W3C publishes several types of technical reports:
All public technical reports [PUB11] are available at the Web site.
The W3C Team will establish conventions for creating and publishing documents [MEM11] and will publish these conventions on the Web site.
All Notes, working drafts, Proposed Recommendations, and Recommendations must include:
Each document produced by a group will be edited by one or more editors appointed by the group Chair. It is the responsibility of these editors to ensure that the decisions of the group are correctly reflected in subsequent drafts of the document. Document editors need not belong to the W3C Team.
The Team reserves the right to reformat documents at any time, including changing the "Status of this Document" section and the document style, so as to conform to changes in W3C practice.
Electronic documents have primacy over paper versions except when legal issues are involved.
The primary language for official W3C documents is English. In addition to the official English version of a document, W3C welcomes translated versions.
At times, it may be deemed necessary to make hitherto confidential documents public. Any proposal to make a document public must be approved by a majority of the Advisory Committee through the review process. If approved, the document may be published in the public area of the W3C Web site (e.g., as a Note) at the discretion of the Director.
A Note is a dated, public record of an idea, comment, or document. Notes are published on the Web site at the discretion of the Director and may be published at any time. The publication of a Note does not imply endorsement of its contents by W3C. The status section of a Note indicates whether or not W3C has allocated resources to the topics covered by the Note.
Notes are used in the following situations:
Every Note will be allocated a document name to clearly indicate that the document is a Note.
The status section of a Note must state whether W3C has allocated and/or will allocate resources to the work covered by the Note. The status sections of every Note must include this statement:
This document is a NOTE made available by the W3C for discussion only. Publication of this Note by W3C indicates no endorsement by W3C or the W3C Team, or any W3C Members.
If W3C has no resources allocated to the note, include this statement (modifying it appropriately) as well:
No W3C resources were, are, or will be allocated to the issues addressed by the NOTE.
If the document was not prepared or authored by the Team, include this statement as well:
W3C has had no editorial control over the preparation of this Note.
If the Note is the result of a acknowledged Submission request, it must contain the following statement:
This Note is the result of an acknowledged Submission request. Publication of this Note by W3C indicates no endorsement by W3C, the W3C Team, or any W3C Members. W3C has had no editorial control over the preparation of this Note. The acknowledgment of a Submission request does not imply that any action will be taken by W3C. It merely records publicly that the Submission request has been made by the submitting Member. This document may not be referred to as "work in progress" of the W3C.
A Recommendation indicates that consensus has been reached within W3C about a specific topic and that a document - typically a specification - is appropriate for widespread use.
The process described below for creating a Recommendation is an alternative to, and not a replacement for, or modification of, the standards process in the W3C Member agreement.
The result of the W3C Recommendation process may be submitted to a formal standards body for ratification, however this is not required or guaranteed.
A document must begin the path to Recommendation as a working draft produced by a Working Group.
Working drafts may be released publicly or only to a limited group of reviewers, at the Director's discretion. The first public version of a working draft must be approved by the Director prior to publication. Publication of a working draft does not imply a commitment to a future proposal as a Recommendation. Every working draft will be allocated a document name to clearly indicate that the document is a working draft.
A working draft must include a paragraph in the status section of the document that makes clear that the document may change at any time, does not represent consensus from W3C or its Members, and may not be cited other than a work in progress. Here is a sample paragraph for a public working draft:
This is a public W3C Working Draft for review by W3C members and other interested parties. It is a draft document and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use W3C Working Drafts as reference material or to cite them as other than "work in progress". A list of current public W3C working drafts can be found at http://www.w3.org/TR.
Once a group considers that a working draft meets the requirements of its charter, it publishes a stable Working Draft and issues a last call for comments to the Team and all Working Group Chairs (copying Chairs of known dependent groups). Last call announcements must recapitulate known dependencies. The last call must also state the deadline for comments (e.g., three to four weeks after the last call is issued).
To ensure the proper integration of a specification in the international community, documents must, from this point on in the Recommendation process, contain a statement about how the technology relates to existing international standards and to relevant activities being pursued by other organizations.
Once the last call period has ended and any issues raised during the last call period resolved, the document is submitted to the Director for approval. If approved, the Director announces to the Advisory Committee that the document is now a Proposed Recommendation available for review. The review period may not be less than four weeks.
A Proposed Recommendation is given a new document name to clearly indicate that the document is a Proposed Recommendation.
In addition to the standard review information, the ballot in the call for review must contain:
Advisory Committee representatives must send their ballot to one of the two return addresses. Public comments may be made available to Members or the public at the discretion of the proposal's editors. Confidential comments will remain within the Team.
The proposal's editors must respond to substantive comments until the end of the review period. During the review period, any Advisory Committee representative may demand a specific response from the editors to any public comment made by the representative's Member organization.
Once the review period has ended and all ballots and pertinent comments have been considered, the Director may elect to do one of the following:
The Director must announce the disposition of the proposal to the Advisory Committee.
Once a document becomes a W3C Recommendation, it receives a new document name to clearly indicate that it is a Recommendation.
Editorial changes may be made to a W3C Recommendation after its release in order, for example, to clarify an issue or correct minor errors. The date code must be changed when published, and any previous versions marked as superseded. The Communication Team will notify the Members when a revised document is published.
If more substantial revisions to a Recommendation are necessary, the document must be returned to the working draft phase and the Recommendation process followed from the beginning.