Publication process Andy King a m kingkent ac

Publication process Andy King a. m. king@kent. ac. uk http: //www. cs. kent. ac. uk/~amk Abstract: In the UK, under-graduate students have little exposure of the scientific literature and are largely oblivious to the process of publishing. Therefore, as part of the induction of our first year Ph. D students, we run a short course explaining the publishing landscape. Acknowledgments: these slides have been adapted from the slides of Howard Bowman and CACM 46(10) 111 --114

What is a theory? z What is the hypothesis that you are testing? y. Is algorithm X faster than algorithm Y? y. Does this engineering tactic lead to better code? z How do state your theory? y. For example, does it require formal language? z How do you test your theory? y. Are 3 case studies enough? y. Do you require proof and where do you stop? y. How do you know that your benchmarking is adequate and unbiased? y. Are you comparisons fair and against state-of-the-art?

Why bother to publish? z Enables physically distributed researchers to communicate z Provides a firm platform of existing knowledge z Enables ideas to tracked and ownership claimed z Establishes a virtual research network z Peer-reviewing provides a feedback mechanism (even if the work is not published, for instance, new anti-unification that was proposed in 2002) z Incremental approach to thesis construction

What is the primary/ secondary literature? Primary Secondary Research Teaching Post-graduate level Under-graduate level Peer reviewed with quality guarantee Focused on research Lightly refereed with variable quality Synthesis of research Journals, research Conference proceedings monographs, conference (Astronomy) proceedings (CS)

What is the grey literature? z GL’ 99 defined grey literature as: "That which is produced on all levels of government, academics, business and industry in print and electronic formats, but which is not controlled by commercial publishers" z Grey literature is non-conventional and ephemeral. z It includes technical reports, workshop preproceedings, web pages, newsgroup articles, memoranda, manuals. z Due its nature, librarians have had difficulty acquiring and making accessible grey literature.

Two classic examples of grey literature z Vaughan Pratt, “Two Easy Theories Whose Combination is Hard”, MIT, 1997 – a counterexample on theory composition for Greg Nelson z Now from http: //boole. stanford. edu/pub/sefnp. pdf

Final-year report versus a thesis/academic paper z Report describes the unfolding software process z Usually not very reflective z Size matters – an exercise in documentation z Paper focuses on a novel algorithmic, a correctness argument, a new result – science z Usually reflective z Size matters – an exercise in clarity and conciseness z Ph. D by Boyer, “Locking: a restriction of resolution”, University of Texas, 1971 is 40 pages long.

How do you construct a MSc thesis? z Typically structured as: y. Introduction and problem statement y. Review of related work y. Description of the technique or model y. Outline of a prototype implementation y. Experimental work and conclusions y. Directions for future work z MSc theses are often reworked a workshop paper z 30 pages of insight, carefully structured with thoughtful reflection is better than 50 pages of waffle

How do you construct a Ph. D thesis? z 3 papers in good conferences or 2 journal papers significantly simplifies the job of the examiners z Not clear that 6 weak papers are sufficient z Two models for constructing a thesis: y. Big-bang model -- compose Ph. D around mini-thesis material; pass viva; then carve up into papers y. Incremental model -- publish results as they arise; compose thesis around papers; pass viva. With creativity thesis can be presented as a “unified whole”. y. See thesis by Ulf Nilsson on “Abstract Interpretation and Abstract Machines”

Plagiarism (material from the Part II handbook) z Plagiarism is the act of claiming the ideas or discoveries of another as one’s own – academic thief z Copying examples, code, sentences or even striking expressions without acknowledgement is plagiarism z Merging bulleted points into sentences is plagiarism z Severe penalties will be imposed if plagiarism is found (and it is easy to find) z It is galling to read a paper that uses one of your sentences, or even some notation, without proper reference

How do you read a research paper? z Read the introduction and related work z Carefully study any worked examples, checking the working by hand if possible z Read a paper looking for weaknesses and technical holes z Ask sceptical technical questions: y. Does the method scale-up to real problems? y. Does is the technique engineered around the data-set? y. What is the main weakness of the method and how can it be patched?

