.13. Exception Handling................................................12
3.14. Notification of publication.......................................12
3.15. Post Publication Corrections......................................13
3.16. Indexing: maintenance of the catalog..............................13
3.17. Access to Published Documents.....................................14
3.18. Maintenance of a Vocabulary Document..............................14
3.19. Providing Publication Statistics and Status Reports...............14
3.20. Process and Document Evolution....................................15
3.21. Tutorial and Help Services........................................15
4. Technical Publisher Performance Metrics.................................16
4.1. Post-approval timeframes...........................................16
4.2. Publication Throughput.............................................17
4.3. Non author changes Generated during Publication....................17
4.4. Author changes generated during publication........................17
5. IETF Implications of Technical Publication Requirements.................18
6. IANA Considerations.....................................................18
7. Security Considerations.................................................19
8. Acknowledgments.........................................................19
9. Informative References..................................................19
Author's Addresses.........................................................19
Intellectual Property Statement............................................20
Disclaimer of Validity.....................................................20
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Copyright Statement........................................................20
Acknowledgment.............................................................21
1. Introduction
The work of the IETF is to discuss, develop, and disseminate technical
specifications to support the Internet's operation. An 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.
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:
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
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o Policies governing the contents of non-technical sections (acknowledgement
sections, reference classifications, etc.)
To allow progress on developing the process requirements, this document assumes
the policies for document format, etc. as are currently defined in [1].
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 document that update IETF
protocols where there is no longer a working group, or documents on
interdisciplinary topics.
| Author | WGLC | IESG, | | Tech
Actors | or | AD | Shepherd, | A | Publisher,
| Editor | IETF LC | Editor, | P | input from
| | IANA | WG | P | authors, et al
| | IESG | | R |
Actions | Creation | | Resolution | O | non-author
| and | Formal | of all | V | editing,
| Editing | Reviewing | reviews | A | other
| | | | L | publication
|------------------| |---------------------| |------------------|
In WG Out of WG - Post-Approval
Figure 1: Stages of a Working Group Document
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
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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 current or potential 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. Assignment 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
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
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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 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 with promising results in the early copy
editing experiment.
Derived Requirements:
o Potential 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 address the
areas outlined in [1].
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.
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.
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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 40-100 substantive
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.
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 Current Req-POSTEDIT-1 - The IETF technical publisher should review the
document for grammar, spelling, formatting, adherence to boilerplate, document
structure, proper use of keywords, etc. as defined in [1].
o Current 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 Potential 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.
o Potential 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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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 Current Req-REFVAL-1 - The IETF technical publisher should ensure that
references within specifications are available.
o Current 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 Current 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.
3.6. Assignment 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.
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Derived Requirements:
o Current 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 corrects during the publication process.
This should ideally be a rare occurrence, but as publication times increase, the
number of minor technical improvements increases. 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:
o Current Req-POSTCORR-1 - The IETF technical publisher should permit the
incorporation of technical changes detected after approval, but pre
publication.
o Current Req-POSTCORR-2 - The IETF technical publisher should only allow post
approval technical changes which have been approved by the IESG.
o Potential Req-POSTCORR-3 - The IETF technical publisher should have the
discretion to reject post-approval corrections as too late in the process and
propose that it be handled as errata.
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
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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. When the delay between technical
approval and publication of a document is long, this creates a problem for
external standards organizations that cannot reference the specification until
this identifier is available.
Derived Requirements:
o Current Req-PERMID-1 - The IETF technical publisher should allocate stable
identifiers as part of the publication process.
o Potential Req- PERMID-2 - The IETF technical publisher should permit early
allocation of stable identifiers for or by the IESG to satisfy referencing
requirements of external bodies.
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.
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 Current 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 Potential Req-DOCCONVERT-2 - The IETF technical publisher should accept as
input xml2rfc files.
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
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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 of 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 [2]. 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:
o Current Req-STATUSTRK-1 - The IETF technical publisher should provide state
information for each document in the publication process.
o Potential 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 Potential 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
expedites publication of a document. Ideally, this should not skip any of the
publication steps, but allocates it higher priority in the work queue that should
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 or
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providing stable identifiers early in the publication process would likely reduce
the need for fast-tracking.
