An Incubator Group's deliverables are linked from the home page for that group. When an Incubator Group wishes to publish a Final Report, it follows the process described below. Incubator Groups are encouraged to publish documents that satisfy the publication rules of the W3C Communications Team even in their draft state. This will facilitate the transition to Final Report.
If all goes well, W3C publishes and announces the XGR.
In this document, the key words MUST, MUST NOT, REQUIRED, SHALL, SHALL NOT, SHOULD, SHOULD NOT, RECOMMENDED, MAY, and OPTIONAL are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119.
Serving as Document Contact, the XG Chair negotiates a publication date with the Webmaster. Each publication request SHOULD propose a publication date, which is generally on or shortly after the title page date. If the request does not include a proposed publication date, the Webmaster MAY consider the title page date as the proposed publication date.
To ensure that Webmaster and Communications Team resources are available for publication, the Document Contact SHOULD send a publication request at least five days prior to the proposed publication date. When scheduling publication, please note that publishing moratoria ("blackouts") occur at the end of the calendar year and in advance of certain W3C events such as AC meetings and Technical Plenary Week. The Communications Team announces publishing moratoria to Chairs in advance of these meetings.
If it becomes apparent that a publication date will be well after a title page date, the Webmaster SHOULD ask the Document Contact to resubmit a revised document with a more current title page date.
A Final XG Report MUST satisfy W3C Publication Rules ("pubrules") for XGRs.
Install the XGR in its final dated location. The preferred location is the Incubator Group's public Web space. Do not install it at the latest version URI, the Webmaster will take care of that.
A publication request MUST include the following information.
Send the publication request to to the Webmaster (at webreq@w3.org) and the Activity Lead (at coralie@w3.org) asserting that the XGR satisfies these requirements. The document title is subject to review by the Communications Team.
In order to ensure publication standards, upon receiving a publication request the Webmaster SHALL make a best effort to verify that the document satisfies the pubrules requirements following the Webmaster's usual practices. The Webmaster SHALL publish the document (cf. the Webmaster's guide) if the following conditions have been met:
Otherwise the Webmaster SHALL NOT publish. In this case, the Webmaster SHALL provide details to the person who sent the request about which requirements have not been satisfied.
The Webmaster SHALL NOT publish the document until the date on the title page or later. The Webmaster publishes the document by updating the XGR index, updating the latest version link, and announcing publication to the person who sent the request, cc'ing webreq@w3.org, and w3t-comm@w3.org.
After the Webmaster publishes the document, the Comm Team announces the publication on the W3C home page and may send additional announcements (e.g., to the AC). The publication should precede announcements by only a small amount of time.
Please contact the Communications Team at w3t-comm@w3.org (cc'ing the group's Team Contact) if you have any general questions regarding the publications process.