Information for Authors

Procedure for singel submitted articles

Reviewing in ETAI comes in a few varieties:

Reviewing for individually submitted articles
Reviewing for articles in a workshop whose proceedings will appear in the ETAI
Reviewing of invited papers

Other varieties may later be added. In spite of the varieties, there is a common philosophy to the effect that in order to be accepted for the ETAI, an article must first be submitted to a period of open discussion. The pages on the present menu describe how this works in the case of individually submitted articles. For the other varieties, please click "Alternative procedures" at the lower end of the menu.

Deciding to submit your article to the ETAI

The following is what you need to think about when you consider submitting an article to the ETAI.

Is there an ETAI area where the article belongs? If not, we can not receive it, sorry. (This is because the idea of on-line public review discussion with peers in the same speciality is a core idea in ETAI, and these discussions are organized within the areas).
Are you convinced that the article is ready for publication? Please remember that it's not like in a conventional journal or conference, where you can always send in an article to see what happens. Here, the article is published at the beginning of the review process, so you can't retract it. It will stay with you forever.
Does the article convey distinct new results, or a solid argument for a new approach in its area of research? A good test in the former case is that you can write a summary of two-three pages specifying in concise form what the new results are. A minimal requirement for an "argument for approach" type of paper is that the approach is indeed new, that you have described both it and its known alternatives in concise form in the paper, and that you have a good argument why your approach is a superior one. (If your paper does not belong to either of these two categories, then you run a clear risk of nonacceptance).

If the answer to each of these three questions is Yes, then it is very appropriate to submit the article to the ETAI. If you should still wonder whether it is a good idea to do so, then please click for arguments in favor of publishing in the ETAI.

Good Reasons to Submit Your Article to the ETAI

The advantages are:

Very good exposure of your article to peers from the day of its appearance, thanks to the online and open reviewing scheme.
Your article will always be openly available to the research community, and will not be restricted to those colleagues that have subscribed to a particular journal or publisher.
Fair reviewing: the open review scheme gives you a chance to explain your point of view. In a conventional journal you have very little chance against an unfairly negative reviewer; in the ETAI you have the opportunity to answer back.
Safe handling: your article or your results can not be lost in the reviewing process. It is officially considered as published from the point where the reviewing begins. Reviewing and refereeing come after first publication.
ETAI is a high prestige medium, in particular since its paper edition is published by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (the Academy that awards the Nobel prizes in Physics and in Chemistry).
The innovative procedure used by the ETAI appears to more than outweigh the fact that it is new and has not yet acquired its citation ratings. This will no doubt come in a few years.

Since ETAI is a new medium, we also need to provide arguments to evaluators, such as members of promotion committees and research funding committees, concerning ETAI's quality control procedures. You may wish to check our special page for evaluators to see how we explain ETAI's qualities to them.

Posting your Article for ETAI Review

ETAI's public reviewing scheme requires that every submitted article must be available over the Internet in a secure fashion, so that it remains on-line in a tamper-free way. There are three ways of arranging this.

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.
Computing Research Repository (CoRR): The article is issued as a department technical report and is deposited in the newly-organized Computing Research Repository (CoRR).
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 (backup, etc) are taken to verify that the on-line version is identical to the one in the conference proceedings.

Here's what you have to do as an author in each of these cases:

First Publication Archives: Get in touch with one of the ETAI approved FPA's, and arrange to have your article published there. If your own university or institute has its own FPA, then talk to them, otherwise contact the ETAI secretariat for assistance.
The FPA method is easy to use if your article has been prepared using Latex, since then it is only a question of reformatting it with the ETAI standard style file (plus making those corrections that may be necessary because of the change of linewidth etc). If you have prepared your manuscript using Word or Framemaker, or if you have it in HTML form, then the matter is slightly more complicated but it can still be done.
Computing Research Repository: This method can be used if your department or institute has an organized system for publishing technical reports in electronic form.
In this case, you can choose the format required or recommended for the tech-report series, as long as it uses a reasonable size (A4 or American letter size paper). You are also welcome to use the ETAI style file if you wish; this has the advantage that the article is then ready for ETAI journal publication after acceptance.
Posted Copy of Printed Article: This method can be used if you are submitting an article that has already been published in a widely available conference proceedings, and you can also put it on-line (e.g. on your web page), and if it is consistent with your agreement with the publisher of the conference proceedings that you do so. In this case, you have to sign a simple statement confirming that these conditions apply, that you will keep the article on-line at least for the duration of the reviewing period, and that you approve a certain backup arrangement.

You are welcome to use whichever method is the most convenient for you.

Submitting your article to the ETAI

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. Also enclose the article's abstract, preferably in plaintext or HTML form. The abstract ought to be "glued" into the message; please don't use attachments.

For articles that are relatively long and/or have quite technical contents, we strongly recommend to also submit a summary of the article. The summary shall be more concrete and detailed than a conventional abstract; two to three journal pages are usually adquate. It shall specify in crisp terms what are the new results that are presented in the article.

The area editor and the ETAI secretariat will then cooperate to make the following arrangements:

A review protocol page (RPP) is set up for your article. All contributions to the discussion about the article will be included in the RPP.
A message goes out to the peer community, informing them that your article has been submitted, and inviting them to send in questions and comments.
In some cases, the area editor will ask one or a few peers to initiate the open discussion: they are then invited reviewers.

Please take a look at the present review discussions to see how this has worked for previously submitted articles.