Tracking the literature z For biblio and co-author searches use http: //www. informatik. uni-trier. de/~ley/db z For topic searches use http: //www. google. com z For citation and sources use http: //citeseer. com z For awareness scan ACM Computing Surveys z For pre-history use supervisor and

Targeting a conference z Study the topics list: “Contributions are sought in all areas of blah including but not restricted to …” z Many theory conferences solicit application papers: “Specific attention will be given to new applications of thingamajig” z Search the literature for related papers published in the conference series (work by case law) z Consider the quality of the symposia: “A total of 128 submissions were received of which 28 were selected for publication” z Deadlines are surprising flexible (ESOP)

What the sub-referee sends to the PC member REVIEWER-NAME: Andy King PAPER-NUMBER: 14 B: I can accept this paper, but I will not champion it (accept, but could reject). CLASSIFICATION: Y: I am knowledgeable in the area, though not an expert; REVIEWER-EXPERTISE: 1: Research PAPER-TYPE: 4 - Summary of the paper: [32 lines] 5 - Comments for the committee only (Not shown to the author(s)): [10 lines] 6 - Comments for the author(s) - will be sent to the submitters: [44 lines] 7 - Points in favour or against 8 - Co-reviewer(s) for this paper: None

What the author receives from Cyber. Chair From: ESOP 2003 - Cyber. Chair [curtim@di. unipi. it] Subject: ESOP 2003 Notification Dear Andy King, We are pleased to inform you that your paper, titled "Goal-Independent Suspension Analysis of Logic Programs with Dynnamic Scheduling" has been accepted for presentation at the conference ESOP 2003. Actually, the committee selected only 25 papers out of 99 submissions. Please carefully take into account the enclosed comments by the reviewers when preparing the camera-ready version. It is incumbent upon you to do so. Your camera-ready paper, NOT exceeding 15 pages, is due on January 17, 2003, in the format specified by Springer-Vela at the URL http: //www. Springer. de/comp/lances/authors. html Sincerely, Pier Paolo Delano (ESOP 2003 PC Chair)

What the author receives from Cyber. Chair (part II) First reviewer's review: >>> Summary of the paper <<< [59 lines] >>> Comments <<< [47 lines] >>> Points in favour or against <<< [69 lines] Second reviewer's review: Third reviewer's review: [Note that the scores are not seen by the author with Cyber. Chair. Better conferences, such as POPL and ICLP, tend to use 4 or more referees]

What happens in a PC meeting? z The chair presents a ranking all the papers AAAB, …, DDDD (updated during meeting) z The list is top and tailed z The discussion focuses on the middle-ground and the number of conference streams. z Sometimes borderline papers are refereed again over night or over lunch, sometimes remotely. z The referees reports are tweaked to remove bias and offensive language z PC member papers are considered at the end

Is your work ready for publication? z Can you write a convincing introduction? z Can you fill 8 LNCS pages with a suitably novel and original core? The rest goes on the mandatory abstract, intro, preliminaries, related work, conclusions, references. z Even if you decide after writing, that you work is too premature, then you have still made an advance. Deadlines drive research.

Tips on how to improve a conference paper z Craft the introduction around themes in the call for paper – be creative if necessary z Itemize your 3 contributions in the introduction for the lazy referee using say, “this paper is not an exercise in aesthetics but has a number of important practical implications: ” z Write the paper early and sent it to an expert z Add a proof or implementation appendix that will be removed in the final LNCS version z Use a CGI script to demonstrate your system z Follow the style of heroes who define the genre

Finding a co-author z Poster sessions z Social events at conferences z Seminars at other institutions z Remember that a network of good Ph. D buddies age into a network of senior academics

Routes to a journal paper z Extend a workshop or conference paper with new results, for example, implementation details, proof of correctness (regular paper) z Submit to a conference with a journal route, for instance, ESOP in SCP (special issue) z Write a pearl, letter or technical note (fast track) z Make accessible a version of your thesis work, ideal for TOPLAS (generalist paper with meat in an electronic appendix)

Referee/author interaction (stage 1, 22/11/02) To: Bart Demoen Subject: Submission to TPLP Dear Bart, Please find enclosed as an attachment a copy of our paper “Computing Convex Hulls with a Linear Solver” for consideration as a pearl in TPLP. The paper is a revised and extended version of a paper that appeared in Logic-based Program Synthesis and Transformation (LOPSTR) in 1996. Best regards, Florence Benoy, Andy King and Fred Mesnard [Paper is 6 pages long but it takes a month to journalise a section of the original 20 -page LOPSTR paper since portable code has to be written, exposition added and add a new correctness result proven in computational geometry. Bart is the area editor. ]

