JMLR Workshop and Conference Proceedings Frequently Asked Questions

The JMLR Workshop and Conference Proceedings are very much a community effort. Thanks are particularly due to Isabelle Guyon for working closely with us in preparing early volumes, Nicola Talbot for preparing the LaTeX class file and Leslie Pack Kaelbling for supporting the launch in the first place.

How do I publish my proceedings with you?

Email the series editor with your planned event. You need to provide brief CVs of the organizers and an overview of the subject matter. Potential proceedings are judged on the basis of the appropriateness of the material, the perceived quality of the workshop and the track record of the organizers.

What Volume Number will my Proceedings be?

When you are close to finalizing the proceedings, email the series editor. He will give you a volume number by allocating from those currently available.

What if I want a Paper Copy?

You are free to organize a hard copy of your proceedings for your workshop, although JMLR does not provide the support for this. Previous editors have made use of Microtome.

Should the Call for Papers be Before or After the Workshop?

This is up to you. You can make the proceedings a pre-proceedings or a post-proceedings. Some conferences, like AISTATS 2010, do the call before the workshop and put the proceedings on line in time for the event. Other will finalize their proceedings after the event.

What is the Style File for the Proceedings?

There are two style files, a two column style file (see for example the AISTATS volumes) or a one column style file similar to the standard JMLR style. As of 2010 Nicola Talbot has kindly put together a LaTeX package for these styles. It is available here. We don't support preparation systems other than LaTeX.

Software for Supporting Proceedings Preparation

As of 2012 Nicola Talbot has prepared a Java Application for assisting in preparing a JMLR proceedings. It is available here. Many thanks to Nicola.

What do I Need to Provide for the Proceedings?

You should appoint a publications chair (who could also be one of the editors, but needn't be: for larger conferences it is often a separate role, but for smaller workshops it tends to be an editor). The publications chair will be responsible for compiling the proceedings.

The proceedings should be provided in a standard format:

The volume sits in a directory called vX, where X is the number of the volume. All pages and directories listed below are in that directory. It is this directory that is zipped or made into a tarball and sent for final publication.
The front page (see e.g. here) lists the volume number and title of the proceedings. The editors are then listed, followed by a preface (written by the editors) and the papers in their proceedings order. The page numbers of each paper is given. Underneath the paper is a link to the abstract, the pdf and supplementary material (if any). A template front page is given here based on AISTATS 2010. This page should be in the vX directory and called index.html.
- Note the papers are normally in alphabetical order by first named author.
- The index.html page has a time stamp indicating creation time at the bottom.
- The pages of each paper are number consecutively starting with page 1 for the first page of the preface. These numbers are listed as given in the examples.
There is a standard naming convention for works associated with the same paper in the volume. It starts with the last name of the first author (no capitals), followed by the last two digits of the year followed by an 'a' for the first paper, a 'b' for the second etc.. E.g. for a paper by Turner et al in 2010 the base name would be turner10a. If there are many papers with the surname Li, the base name would be li10a, li10b, li10c etc.. Extensions are then added to the base name. For example the abstract has extension .html giving li10c.html.
Each paper has its own abstract page. For example see here. The abstract page has a time stamp at the bottom. The abstract page appear in the vX directory and has the extension .html
Each paper has its own subdirectory which follows the same naming convention as the abstract. For example the Turner et al. paper lives in the directory v9/turner10a/. You can check the listing of such a directory here.
In the subdirectory there will be a PDF version of the paper using the naming convention given above with the extension .pdf.
If a paper has supplementary material these files will be given a suffix of Supple on the naming convention (giving for example turner10aSupple. If the supplementary material is written work it will be in the form of a PDF file and it will be named turner10aSupple.pdf. Supplementary material in the form of code will be placed in a zip file or a tar.gz and given the appropriate extension (.zip or .tar.gz). Supplementary material appears in the paper's subdirectory alongside the PDF version of the paper.

If the supplementary material takes the form of a video or other large file, please make contact with the series editor to ensure that this is possible. We will deal with such requests on a case by case basis unless demand becomes high, when we will put a protocol in place.

As well as the papers in the format described above, you will need to provide permission to publish forms from your authors. Please distribute the form found here to your authors. Have them sign a copy and send you a scanned PDF. The scanned PDF should be named with the convention given above with the suffice Permission e.g. turner10aPermission.pdf. These files should be placed in a separate directory from the other material called vXpermissions and sent the series editor.