Standard publishing procedure 2
for Computer and Information Science

The publishing procedure number 2 is the more aggressive one with respect to using the Linköping University Electronic Press. Its basic idea is that the author publishes the first version of his/her article in the E-Press as soon as it is ready, and then submits it to journal or conference reviewing afterwards. This is clearly acceptable for some journals/conferences; it is likely to work fine for workshops in most cases; it is the only mode of operation for the new European AI publishing system (Electronic Transactions on Artificial Intelligence); it is almost certainly OK with IEEE and has a good chance of being OK with ACM, and it is almost sure to preclude external publication in some journals or conferences.. The user of this procedure must therefore be careful to know what he/she is doing.

To use procedure 2, one proceeds in the following steps:

1. Write the article, up to the point where you have a version of the article, stored in computer, which you are ready to show to the world.

2. Apply to the series editor for "Electronic Articles in Computer and Information Science" to have the article published by Linköping University Electronic Press. If the editor approves, proceed, otherwise stop here.

3. Format the article for publication by the E-Press. Arrange to put the following notice on the first page of the article:
   This work has been submitted for publication. Copyright may be transferred, and the present version of the article may be superseded by a revised one. The WWW page at the URL stated below will contain up-to-date information about the current version and copyright status of this article. Additional copyright information is found on the next page of this document.
   An option in the Latex style etendu puts in this phrase automatically.

4. If you wish, obtain a URL for an Article Locator Page within the IDA article register, and set up the relevant information there, including a reference to the publication by the E-Press.

5. Make the article available to colleagues who may give you comments about it. Use the URL which the E-Press assigns to this article as the reference, and tell them to do likewise. Promote the article as much as possible, so that people get to see it and read it.

6. Submit the article to an appropriate journal, conference, etc. Be sure to use a printout of the E-Press version of the article, and add a note confirming that the article is available on-line in this format.

7. If the article is not accepted for publication, decide on one of the following:
   • Maybe the reviewers were right, the paper was lousy, and you should forget all about it and do something else. (This is sometimes the case, but not at all always).
   • The reviewers made an obvious mistake, and you think you can get it accepted quickly in another place. Resubmit quickly. Don't make any extensive changes; marginal changes are OK but they are no reason to republish the article in the E-Press. If downright errors have been found, then prepare an errata list and have it referenced from the E-Press cover page for the article.
   • Maybe the article contains good substance but needs a big rewrite in order that people shall understand it, or maybe the reviewers just aren't mature enough or fair enough. Rewrite the article and start the present procedure over again.

8. If the article is accepted for publication (congratulations!), then do the following:
   1. Request the E-Press to add information to the article's cover page about where it has been accepted for publication.
   2. Prepare a modified version of the article which differs from the original one by including a copyright notice, for example an ACM, IEEE, or AAAI copyright notice (see the copyrights overview page). Request the E-Press to add a link to the modified paper to the article cover page. Note that they will also retain the link to the original, according to E-Press policy, but the cover page can clearly show what is now the current version of the article.

9. Usually, the reviewers have requested some changes to the article, or you may have thought of some yourself. When you have completed the definitive version of the article which is going to be published, then provide it with the same copyright notice as was mentioned in the previous item. Inform the E-Press about the existence of this revised version of the article, and request them to put a link to it on the article's cover page.

   If the publisher is IEEE, you are required to replace the previous electronic version of the paper with the new one. The E-Press will comply with this requirement by storing the revised version of the article in the URL where the original version was stored before, and move the original version to another URL. However, both the original and the revised version will be accessible from the cover page.

   We do not recommend to republish the revised version of the article as a separate E-Press publication, because of the complications that that may entail.

10. Send the finished article to the publisher. Usually, they also require you to complete a copyright release where you transfer all rights to them. Consider the following four cases:
    • You get to sign a "permission to publish" whereby you as the author retain the copyright: no problem.
    • The publisher does not require you to sign any transfer at all: no problem here either. However, in this case you should make a distinct, written note of that fact, and store it in the same place as where you would otherwise have stored your copy of the copyright release form. In this way, you can state with confidence later on that you never signed such a form.
    • The standard agreements of ACM and IEEE, and all other agreements where you sign away your copyright: add the following clause to the agreement before signing it:

      The author confirms and ACM (resp. IEEE) accepts that the preliminary version of this article has previously been published, without refereeing, by Linköping University Electronic Press, and that they have a right to keep the original version of the article on-line on the Internet, provided that a clear citation of the definite publication by ACM (resp. IEEE) is made.

      Then see what will happen; probably nothing happens. However if the publisher comes back and says that you have to remove that clause otherwise they will not publish your paper, then you must not go along; you have to abstain from having the paper published by them. This is the risk you are running with this publication procedure. - However, in the unlikely event of this happening, we recommend that you anyway include the article in your CV, explaining that it was accepted based on refereeing but then this other thing happened.

    In any case, be sure to retain two copies of the copyright agreement that you signed and sent in, (or of your own, written note that you never signed any agreement), and to give one of those copies to whoever in your department is in charge of administrating copyright agreements. Starting 1997, this has to be done on the departmental level.

11. When the article appears in published form, then do the following depending on who is the publisher:
    • ACM, if/when your article appears in their digital library: Request the E-Press to remove the (link to) the on-line version of the definite article from the cover page, and to replace it by a link to the copy of the article that is maintained by ACM.
    • ACM, before your article appears in their digital library: No need to do anything. (You may however arrange to change the phrase "will appear" to "appeared" in the appropriate places).
    • Other publishers who, like ACM, require you to not keep the definite version of the article on line, while granting you the right to keep the original version on line: like in the previous item.
    • All other cases: No action at this point, except for changing "will appear" to "appeared" in the appropriate places.

12. If you decide later on the make further changes to the article, then proceed as follows according to who is the publisher:
    • ACM, IEEE, AAAI: Feel free to put the revised version on-line, but be sure to refer to them as copyright holders even in the revised article.
    • Publishers which leave the copyright with you, (including e.g. Morgan-Kaufmann): feel free to put the revised article on line. As a matter of courtesy, make a clear reference to where the earlier version of the article was published.
    • Publishers where you added to the publication agreement a clause reserving the same author rights as with IEEE, and they did not object: as for IEEE.
    • All other publishers: get the permission of the publisher as copyright holder before you consider putting the revised article on-line.
    In any case, make sure that there can be no mixup as to which version of the article is which.