Referee/author interaction (stage 2, 12/3/03) From: Bart Demoen Subject: TPLP/LN/5 Andy, Your paper TITLE: Computing Convex Hulls with a Linear Solver AUTHORS: Florence Benoy, Andy King and Fred Mesnard has been accepted conditionally for publication in the Pearls Section of TPLP. I will get back to you with one more referee report and shortly afterwards with the conditions for acceptance - they are related to some rewriting and polishing of the text. Regards, Bart

Referee/author interaction (stage 2 cont’d, 30/3/03) From: Bart Demoen Subject: TPLP/LN/5 Dear Andy and other authors of Computing Convex Hulls with a Linear Solver. Here additional comments of mine. . . my apologies that it took so long. Personally I tend to agree with referee 3 that there is no LP pearl in your paper. This is not related to what referee 4 refers to: # Whether it could be a logic programming pearl depends # on your view of the relationship between logic and constraint # programming, but I'm inclined to say yes. The actual CLP code must be improved and explained better. One referee complains very justifiably about the variable naming convention. That is one point that can be improved. Another point is… [262 lines on instructions on 4 referees reports of 98, 65, 92 and 59 lines]

Referee/author interaction (stage 3, 30/7/03) To: Bart Demoen Subject: TPLP/LN/5 Bart, Thanks for your meta-report on the referees' reports. We have revised the paper to address these comments -- see the enclosed attachment. In fact we provide responses to each of your comments so that you can check things off. Sorry that our response has been so slow. The new complexity counter-example in (which is now very simple) represents several weeks of thinking. Best regards, Andy, Florence and Fred > I would appreciate if you do not take the minimalist approach: some > comments of the referees should be addressed even if I do not mention them. We have expanded the proof of correctness and have now added intuition to make it more readable. [letter of response is 367 lines and paper is now 11 pages]

Referee/author interaction (stage 5, 26/9/03) From: Bart Demoen Subject: TPLP/LN/5 Hi Andy, Here are the comments of my harshest referee : -) (it is also the only referee at this point, because we are in the end phase) I have added my own comments prefixed by > I have to ask you for another iteration. If it is of any consolation: of all papers submitted/accepted by TPLP, pearls take most time and most iterations ( …); I think this iteration is not very demanding on you and you are very close. If you need more explanation on the comments, please let me know. Cheers, Bart [Bart’s new meta-report on the harshest referee’s new report is 124 lines]

Referee/author interaction (stage 6, 14/10/03) To: Bart Demoen Subject: TPLP/LN/5 Dear Bart, Please find enclosed a revised copy of our paper as an attachment. As before, a response to each of the issues you raised is given. Best regards, Florence, Andy and Fred. > > > > > ignore the part where the referee complains about "this is not a pearl" the remark that a naive implementation (without copy_term and prepare_dump) would at first be easier to understand, is correct and would make the presentation better from the didactic point of view; for a pearl, that would be indeed very nice - can you do it ? We have followed this suggestion, restructuring the development of project in 3 stages. [New revision of paper is 12 pages and the new letter of response is 151 lines]

Referee/author interaction (stage 7, 17/10/03) From: Bart Demoen Subject: TPLPLN 5 Dear Andy, Florence, Fred, I am pleased to tell you that your nightmare is coming to an end: your paper is really in the final stage of acceptance, meaning that I will now bug you only with syntactical, grammatical, typographical and similar matters. Allow me to comment on your most recent changes: # We have followed this suggestion, restructuring the development of # project in 3 stages. I would suggest that you change the sentence "This leads to the following revision" on page 6 into "This leads to the following (SICStus Prolog specific) revision" or something in the same spirit. [142 line report on rewording, grammar and “political” comment]

Referee/author interaction (stage 8, 17/10/03) From: Bart Demoen Subject: TPLPLN 5 Dear authors of the TPLPLN 5 submission, I am very happy that your submission Computing Convex Hulls with a Linear Solver as a TPLP Programming Pearl is in the final stage of acceptance: I herewith recommend it to Maurice Bruynooghe - the editor-in-chief for publication in that particular section of TPLP. Maurice will send you additional requirements you should comply with for the final version: they relate to form and what exactly needs to be send to him as final copy. From now on, you deal with him. Thanks for submitting to the programming pearls section of TPLP: I can only wish we receive more submissions like yours. Regards, Bart Demoen

