Electronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science

Information for Authors and Event Organisers

Only original papers will be considered: manuscripts are accepted for review with the understanding that the same work has not been published, nor is presently submitted, elsewhere. However, full versions of extended abstracts published in EPTCS, or substantial revisions, may later be published elsewhere.

An article counts as a scientific paper only when it contains a novel scientific contribution itself—possibly a survey—not counting results that are quoted from other papers, or announcements of results that are not fully stated in the contributed paper. Only scientific papers in this sense are published in EPTCS as separate LaTeX/pdf entities archived at arXiv.org.

Abstract-only contributions, not meeting the criterion above, are published on-line in EPTCS in HTML form, as part of the same file containing the cover page and table of contents of an EPTCS volume and the editorial contributions. A LaTeX/pdf rendering of such contributions will be used for the printed form of EPTCS.

Submissions must be prepared in LaTeX using the EPTCS macro package (which is also available from Overleaf). Upon request, permission to use other software may be given. The event organisation may give this permission only if (1) this software is compatible with lodging the paper with CoRR, and (2), the output is visually indistinguishable from LaTeX output using our house-style, or the difference is both small and an improvement.

References in EPTCS papers should contain the digital object identifier (DOI) of each cited publication, if available, with a life link to the publication's response page.

The submission and refereeing process is handled entirely by the organisation of the conference, workshop or Festschrift (hereafter called "event") to which the paper is submitted.

Once an event has determined its accepted papers, the event organisers log in at this website to interact with EPTCS in creating the corresponding EPTCS volume.

Any questions on the EPTCS publication process, or issues that arise during this process, are to be addressed to our editorial staff, at staff@eptcs.org.

Approval of Accepted Manuscripts

Once a paper is accepted by the event that creates an issue of EPTCS, our staff quickly inspects the paper and, normally, approves it for publication. We check four things. We require that the organisers of the event in question arrange to check all four before accepting an article. In the end, it is their task to ensure the papers pass all checks.
Content
Our check for content will generally be cursory, because we trust the refereeing process performed by the PC of the event in question.
English
We require the accepting body of the event in question to check the papers for correct English (spelling, style and grammar) as well as content. Our own check is again cursory; we read a few random passages only.
Formatting
We check that papers adhere to our style file and are well formatted. For instance if there are changes to header placement or overflows into the margin we will request changes, which will slow the publishing of the proceedings.
Metadata
We require that title and author names entered on our website match the ones in the paper exactly, that the chosen subject classification is appropriate, and that references in papers are equipped with DOIs.

Post-Acceptance Workflow

EPTCS allows event organisers to choose between two workflows: one in which authors are responsible for uploading LaTeX source code that typesets well, and one in which they take this responsibility themselves. Below we describe the former choice.
  1. Using an access code we ask event organisers to pass on to authors, authors log in at http://login.eptcs.org/, to upload the LaTeX source code of an accepted paper. At the same time, the submitting author, on behalf of all authors of a paper, electronically signs our copyright agreement. Our website shows authors whether the paper typesets without problem, and how the resulting pdf looks. There will also be a brief form to fill in, requiring:
  2. Upon approval by authors of the EPTCS-generated pdf and all meta data (abstract etc.), our software generates another pdf using the LaTeX installation at arXiv.org, and asks authors to check that also there the paper typesets correctly. In the rare event of a mismatch, this problem should be addressed by authors, possibly with help from the staff at arXiv.org.
  3. Volume editors (= event organisers) inspect author's (EPTCS-generated) pdfs on the EPTCS website and
  4. If volume editors make any changes to a paper, we invite the authors to check, on the EPTCS website, if the edited paper is acceptable. Authors can either approve the paper, change it further, or submit a request to volume editors regarding their editing in the paper.
  5. Volume editors upload a preface (and optional other editorial contributions) in HTML form as well as in LaTeX.
  6. EPTCS staff either approves the papers or communicates to authors (or volume editors) what needs to be changed.
  7. EPTCS software automatically calculates and overwrites page numbers, as well as the other general data that is displayed in the footer on the first page of each paper.
  8. When all papers are ready, the entire volume is archived at http://arXiv.org/corr. We also publish, in HTML form, the cover page of the volume, containing the preface and all other editorial contributions, as well as optional abstract-only contributions (typically from invited speakers) and a table of contents with links to the arXived papers. The DOIs of all papers are activated, and the publication data for all papers is transmitted to various bibliographic databases.

Post-Publication Replacements

EPTCS publications cannot be changed retroactively. This applies to the papers themselves as well as to the published metadata. Allowing this would make it impossible to refer back to published work in a reliable way. However, arXiv.org offers a replace-feature. It works by creating a new version of a paper, while the old one remains visible as well.

We urge our authors not to make use of the replace feature of arXiv for a paper that has been published in EPTCS. However, if a published EPTCS paper contains a particularly embarrassing flaw, authors may file a replacement at arXiv.org, using EPTCS as a middle man in submitting this replacement to arXiv. In that case, the paper as it appears on our website, as well as the DOI number, will be a pointer to the original, unreplaced version of the paper in arXiv. Moreover, the footer on page 1 on the paper that says:

E. di Thor (Ed.): First Conference on
Theoretical Computer Science
EPTCS 118, 2011, pp. 88-102, doi: 10.4204/EPTCS.118.7

should in the replacement paper be replaced by a footer like

This is a revision of a paper with the same title,
published in EPTCS 118, 2011, pp. 88-102.

Moreover, the arXiv response page for the replacement may not use the fields DOI or Journal reference.
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