JACoW Website

JACoW Website

J. Poole

• Review the objectives of the web pages.• Review the contents of the website (other than the

conference proceedings).• Proposal for the future content of the site.

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Aim of this Talk

Technical Issues, TM KEK, November 2008, J. Poole

3JACoW Website, TM KEK, November 2008, J. Poole

• Primary function is to provide access to the conference proceedings.

• Secondary function is to provide information to help authors in the preparation of JACoW conference papers.

• Tertiary function is communication with the JACoW Team and the accelerator community.

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Website Purpose

JACoW Website, TM KEK, November 2008, J. Poole

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The Central Frame


The help page has not been updated since 2003 and has a bad return link. It needs to be updated with some more up-to-date examples and checked to see that the information is still relevant for the FAST search engine.

The hit counter only counts hits on this page. The number of papers being served is far more than this would indicate (in October 2008 the number of papers per annum is about 400,000) so this counter could be removed.

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Contents Today


• The templates are the first step in enabling the authors to produce conforming papers.

• The analysis of problems encountered at conferences shows us where ‘help’ is needed.

• There is also a level of background information which it is useful for authors to know about – SPMS repository, library data, JACoW conferences etc.

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Author Education


• Incomplete author list in SPMS• Format errors• A4 printed on US letter and vice-versa• PDF, not PS submitted• Loss of colour

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Problems to Attack


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Current Help Frameand the Problems to Attack


Incomplete author list – not addressed

Format errors (columns, margins, styles …)- not addressed

A4 on US – making the PS

Submitting PDF

Loss of colour

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General background to the process but does not reflect the current status of JACoW. Needs updating to underline the role of PostScript.

Too much emphasis on Type 3 fonts, given today’s Acrobat capabilities.

Contains quite a lot of obsolete information.

Basically OK but need updating.

Basically OK but need updating with the latest information and tips.

• Basic description is OK – explains what affiliations and profiles are.

• Historical information could be removed as it is not really relevant any more.

• Creation of profiles is mixed with the privacy policy.

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Author Profiles


• Collaboration conferences maintained by Christine and is up-to-date.

• PRSTAB seems out of place.

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The Rest of Author Info.


• Steering Committee link leads to a page which also defines the Team membership.

• Terms of Ref. – give prominence to sanctions on conferences which do not adhere to them

• Requirements for membership – first paragraph could be reworded to explain the requirement that the conference should send a stand-alone set of files and JACoW does not publish links.

• ‘Meetings’ is for the Team and Steering Committee ( ≠ editors)

• Documentation is for the Team.

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‘For Editors’


• ‘Meetings’ is messy• Documentation is lacking in structure.

– Are Post Mortem reports a thing of the past ?– The editor training may be the most useful link but is buried

at the end– Shouldn’t we have a new poster ?

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Pages Under ‘Editors’


• Website updates (perhaps only 2 people ever look at this). Critical to the operation of the mirror site, but is this the right place for it ?

• SPMS Terms and Conditions – essential source material for organisers wishing to use SPMS or JACoW Software licenses.

• SPMS – still has links to the old documentation (such as it is).

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JACoW Team Items


• Library data is useful and should be there, but does it need to have its own sub-heading ?

• About JACoW - useful and it should be on the website.

• Award for the collaboration is nearly 5 years old and could be removed (maybe include the text in the above).

• Future Accelerator Projects – only needs one link from the index.– Is this a core JACoW Activity – the link goes to EPAC ?– Should it have more explanation

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Other Links in the Index


• Apart from the more obvious errors, editors spend a lot of time fixing:– Fonts not available to distiller substituted with Type3 –

simple to fix but hard to avoid– Title to upper case– Sub-section headings to initial caps– Figure and table captions (single and multi-line)– Figures with paragraph indent– Tables wider than the column– Removing hyperlinks

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Editor’s time


• Papers which will perform well on JACoW• Papers which have a reasonable appearance• Make it easy for authors to deliver what we need• Educated authors• Minimise editorial effort

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What do we want to achieve ?


• Provision of templates• Simpler guidelines (more drill-down instructions)• Clarity and ease of use• Clear instructions for editors

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How can the Website Help


• Recall that priority on the website should be given to certain specific problems :– Incomplete author list– Format errors– A4 printed on US letter and vice-versa– PDF, not PS submitted– Loss of colour

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Planning a New Version


• Basically have structured information for:– Authors

• How to avoid common problems• Templates• General help information

– Organisers• Terms and Conditions• JACoW Structure and roles• Using SPMS

– JACoW Team• Meetings• Editor Training• Documentation

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Secondary and Tertiary Objectives


There are several aspects to this:• Technical requirements for publication on JACoW• JACoW Membership conditions• JACoW activities – steering committee and team

meetings• Technical information for team members (‘editors’)

like SPMS/JPSP GPL download site, post mortem reports, editor training and instructions etc.

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JACoW Team Information


• The basic site needs modernisation.• The structure is too flat (often a confusing amount of

information on each page).• The majority of the information on the existing pages is valid

but needs updating and tidying up.• Information specifically targeting the author errors which

cause red and yellow dots to be attributed should be given some prominence (perhaps a page which conferences can link to from their author instructions).

• The Team information needs to be re-structured and clarified.

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Overall Assessment


• The file structure could be cleaned up.• Obsolete information should be removed.• What is the impact for the mirror site at KEK ?

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Physical Implementation


Keeping in mind the three levels of the objectives• Find a young web engineer to propose a better way

to present the basic structure (not just relying on frames) – but the requirements of the search engine must not be overlooked.

• Find a volunteer to make a new JACoW poster – the collaboration does much more than it used to and it would be good to tell the World

• Update the existing information following what was discussed/agreed in this meeting.

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Proposal


Documents

JACoW Website