Things that you shouldn't do (but I’ve done) z Send a paper to the wrong journal, for instance, Jo. Pa. DC submission rejected after 2 years z Not respond to the referee’s comments, for example, JLP paper with inadequate discussion of related work z Forget to update related work in the final copy, for instance, embarrassing erratum z Don’t confuse your versions, for instance, JLP technical note

Are journal papers longer than conference papers? z Many good journals take technical notes, short papers or “letters”: z Some of the best algorithms are incredibly simple (but very clever):

Problematic papers z Experimental but useful papers that quantifiably compare algorithms U, V, W, X, Y and Z z Counter-example papers that reveal errors can inflame the referee (run the letter past the author so that you “do not misrepresent their work”) z Long papers that build on existing work can be tedious to referee (adopt technical note style) z Algorithm papers that rely on tricky theory can be hard to penetrate for referee (provide worked example and implementation section)

Refereeing papers z It is inevitably and it inevitably takes 2 day per conference paper, longer for a long article. z PC may have to initiate new refereeing if your report is late. Can jeopardise the PC meeting z Indicate to the editor/chair any doubts in your understanding (usually it concurs with others) z The rejection of a paper is never pleasant especially to a new researcher. Thus be tactful and supply corrections and do’able suggestions. z One flaw is enough to kill a paper; never use bluster.

Why bother to quantify quality (biblio-metrics)? z Publication in prestigious forums influences peer recognition, RAE, promotion decisions, etc. z Quality research provides a foundation for further scientific achievements z Therefore citation analysis is considered to be an objective way of assessing quality z To ensure a reasonable citation history, it is normal to allow a 2 -year lag between the publication and the citation analysis

Citation analysis techniques z CPA – average number of citations per article. This measures influence whilst factoring out the size effect, for example, TCS. z UCR – the un-cited ratio, that is, the percentage of journal articles that were not cited at all. z 20+ – percentage of articles with 20+ citations. z C 2 C – cited-to-citing ratio, that is, the total number of citations against the total number of references. Forums that emphasize basic research are likely to be cited more often than they cite others. “Source” versus “store”.

Digression – how to write a paper with 20+ citations z Write an early paper on an emerging topic that grows into a sub-field of 20+ papers z Write a survey paper that helps 20+ researchers in their work z Write a simple paper on an algorithm or technique and then distribute the code so that 20+ researchers use it z Write a problem paper that poses lots of issues but does not provide many answers that keeps 20+ researchers entertained for a few years

Sample of journals with abbreviations Journal Abbrev MIS Quarterly MISQ Information and Management I&M Information Systems Research ISR IEEE Computer IEEECom Communications of the ACM CACM Information Systems Journal ISJ J. of the ACM (JACM) JACM Information Systems IS IEEE T. on Software Engineering IEEESE Information Systems Management ISM Artificial Intelligence AI Decision Support Systems DSS Human-Computer Interaction HCI Knowledge Based Systems KBS IBM Systems Journal IBM J. of Strategic IS JISC AI Magazine AIMag J. of Information Technology Jo. IT ACM T. on Database Systems ACMDB Expert Systems with Applications ESA Int’l J. of Human-Computer Studies HCS Computer Journal CJ ACM Computing Surveys ACMCS J. of Computer IS JCSI J. of Computer and System Sciences JCSS J. of Systems and Software JSS European J. of IS EJIS

