JMLR Publication - Final Steps
Congratulations! Your paper has been accepted for publication to JMLR - now what?
For the final steps, you will interact with the Production Editor (currently Erik Learned-Miller - elm@cs.umass.edu).
Once your action editor approves your paper, you must
- Look very carefully at the instructions for formatting, to make sure you have followed them all (the slightly-out-of-date authors guide has some examples of what not to do. To further make our lives easier and earn good karma:
- Pay special attention to the list of common formatting errors
- really, we mean it. Most papers commit at least two or three of these
errors, even after we ask that people look over the list and make sure
their papers don't.
- Have your paper proofread by someone other than one of the
authors. Trust us - they will find errors that your should correct
before sending it along.
- Please assemble multiple LaTeX source files into a single
source file - it's a pain for the proofer to hunt between multiple
files to figure out which one contains the source text for an error
he/she is trying to fix.
- Please, please, please follow the naming conventions for output files (e.g. jones03a) - it's a pain sorting out half a dozen submissions that are all named jmlr-final.tex.
- Email the production editor a compressed archive of the entire paper source
(including figures, .bib file, and customizations you've inflicted on
jmlr2e.sty, etc). Make sure you've filled in the submission date. If
the paper was revised and resubmitted, please note that too. Don't
worry about page numbers - the production editor will fill those in
while generating the final copy. If you don't receive confirmation that
it's been received within 48 hours, send a separate email message to
inquire - some paper archives are large and some mailers choke on large
messages.
- Fill out the permission to publish form (Word,
PostScript and PDF
formats), and send it to Christina
Ellas, The MIT Press, 5 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA 02142-4293 USA,
FAX: 617-258-5028.
- Fill out as much of the form as possible. You may not know the
page numbers yet, but please fill in the volume, month and year. MIT
Press complains that they frequently get agreement forms with no date
or paper title on it - just the author's name. You're the author, you should know what your paper is called.
- Send the whole signed
agreement. MIT Press complains that they frequently get just the
last page with the author's name, and have no idea even of which
journal the agreement is for.
- Send email to the Production Editor confirming that
you've sent the agreement, or incur the wrath of MIT Press. If your publication
includes executable software, you must also send a software release form (PostScript and PDF).
- Expect that, within a week or two, the production editor or
proofer will ask you to review a proposed final draft. Please do this
as soon as possible - once a paper has been sequenced and assigned page
numbers, nothing behind it in the queue can be sequenced until it's
been approved and published. Your fellow researchers will thank you.
- Wait for the publication announcement to arrive by email, sit back, and congratulate yourself on a job well done.