Copyright © 2013 W3C® (MIT, ERCIM, Keio, Beihang), All Rights Reserved. W3C liability, trademark, document use and software licensing rules apply.
The W3C technical report development process is the set of steps and requirements followed by W3C Working Groups to standardize Web technology. The W3C technical report development process is designed to
See also the licensing goals for W3C Recommendations in section 2 of the W3C Patent Policy [PUB33].
This chapter describes the formal requirements for publishing and maintaining a W3C Recommendation or Note.
Typically a series of Working Drafts are published, each of which refines a document under development to complete the scope of work envisioned by a Working Group's charter. For a technical specification, once review suggests the work has been completed and the document is good enough to become a new standard, there will then be a Candidate Recommendation phase allowing review by the W3C membership and to formally collect implementation experience to ensure it works in practice, followed by Publication as a Recommendation.
Groups may also publish documents as W3C Notes. The two common purposes for Notes are
Some W3C Notes are developed through successive Working Drafts, with an expectation that they will become Notes, while others are simply Published. There are few formal requirements to publish a document as a W3C Note, and they have no standing as a recommendation of W3C but are simply documents preserved for historical reference.
Individual Working Groups and Interest Groups may adopt additional processes for developing publications, so long as they do not conflict with the requirements in this chapter.
W3C follows these steps when advancing a technical report to Recommendation.
W3C may end work on a technical report at any time.
The Director may decline a request to advance in maturity level, requiring a Working Group to conduct further work, and may require the specification to return to a lower maturity level. The Director must inform the Advisory Committee and Working Group Chairs when a Working Group's request for a specification to advance in maturity level is declined and the specification is returned to a Working Group for further work.
Working Groups and Interest Groups may make available "Editor's drafts". Editor's drafts have no official standing whatsoever, and do not imply consensus of a Working Group or Interest Group, nor are their contents endorsed in any way by W3C.
Every document published as part of the technical report development process must be a public document. The index of W3C technical reports [PUB11] is available at the W3C Web site. W3C strives to make archival documents indefinitely available at their original address in their original form.
Every document published as part of the technical report development process must clearly indicate its maturity level, and must include information about the status of the document. This status information
Every Technical Report published as part of the Technical Report development process is edited by one or more editors appointed by a 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 technical report. An editor must be a participant, as a Member representative, Team representative, or Invited Expert in the Group responsible for the document(s) they are editing.
The Team is not required to publish a Technical Report that does not conform to the Team's Publication Rules (e.g., for naming, status information, style, and copyright requirements). These rules are subject to change by the Team from time to time. The Team must inform group Chairs and the Advisory Committee of any changes to these rules.
The primary language for W3C Technical Reports is English. W3C encourages the translation of its Technical Reports. Information about translations of W3C technical reports [PUB18] is available at the W3C Web site.
For all requests to advance a specification to a new maturity level other than Note the Working Group:
Because the requirements for First Public Working Drafts are fairly mechanical approval is normally fairly automatic, whereas for later stages there is generally a formal review meeting to ensure the requirements have been met before Director's approval is given.
Note that for a First Public Working Draft there is no "previous maturity level".
A document is available for review from the moment it is first published. Working Groups should formally address any substantive review comment about a technical report in a timely manner.
Reviewers should send substantive technical reviews as early as possible. Working Groups are often reluctant to make substantive changes to a mature document, particularly if this would cause significant compatibility problems due to existing implementation. Working Groups should record substantive or interesting proposals raised by reviews but not incorporated into a current specification.The requirements for wide review are not precisely defined by the process. The objective is to ensure that the entire set of stakeholders of the Web community, including the general public, have had adequate notice of the progress of the Working Group and thereby an opportunity to comment on the specification. Before approving transitions, the Director will consider who has actually reviewed the document and provided comments, the record of requests to and responses from reviewers, especially groups identified as dependencies in the charter, and seek evidence of clear communication to the general public about appropriate times and which content to review.
For example, inviting review of new or significantly revised sections published in Working Drafts, and tracking those comments and the Working Group's responses, is generally a good practice which would often be considered positive evidence of wide review. A recommended practice is making a specific announcement to other W3C Working Groups as well as the general public, especially the sub-communities thereof that are affected by this specification, that a group proposes to enter Candidate Recommendation in e.g. approximately four weeks. By contrast a generic statement in a document requesting review at any time is likely not to be considered as sufficient evidence that the group has solicited wide review.
A Working Group could present evidence that wide review has been received, irrespective of solicitation. But it is important to note that receiving many detailed reviews is not necessarily the same as wide review, since they may only represent comment from a small segment of the relevant stakeholder community.
Implementation experience is required to show that a specification is sufficiently clear, complete, and relevant to market needs, to ensure that independent interoperable implementations of each feature of the specification will be realized. While no exhaustive list of requirements is provided here, when assessing that there is adequate implementation experience the Director will consider (though not be limited to):
Planning and accomplishing a demonstration of (interoperable) implementations can be very time consuming. Groups are often able to work more effectively if they plan how they will demonstrate interoperable implementations early in the development process; for example, they may wish to develop tests in concert with implementation efforts.
This document distinguishes the following 4 classes of changes to a specification. The first two classes of change are considered editorial changes, the latter two substantive changes.
A Public Working Draft is published on the W3C's Technical Reports page [TR] for review, and for simple historical reference. For all Public Working Drafts a Working Group
To publish the First Public Working Draft of a document, a Working Group must meet the general requirements for advancement.