Citation-based indices of journal quality Abbrev CPA UCR 20+ C 2 C MISQ 7. 7 6. 0 7. 5 0. 15 I&M 2. 2 24. 1 0. 06 ISR 6. 3 9. 2 9. 6 0. 12 IEEECom 2. 0 35. 4 0. 5 0. 11 CACM 4. 4 23. 8 4. 2 0. 45 ISJ 1. 9 32. 8 0. 05 JACM 5. 8 17. 2 6. 4 0. 17 IS 2. 0 34. 1 0. 06 IEEESE 4. 5 20. 5 3. 3 0. 16 ISM 0. 4 74. 8 0. 0 0. 20 AI 5. 1 18. 9 4. 8 0. 13 DSS 1. 5 37. 9 0. 05 HCI 3. 4 14. 5 1. 7 0. 09 KBS 1. 4 48. 6 0. 7 0. 06 IBM 3. 0 26. 3 1. 9 0. 14 JISC 1. 5 54. 1 0. 04 AIMag 3. 1 37. 7 2. 7 0. 14 Jo. IT 1. 4 40. 5 0. 04 ACMDB 3. 4 23. 7 0. 09 ESA 1. 1 52. 3 0. 05 HCS 3. 2 28. 4 2. 2 0. 09 CJ 1. 0 55. 7 0. 05 ACMCS 2. 6 31. 4 0. 07 JCSI 0. 3 80. 4 0. 02 JCSS 3. 1 30. 3 1. 0 0. 12 JSS 0. 9 55. 7 0. 04 EJIS 3. 0 32. 5 1. 3 0. 06

Conclusions from quality analysis z CPA, UCR and 20+ almost concur and their ranking reflects our expectations for quality z On average, journals with a technical or a specialty focus attain higher rankings z Journals that not receive much recognition by general audiences should not be shunned z Caveat – journals are not necessarily more prestigious than conferences in CS.

Ranking of journals, conferences, workshops OSDI, USENIX Symposium on Internet Technologies and Systems, PLDI, SIGCOMM, MOBICOM, ASPLOS, USENIX Annual Technical Conference, TOCS, SIGGRAPH, JAIR, SOSP, MICRO, POPL, PPOPP, Machine Learning, Computer Networks, Computational Linguistics, JSSPP, VVS, FPCA, LISP and Functional Programming, ICML, Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery, SID, ICSE, ACM Transactions on Networking, OOPSLA, Workshop on Workstation Operating Systems, Journal of Computer Security, TOSEM, Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Debugging, Workshop on Hot Topics in Operating Systems, Journal of Cryptology, CSFW, ECOOP, Evolutionary Computation, TOPLAS, SIGSOFT FSE, CAV, PODS, Artificial Intelligence, NOSSDAV, ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, IJCAI, VLDB Journal, TODS, USENIX Winter, HPCA, LICS, JLP, Computer Networks, ICCV, IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium, AES Candidate Conference, KR, TISSEC, ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce, TOIS, PEPM, SIGMOD Conference, Formal Methods in System Design, Mobile Agents, REX Workshop, NMR, LOPLAS, STOC, Distributed Computing, KDD, Symposium on Testing, Analysis, and Verification, Software Development Environments, SIAM J Comput, CRYPTO, Multimedia Systems, ICFP, Lisp and Symbolic Computation, ECP, CHI, ISLP, ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology, ESOP, ECCV, ACM Transactions on Graphics, CSCW, AOSE, ICCL, Journal of Functional Programming, RTSS, ECSCW, TOCHI, ISCA, SIGMETRICS/Performance, IWMM, JICSLP, Automatic Verification Methods for Finite State Systems, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, AIPS, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, VLDB, Symposium on Computational Geometry, FOCS, ATAL, SODA, PPCP, AAAI, COLT, USENIX Summer, Information and Computation, Java Grande, ISMM, ICLP, Structure in Complexity Theory Conference, IEEE Transactions on Multimedia, Rules in Database Systems, ACL, CONCUR, SPAA, J Algorithms, DOOD, SIGSOFT FSE, ICDT, Advances in Petri Nets, ICNP, SSD, INFOCOM, IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, Cognitive Science, TSE, Storage and Retrieval for Image and Video Databases (SPIE), NACLP, SIGMETRICS, JACM, PODC, International Conference on Supercomputing, Fast Software Encryption, IEEE Visualization, SAS, …

