authors-guide

Author's guide - Instructions for Final preparation

Journal of Machine Learning Research

[Based heavily on the JAIR Author's Guide, gratefully reproduced by permission of JAIR]

This file is available at http://www.jmlr.org/format/authors-guide.html

Checklist (see detailed instructions below)

1. [ ] Format your article in LaTeX using the JMLR style files.
2. [ ] Have your article proofread.
3. [ ] Contact editor (editorjmlr.org), obtain final approval and formatting check.
4. [ ] Fill out permission to publish form, and send it.
5. [ ] Fill out source code release, and send it (only necessary if you are releasing source code in an online appendix).
6. [ ] Fill in page numbers and publication date, make final changes.
7. [ ] Send all the required files.
8. [ ] Inform the editor of any special mailing lists or newsgroups you'd like an announcement sent to.

Once a paper has been accepted for publication in JMLR, you should follow the procedure outlined below. The final version of your manuscript is due to us within three months of the acceptance date. If you require more than three months, please request an extension from the editor.

1. Format your article according the JMLR style, which is described in Instructions for Formatting JMLR Articles (PostScript and PDF versions are also available). The instructions describe the use of the JMLR LaTeX style file, which is required for camera-ready submissions. There is also an annotated JMLR sample paper available as LaTeX source, PostScript and PDF.

For users of LyX, the graphical front end to LaTeX, Ralf Herbrich has made available a set of LyX layout files that conform to the JMLR style.

Authors are responsible for correctly formatting their article. If you wish we can recommend professionals who will do this for you for a fee.

Here are things to check, before you send us your article:

Capitalize section and subsection titles.
Make sure your abstract reads well. It will be used to advertise your paper.
We recommend you use small caps for system names. (In LaTex that's \sc)
Capitalize references to figures and tables, e.g. "In Figure 7..."
Ensure that your paper has both sets of running heads: authors and paper title.
It is preferable to cite published papers, rather than tech reports.
Carefully read the section on citations in Instructions for Formatting JMLR Articles . Here are examples of BAD citations:

"See (Ginsberg, 1994) for an analysis..." [Uses citation as a noun]
"Drummond (Drummond, 1994) showed that..." [Should be "Drummond (1994)"]
"...the best method (see the ERT test (Davis, 1995))..." [double parens, should be "...best method (see the ERT test, Davis, 1995)..."]

In the authors' addresses, don't use commas at the end of the lines.
Do not start a section with a subsection. (E.g., Each section should start with some text, rather than immediately starting with a subsection) Similarly, don't start a subsection with a subsubsection.
Your paper should be formatted for 8.5 x 11 letter size paper, not A4 (common in Europe). If you are in Europe and use Latex, use "dvips -t" when you create your PostScript file to get the right size.

Consulting a brief checklist of common formatting errors before submitting the formatted paper will save time and effort on everybody's part.

2. Make any final changes and have your article proofread. For better or worse, we do not have a copyediting staff. (Note: Authors are notoriously bad proofreaders. Have the paper proofread by a skilled proofreader - NOT one of the authors.)

3. Send the paper to the editor in charge of your article. Also send a copy editorjmlr.org. You should leave the publication date and page numbers blank for the moment, pending final approval from the editor (step 7, below).

4. Please print out, fill in, and sign the Permission to Publish form (PDF). Send the scanned PDF file to production@jmlr.org. The form agreement provides non-exclusive rights for electronic publication to JMLR and for print publication to Microtome Press; the copyright remains with the authors.

5. We encourage you to make use of "online appendices" where appropriate. Online appendices can contain source code, data, even quicktime demonstrations -- anything that that will make life easier (or more interesting) for your readers and researchers who follow in your footsteps.

If there are online appendices containing source code, please sign the software release form (available in PostScript and PDF formats) and send it along with the Copyright form. The release form is intended to reduce the liability of JMLR.

6. Once you have the final approval on the paper and the formatting, you should add in the page numbers and publication date sent to you by the editor. Put the final touches on any additional versions of the paper that you want us to publish alongside the PDF version.

7. Send the editor all the files. (A single tar file is convenient.) We would appreciate it if you use the following naming scheme for your files. Assuming the first author's last name is "Jones" and the current year is 2000, you should send us:

jones00a.pdf, the final PDF file
jones00a.tex (or jones00a.txt), a single LaTex source file (or, if you didn't use LaTex, some sort of ascii version of the paper if possible) which we can use for our search engine
jones00a.tar, a tar file containing all the source files (latex files, figures, word file, whatever) which we will archive.
abstract.txt, an ascii version of the abstract. Please also include the title at the top.

Optionally:

jones00a.bw.pdf, a version of your paper with grayscale (not color) figures. If your paper contains color figures, we need a black-and-white version for the hardcopy edition to be printed by MIT Press.
jones00a-appendix1.txt (or .ps, .lisp, or .whatever), an online appendix. If there are two or more, name them jones00a-appendix2.txt and so on.

Note: if the first author has previously published a JMLR article earlier in the year called jones00a, use jones00b this time.

As an alternative to emailing the files, you can send FTP instructions to the managing editor.

8. After we receive the final version and release the article, we will post an announcement on the JMLR mailing list. The paper will also be stored at the JMLR distribution site and forwarded to ACM's computing repository (CORR) and the CiteSeer Index.

If you know of any other mailing lists where it would be appropriate to post an announcement for your paper, please feel free to forward our announcement. If you would prefer that we do, please let the managing editor know the addresses where he should forward the announcement.

Congratulations!