The Director must announce the publication of a First Public Working Draft publication to other W3C groups and to the public.
Publishing the First Public Working Draft triggers a Call for Exclusions, per section 4 of the W3C Patent Policy [PUB33].
A Working Group should publish a Working Draft to the W3C Technical Reports page when there have been significant changes to the document that would benefit from review from beyond the Working Group.
If 6 months elapse without significant changes to a specification a Working Group should publish a revised Working Draft, whose status section should indicate reasons for the lack of change.
To publish a revised Working draft, a Working Group
Possible next steps for any Working Draft:
Work on a technical report may cease at any time. Work should cease if W3C or a Working Group determines that it cannot productively carry the work any further. If the Director closes a Working Group W3C must publish any unfinished specifications on the Recommendation track as Working Group Notes. If a Working group decides, or the Director requires, the Working Group to discontinue work on a technical report before completion, the Working Group should publish the document as a Working Group Note.
To publish a Candidate recommendation, in addition to meeting the general requirements for advancement a Working Group
The Director must announce the publication of a Candidate Recommendation to other W3C groups and to the public, and must begin an Advisory Committee Review of the specification on publication.
A Candidate Recommendation corresponds to a "Last Call Working Draft" as used in the W3C Patent Policy [PUB33]. Publishing a Candidate Recommendation triggers a Call for Exclusions, per section 4 of the W3C Patent Policy [PUB33].
Possible next steps:
Add an explanation of publishing a revised Candidate Recommendation. ISSUE-77
If there are any substantive changes made to a Candidate Recommendation other than to remove features explicitly identified as "at risk", the Working Group must repeat the full process of publication as a Candidate Recommendation before the Working Group can request Recommendation status.
Advisory Committee representatives may appeal the decision to advance the technical report.
A better explanation of how a document goes from Candidate Recommencation to Recommendation is needed here. ISSUE-77
In addition to meeting the general requirements for advancement,
To publish a Candidate Recommendation as a W3C Recommendation, a Working Group
The Director
Possible next steps:
A W3C Recommendation normally retains its status indefinitely. However it
The following sections discuss the management of errors and the process for making changes to a Recommendation.
Tracking errors is an important part of a Working Group's ongoing care of a Recommendation; for this reason, the scope of a Working Group charter generally allows time for work after publication of a Recommendation. In this Process Document, the term "erratum" (plural "errata") refers to any class of mistake, from mere editorial to a serious error that may affect the conformance with the Recommendation by software or content (e.g., content validity). Note: Before a document becomes a Recommendation, the W3C Process focuses on substantive changes (those related to prior reviews). After a document has been published as Recommendation, the W3C Process focuses on those changes to a technical report that might affect the conformance of content or deployed software.
Working Groups must track errata on an "errata page." An errata page is a list of enumerated errors, possibly accompanied by corrections. Each Recommendation links to an errata page; see the Team's Publication Rules.
A correction is first "proposed" by the Working Group. A correction becomes part of the Recommendation by the process described below.
A Working Group should keep their errata pages up-to-date, as errors are reported by readers and implementers. A Working Group must report errata page changes to interested parties, notably when corrections are proposed or incorporated into an Edited Recommendation, according to the Team's requirements.
Editorial changes to a Recommendation require no technical review of the proposed changes. A Working Group may request republication of a Recommendation for these classes of change, or W3C may republish a Recommendation with this class of change. The modified Recommendation is published according to the Team's requirements, including Publication Rules [PUB31] and the Requirements for modification of W3C Technical Reports [PUB@@].
For substantive changes that do not add new features, a Working Group must request publication of an Edited Recommendation.
To publish an Edited Recommendation as a W3C Recommendation, in addition to meeting the requirements for all W3C Recommendations, a Working Group
For changes which introduces a new feature or features, W3C must follow the full process of advancing a technical report to Recommendation.
Working Groups and Interest Groups publish material that is not a formal specification as Notes. This may include supporting documentation for a specification, such as requirements, use cases, good practices and the like, as well as specifications where work has been stopped and there is no longer interest in making them a new standard.
In order to publish a Note a Working Group or Interest Group:
Possible next steps:
The W3C Patent Policy [PUB33] does not specify any licensing requirements or commitments for Working Group Notes, only for W3C Recommendations.
W3C may rescind a Recommendation, for example if the Recommendation contains many errors that conflict with a later version or if W3C discovers burdensome patent claims that affect implementers and cannot be resolved; see the W3C Patent Policy [PUB33] and in particular section 5 (bullet 10) and section 7.5. A Working Group may request the Director to rescind a Recommendation which was a deliverable, or the Director may directly propose to rescind a Recommendation.
W3C only rescinds entire specifications. To rescind some part of a Recommendation, W3C follows the process for modifying a Recommendation.
Once W3C has published a Rescinded Recommendation, future W3C technical reports must not include normative references to that technical report.
To propose rescinding a W3C Recommendation, a Working Group or the Director
In addition a Working Group requesting to rescind
In addition the Director, if proposing to rescind
The Director must announce the proposal to rescind a W3C Recommendation to other W3C groups, the public, and the Advisory Committee. The announcement must:
If there was any dissent in Advisory Committee reviews, the Director must publish the substantive content of the dissent to W3C and the public, and must formally address the comment at least 14 days before publication as a Rescinded Recommendation. In this case the Advisory Committee may appeal the decision.
Refer to "How to Organize a Recommendation Track Transition" in the Member guide for practical information about preparing for the reviews and announcements of the various steps, and tips on getting to Recommendation faster [PUB27].