Derived Requirements:
o Current 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 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.
The RFC Editor can also deem an independent submission as not acceptable for
publication.
Derived Requirements:
o Current Req-EXCEPTIONS-1 - The IETF technical publisher should permit documents
to be withdrawn from publication at the direction of the IESG or by the author
(for independent submissions).
o Current Req-EXCEPTIONS-2 - The IETF technical publisher should have the
discretion to reject publication of an independent submission based upon
feedback from reviewers.
o Current Req-EXCEPTIONS-3 - 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 Current Req-PUBNOTIFY-1 - The IETF technical publisher should announce the
availability of published documents.
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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 Current Req-ERRATA-1 - The IETF technical publisher should maintain errata for
published documents.
o Current Req-ERRATA-2 - The IETF technical publisher should provide information
on relevant errata as part of the information associated with a RFC.
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 Current Req-INDEX-1 - The IETF technical publisher should maintain the index of
all IETF published documents.
o Current Req-INDEX-2 - The IETF technical publisher should provide the permanent
archive for published documents.
o Current Req-INDEX-3 - Meta information associated with a published document
must be stored and updated as its status changes.
o Current Req-INDEX-4 - The archive must be sufficiently secure to prevent the
modification of published documents by external parties.
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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 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 Current Req-PUBACCESS-1 - The IETF technical publisher should provide search
tools for finding published documents
o Current 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 Potential 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 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 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 Current Req-STATS-1 - The IETF technical publisher should provide monthly
statistics on average queue times and documents processed sorted by category of
document.
o Current 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. 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 Current Req-PROCESSCHG-1 - The IETF technical publisher should participate in
the discussions of changes to author guidelines and publication process
changes.
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.
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 Current 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.
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o Current 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.
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 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 Potential Req-TIMEFRAMES-1 - The IETF technical publisher should have an goal
of 90% of documents published within x weeks of approval. Documents held up
due to references or due to a protocol action should be excluded from this
statistic.
o Potential Req-TIMEFRAMES-2 - The IETF technical publisher should have a goal of
90% of documents have a stable identifier allocated within y weeks of approval.
Documents held up due to references or due to a protocol action should be
excluded from this statistic.
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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 Current 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 Potential 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.
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 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 Potential 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.
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.
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Derived Requirements:
o Potential Req-AUTHCHGSTATS-1 - The IETF technical publisher should provide
monthly statistics on author 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.
The following is a list of potential issues that must be addressed within the IETF
depending on the requirements selected for the technical publisher:
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 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 Early allocation of Permanent Stable Identifiers: If early allocation of
permanent stable identifiers is agreed as a requirement, then the IETF
processes must be adapted to either generate or use these early identifiers.
o Exception Handling: If publication timelines can be reduced sufficiently or
permanent identifiers allocated early, then expedited handling may no longer be
needed.
It is expected that as decisions are made on the technical publication
requirements, that this section will expand to include any associated requirements
on the IETF processes.
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.
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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 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. Steve Barclay, John Meredith, and Sami Trabulsi for discussions of the
publication practices of ATIS, ETSI, and ITU. Other acknowledgements to date: a
discussion on the wg chairs mailing list, Henning Schulzrinne, Henrik Levkowetz.
9. Informative References
[1] Reynolds, J. and Braden, R., "Instructions to Request for Comments (RFC)
Authors", draft-rfc-editor-rfc2223bis-08 (work in progress), August 2004
[2] Levkowetz, H. and D. Meyer, "The PROTO Process: Working Group Chair
Document Shepherding", draft-ietf-proto-wgchair-doc-shepherding-05 (work in
progress), March 2005
Author's Addresses
Allison Mankin
Shinkuro, Inc.
1025 Vermont Avenue
Washington, DC 20005
USA
Phone: +1 301 728 7199
Email: mankin@psg.com
URI: http://www.psg.com/~mankin/
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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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Acknowledgment
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