To Resolve Some Doubts

Our main concern is to support computer science researchers. Therefore, we want to help researchers to easily publish their work and to access other's work. We do not want to put you off from publishing at your favorite conferences or journals.

1. Future Publications (Conference / Journals)

As the work published in Dagstuhl Seminar Proceedings is supposed to be a work-in-progress paper, the authors will make significant changes and additions before submitting it as a final paper to a conference or journal. Many publishers say that pre-prints don't count as prior publications and some even encourage pre-prints on a public web server. Dagstuhl Seminar Proceedings do not intend to replace conference publication!

Copyright policies of several important publishers can easily be accessed thanks to the SHERPA project.

Here are some exemplary copyright policy pages:

• ACM SIGPLAN Republication Policy
  "... If a closely related paper was previously presented or accepted at either a conference or a workshop with a published proceedings, ... the second paper will be judged on the additional value of its publication beyond that of the original paper. ..."
  "...If a paper has appeared in a workshop with published proceedings, and this has been properly disclosed, factors such as the following will generally cause program committees to give less consideration to such prior publication:
  - The workshop call for papers clearly states that it is not intended to replace conference publication. ..."

• Kluwer copyright policy
  "... Kluwer therefore stimulates authors to post their electronic pre-press articles and will not require authors to remove electronic pre-press articles from publicly accessible servers (including the author's own home page) once the article has been accepted for publication, nor upon actual publication. At the moment of publication of the final article the author is kindly requested to provide a link from the pre-press article to the final article "
  
  "Retained Rights "
  "... Pre-press: the right to retain a pre-press version of the article on a public electronic server such as the World Wide Web. Kluwer does not require that authors remove versions of their article that differ from the version as published by Kluwer from publicly accessible servers but Kluwer asks for a link to the final article to be posted with the pre-press article."
• Wiley Copyrights/Permissions
  "What rights does the author retain?"
  "- The right to retain a print or electronic "preprint" version of the unpublished article
  - The right to post preprints as electronic files on the author's own Website for personal or professional use, on the author's internal university or corporate network, or on a secure external Website at the author's institution, but not for commercial sale ..."
• Elsevier authors gateway click "Publishing with Elsevier" -> "Copyright Information"
  "What rights do I retain as author?"
  "- the right to post a pre-print version of the article on Internet web sites including electronic pre-print servers, and to retain indefinitely such version on such servers or sites"
  Elsevier electronic preprints (click "electronic preprint":)
  "Preprints"
  "- A preprint of an article doesn't count as prior publication
  - Authors don't have to remove electronic preprints from publicly accessible servers
  [date of citation: July 20, 2005]
  
  With other publishers, the pre-print question should be negotiated.
  IOS Press Copyright agreement
  Springer LNCS copyright form
  Wiley Copyright Transfer Form (see for individual journal)
  Tips are given e.g. by Virginia Tech Graduate School

2. Legal Aspects / Copyright /Former Publication

• Dagstuhl
  Dagstuhl does not want a copyright transfer; it stays with the author. We only need an assurance that publishing your article in Dagstuhl Seminar Proceedings does not violate any rights of third parties (see below).
• Former publications
  If your Dagstuhl presentation was about a paper already published (or ready to be published right away) you should just give us the bibliography of it and/or a link to your online publication together with full meta data.
• Patents and grace periods
  If you are planning to patent your work, please inform yourself about patent law, publications and grace periods at the appropriate patent office before publishing your paper at Dagstuhl.

3. Effort to Write Dagstuhl Seminar Proceedings Article

We suppose that loads of the work you did for Dagstuhl Seminar Proceedings can be re-used for your final (conference / journal) publication.

4. Visionary, "Secret" Ideas

We really want to keep that special atmosphere of openness which lets Dagstuhl be a kind of playground for ideas. So if there are any ideas you don't want to publish yet, there's no obligation. You might consider publishing it later at Dagstuhl.