Ranking of journals, conferences, workshops TACS, International Journal of Computer Vision, JCSS, Algorithmica, To. CL, Information Hiding, Journal of Automated Reasoning, ECCV, PCRCW, Journal of Logic and Computation, KDD Workshop, ML, ISSTA, EUROCRYPT, PDIS, Hypertext, IWDOM, PARLE, Hybrid Systems, American Journal of Computational Linguistics, SPIN, ICDE, FMCAD, SC, EDBT, Computational Complexity, International Journal of Computational Geometry and Applications, ESORICS, IJCAI, TACAS, Ubicomp, MPC, AWOC, TLCA, Emergent Neural Computational Architectures Based on Neuroscience, CADE, PROCOMET, ACM Multimedia, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, Science of Computer Programming, LCPC, CT-RSA, ICLP, Financial Cryptography, DBPL, AAAI/IAAI, Artificial Life, Higher-Order and Symbolic Computation, TKDE, ACM Computing Surveys, Computational Geometry, Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, EWSL, Learning for Natural Language Processing, TAPOS, TAPSOFT, International Journal of Computational Geometry and Applications, IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, Heterogeneous Computing Workshop, Distributed and Parallel Databases, DAC, ICTL, IEEE Computer, IEEE Real Time Technology and Applications Symposium, ACM Workshop on Role-Based Access Control, WCRE, Applications and Theory of Petri Nets, ACM SIGOPS European Workshop, ICDCS, Mathematical Structures in Computer Science, Workshop on the Management of Replicated Data, ECCV, PPSN, Middleware, OODBS, ECCC, UML, Real-Time Systems, FME, Evolutionary Computing, AISB Workshop, IEEE Conference on Computational Complexity, IOPADS, IJCAI, ISWC, SIGIR, Symposium on LISP and Functional Programming, PASTE, HPDC, Application and Theory of Petri Nets, ICCAD, Category Theory and Computer Science, Recent Advances in Intrusion Detection, JIIS, TODAES, Neural Computation, CCL, DPDS, ACM Multimedia, MAAMAW, Computer Graphics Forum, HUG, Hybrid Neural Systems, SRDS, TPCD, ILP, ARTDB, NIPS, Formal Aspects of Computing, ECHT, ICMCS, Wireless Networks, Advances in Data Base Theory, WDAG, ALP, TARK, PATAT, ISTCS, Concurrency - Practice and Experience, CP, Computer Vision, Graphics, and Image Processing, FTCS, RTA, COORDINATION, CHDL, Theory of Computing Systems, CTRS, COMPASS/ADT, TOMACS, IEEE Micro, IEEE PACT, ASIACRYPT, MONET, Computer Networks, HUC, Expert Database Conference, Agents, CPM, Symposium on Compiler Construction, International Conference on Evolutionary Computation, TAGT, Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Simulation, FTRTFT, TPHOLs, Intelligent User Interfaces, Journal of Functional and Logic Programming, Cluster Computing, ESA, PLILP, COLING-ACL, META, IEEE Multi. Media

Citation-based measures of academic quality Academic Cites D. Johnson 12119 J. Smith 6052 R. Agrawal 5143 J. Ullman 11041 D. Knuth 5793 D. Goldberg 5050 A. Gupta 8407 S. Shenker 5716 L. Zhang 4952 R. Milner 7900 E. Clarke 5674 R. Karp 4951 R. Rivest 6930 S. Floyd 5598 G. Hinton 4945 M. Garey 6732 J. Hennessy 5512 J. Quinlan 4812 R. Tarjan 6525 A. Aho 5411 R. Jain 4768 J. Dongarra 6522 R. Johnson 5259 C. Leiserson 4764 V. Jacobson 6494 A. Pnueli 5212 C. Hoare 4758 L. Lamport 6410 C. Papadimitriou 5210 J. Pearl 4737 See http: //citeseer. nj. nec. com/allcited. html for the top 10000 cited authors of the 659481 cited authors in computer science

Finishing well z Tactful: referees are often selected from the related work so say, “Recently, [7] have shown how Def formulae can be cleverly encoded as ACI-terms. The initial experimental results reported in [7] are promising though widening is required for the larger programs” z Broad: “In fact, surprisingly, the same Galois connection is required for the demand-driven analysis of imperative programs” z Insightful: “[3] overlooks the boundedness requirement of sub-goals, no doubt because the technique is goal-independent”

Making the most of what you have got z Keep your web page up-to-date. If you add links to ps, then you are more likely to be cited. z Check what you have signed: y“The Author may publish his/her contribution on his/her personal Web page provided that he/she creates a link to the above mentioned volume of LNCS at the Springer-Verlag server or to the LNCS series homepage at http: //www. springer. de/comp/lncs/index. html” y. If copyright is a problem, then create an “almost identical to the journal” technical report version. y. Many insist on the Computing Research Repository (Co. RR) http: //xxx. lanl. gov/archive/cs/