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 By submitting this Internet-Draft, each author represents that any applicable patent or other IPR claims of which he or she is aware have been or will be disclosed, and any of which he or she becomes aware will be disclosed, in accordance with Section 6 of BCP 79. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html This Internet-Draft will expire on July 12, 2006. 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. Mankin & Hayes Expires July 12, 2006 [Page 1] Internet-Draft draft-mankin-techspec-pubreq-02 January 2006 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 Mankin & Hayes Expires July 12, 2006 [Page 2] Internet-Draft draft-mankin-techspec-pubreq-02 January 2006 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 Mankin & Hayes Expires July 12, 2006 [Page 3] Internet-Draft draft-mankin-techspec-pubreq-02 January 2006 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 Mankin & Hayes Expires July 12, 2006 [Page 4] Internet-Draft draft-mankin-techspec-pubreq-02 January 2006 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 Mankin & Hayes Expires July 12, 2006 [Page 5] Internet-Draft draft-mankin-techspec-pubreq-02 January 2006 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. Mankin & Hayes Expires July 12, 2006 [Page 6] Internet-Draft draft-mankin-techspec-pubreq-02 January 2006 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. Mankin & Hayes Expires July 12, 2006 [Page 7] Internet-Draft draft-mankin-techspec-pubreq-02 January 2006 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. Mankin & Hayes Expires July 12, 2006 [Page 8] Internet-Draft draft-mankin-techspec-pubreq-02 January 2006 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 Mankin & Hayes Expires July 12, 2006 [Page 9] Internet-Draft draft-mankin-techspec-pubreq-02 January 2006 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 Mankin & Hayes Expires July 12, 2006 [Page 10] Internet-Draft draft-mankin-techspec-pubreq-02 January 2006 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 Mankin & Hayes Expires July 12, 2006 [Page 11] Internet-Draft draft-mankin-techspec-pubreq-02 January 2006 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. Mankin & Hayes Expires July 12, 2006 [Page 12] Internet-Draft draft-mankin-techspec-pubreq-02 January 2006 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. Mankin & Hayes Expires July 12, 2006 [Page 13] Internet-Draft draft-mankin-techspec-pubreq-02 January 2006 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: Mankin & Hayes Expires July 12, 2006 [Page 14] Internet-Draft draft-mankin-techspec-pubreq-02 January 2006 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. Mankin & Hayes Expires July 12, 2006 [Page 15] Internet-Draft draft-mankin-techspec-pubreq-02 January 2006 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. Mankin & Hayes Expires July 12, 2006 [Page 16] Internet-Draft draft-mankin-techspec-pubreq-02 January 2006 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. Mankin & Hayes Expires July 12, 2006 [Page 17] Internet-Draft draft-mankin-techspec-pubreq-02 January 2006 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. Mankin & Hayes Expires July 12, 2006 [Page 18] Internet-Draft draft-mankin-techspec-pubreq-02 January 2006 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/ Mankin & Hayes Expires July 12, 2006 [Page 19] Internet-Draft draft-mankin-techspec-pubreq-02 January 2006 Stephen Hayes Ericsson 3634 Long Prairie Rd. 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Mankin & Hayes Expires July 12, 2006 [Page 20] Internet-Draft draft-mankin-techspec-pubreq-02 January 2006 Acknowledgment Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the Internet Society. Mankin & Hayes Expires July 12, 2006 [Page 21]