Paper Submission Format

BAYES-AN Help Directory

Information is available on the following topics: Back to the BAYES-AN Bayesian E-Print Archive

Paper Submission Format

Papers should be submitted in the following format. To: bayes-an@xxx.lanl.gov Subject: put \\ Title: <title of paper with no blank lines> Author: <list of authors and affiliations> Comments: <optional comments, including number of pages, special macros if any> Report-no: <optional report number as assigned by your institution> \\ <Abstract of the paper (or other short description).> \\ <Entire paper goes here.> Note that the lines beginning with \\ should be otherwise empty. The optional report number above is your institutional preprint number (e.g. CRCT TR-25-94), not the archive paper number that you will be assigned. (See below on "Including the Paper Number" for information on including the assigned archive paper number.) Please do not include any other keywords in the second section except for "Title:", "Author:", "Report-no:", and "Comments:". Publication information should not be included in the "Comments:" field. To add publication information, use the `published' command. Here is an example submission message: To: bayes-an@xxx.lanl.gov Subject: put \\ Title: Recent Seminal Results in the Theory of Everything Important That I Have Been Working On Recently Author: Jefferson Hogwash, III (Harvard University) Comments: 12 pages, 3 Postscript figures, uses rotate.sty Report-no: TR-99-94 \\ This paper explains everything about everything, thereby making redundant all other papers in the field. Applications to text compression should be obvious. \\ \documentstyle[rotate]{article} \title{Recent Seminal Results in the Theory of Everything Important That I Have Been Working On Recently} \author{Jefferson Hogwash, III} [...etc., etc., etc....] Title/author/abstract information for submitted papers will appear in the next preprint notification mailing sent to subscribers. The information delineated by the \\'s is removed from your submission and used in the data base, so it is necessary to include your entire file (macro instructions, title, author, body, etc.) after the final \\. The following length limitations are imposed: Sections longer than this will be automatically truncated at these lengths. (Consequently, you should avoid unnecessary blank lines in the title/author/abstract.) If your paper's abstract is too long to fit in this space, you can use a shortened version in the title/author/abstract header and the full version in the paper itself.

File Formats

The paper itself should preferably be a file in LaTeX format that is completely self-contained, except for reference to macros that are stored in the bayes-an macro archive. (See below for more information about the macro archive, and use `get macros' for a listing.) You should therefore include any non-standard TeX or LaTeX macros. The file may also be TeX, ASCII text, or Postscript. You should be warned, however, that Postscript is often not as portable as one might hope, and mailers can have trouble with large Postscript files. It is highly recommended that Postscript files be compressed with Unix compress and encoded with Unix uuencode before sending so as to limit these mailer problems as much as possible. You should keep in mind that the readership of bayes-an is international, encompassing users of both 8-1/2"x11" and A4 paper size. Printing a paper formatted for A4 paper on 8-1/2"x11" paper may be problematic, and vice versa. Formatting accordingly is advised. Postscript files imported by the LaTeX source file (using psfig, for instance) should be tar-compressed and uuencoded (a Unix csh script for producing such a file that unpacks itself is available via `get uufiles') and submitted either together with the manuscript via `put' or separately with the command `figures'. If necessary, include a note in the preprint explaining how to obtain non-postscript figures, oversized tables, etc. via mail, FAX, anonymous ftp, or other means.

Including the Paper Number

If you wish to include the 7 digit paper number directly in submitted files (typically to appear on the title page), `put' will translate any occurrence of the sequence: `bayes-an/yymmnnn' to `bayes-an/paperno' (e.g., bayes-an/9404075) in the stored version of the paper. This particular sequence (note 2 y's for year, 2 m's for month, 3 n's for number) does not ordinarily occur in TeX (or even Postscript) files so there should be no danger of unwanted replaced text.

Citing Other Papers on the Server

Although published reference information should be given where possible (see the `published' command), it is highly recommended that when referencing papers that are available on the server, the reference include the bayes-an paper number in the format `bayes-an/yymmnnn'. Such references are automatically detected by the server software so that, for instance, hyper-text links between the referenced and referencing papers can be automatically generated for the Mosaic interface to the archive.

Avoid Premature Submissions

Statistical analysis shows that "replaced" papers are rarely rerequested, so if it is your intent to communicate correct research it is in your interest to avoid premature submissions and submit only a final version. (Note that incorrect papers cannot be removed. They can only be replaced with a withdrawal notification, leaving a permanent blot on your submission record.) If it is necessary to replace a paper, it is helpful if you indicate parenthetically after the revised title how serious the revision is (e.g. major conceptual changes, minor grammatical changes, etc.), and include as a commented header in the revised version of the paper a guide to the changes so that interested parties need not be bothered to re-tex unnecessarily.

Macro Packages and Style Files

Any `standard' macro package may be submitted as a comment for permanent archiving. Use the `comment' command. Macro packages currently available (via `get') include cl.sty, psfig.tex, and many others. For a complete list, use `list macros'. Information on additional software and utilities available for use in conjunction with this system is also available via `list macros'.

For your convenience, here are the available macros and a brief description of them.

Mailer Problems

Authors submitting papers should be careful that no lines are longer than 80 characters since many mailers will automatically linewrap with carriage returns, which could cause problems (for example, if inserted in the middle of a macro name). A c program that can be used to reformat papers before mailing to hep-th (with carriage returns inserted only at suitably chosen spaces) is available as reform.c. Authors should also be careful to avoid certain curiosities of Unix mailers. For example, any line beginning with the word "From" will automatically be converted to ">From" (resulting in an upside down question mark in the texed paper). This can be avoided either by adding a space or using "{}From". Similarly a "~" at the beginning of a line (for authors who curiously prefer inserting multiple "~"'s instead of \quad's or \qquad's for spacing) is interpreted as an escape sequence by Unix mailers and will confuse them. The solution again is to insert space or use "{}~". A line that begins with a period and is otherwise blank is interpreted as an EndOfFile by Unix mailers and should also be avoided. (It is not obvious why this would ever happen in tex papers, but it has.) It would be helpful if authors burdened with IBM computers that still use non-standard conventions for symbols such as: 
     {,},|,~,^ = left/right curly brackets, vertical bar, tilde, caret
could make the necessary translation before submitting.

Large Files

There is a minor problem with large files. While storage is not an issue, most unsuspecting requesters do not wish to be bombarded with 2Mb of inefficiently generated postscript in 20 separate files, or 1Mb of tables of calabi-yau intersection numbers (yes, these things happen). Moreover there are many VAX VMS and IBM VM systems that will reject most of this mail due to the unsuspecting requester's insufficient disk allocation. Eventually, user interfaces will be standardized and allow greater flexibility. In the meantime, submissions should be limited to under 300kb (600 blocks) (as has already been the case for over 99% of submissions anyway), with a note explaining how to obtain any additional figure files, etc., via mail, anonymous ftp, or other. Postscript figure files should be tar-compressed and uuencoded (a UNIX csh script for producing such a file that unpacks itself is available via `get uufiles').