Electronic Transactions on Artificial Intelligence

1. Make up your mind whether you really think your article is ready for publication. (In a conventional journal or conference, you can always send it in to see what happens. Here, it is published at the beginning of the process, so you won't be able to retract it; it will stay with you forever).

2. Check whether the article belongs within one of the present Research Areas of the ETAI. If it doesn't, then we won't be able to receive it - sorry. We only receive papers in areas where we are properly organized for communication and review.

3. Make an arrangement whereby the article will be available on-line in a persistent fashion during the period of Review Discussion in ETAI. There are three ways of doing that; see below.

4. When the paper has been made available on-line, send a message to the appropriate ETAI area editor, specify that you want to submit the article to his/her ETAI area, and give the article's URL for reference.

5. During the three following months, be prepared to answer to the questions and comments that may arise during the discussion.

6. After three months, decide whether you want to submit the article for acceptance (following confidential refereeing by peers) by the ETAI, or if you wish to go for another journal.

7. If you choose the ETAI, as we hope, then send another E-mail message to the area editor to confirm. Also, consider whether you wish to revise the article before it is sent to the referees.

8. For refereeing, the article must exist in standard ETAI format, which means e.g. that the font size and the length of lines is what you expect from a journal article. This is automatic if you have used an FPA for publication; otherwise ask the advise of the area editor or the ETAI secretariat.

9. Refereeing takes only a few weeks, and normally returns with a binary decision (accept or not accept). We assume that the feedback and exchange of opinions takes place during the review debate.

10. However, in exceptional circumstances where the review debate was lame, refereeing may have to proceed like for an ordinary journal. But even in this case, the "discussion" part of the referees comments will be posted on the article's interaction page.

11. Let us hope that your article is accepted to the ETAI. If it is, then include it proudly in your CV as a published journal article.

12. When your ETAI accepted article is going to be part of your merits for promotion or for a research grant, you may wish to refer to ETAI's home page which now contains information and support arguments specially directed to promotion committees and sponsoring agencies, explaining the solidity of ETAI's quality assurance scheme. (Click here to see what we tell them).

• First Publication Archives: The article is published (without review) by an organization that commits to keeping it on-line for a long period (at least 20 years) and in a secure way.

• First Publication Servers: The article is posted as a departmental technical report that has a special backup agreement with a First Publication Archive.

• Posted Copy of Printed Article: The article has already been published in a conference proceedings; the author puts a copy of it on-line on his or her home page on the web, and some safety measures are taken to verify that the on-line version is identical to the one in the conference proceedings.

The following are the sets of rules for these three means of making the article available. Please consult your area editor or the ETAI secretariat for advise about which method to use in each case.

	Rules for First Publication Archives (FPA:s)
	Rules for First Publication Servers (FPS:s)
	Rules for Posted Copies of Printed Articles (PCPA:s)