This document describes the steps that authors in the Computer Science Department should follow to submit a Technical Report (TR). Completion of these steps will result in the appearance of the technical report in our database and make the report accessible through the international NCSTRL (Networked Computer Science Technical Report Library) WWW server. (Note that currently, as of March 2006, the international link is not working. CSE techreports are still searchable, browsable, and downloadable on the CSE site however.)

The procedure described here should be adequate for almost all TR's. There may be special cases (e.g., TR"s that include animation or other special media) that cannot be handled through this method. In this case, or if you have any other questions, you should contact techreports@cs.ucsd.edu.

To submit a TR, you need to complete the electronic submission form. See the instructions below. Once the form is completed, we will assign a tech report number and get back to you via email.

How to complete an electronic submission:

1. Generate a PostScript file of your technical report and put the file somewhere under your web home directory
   
   /net/cs/htdocs/users/your-login/path-to-file
   
   This can be done on any csehelp-supported department machine. Make sure the file and directory are "world" readable. The PostScript file must be viewable with the postscript viewer /usr/bin/gs on the unix side.
   
   How you generate the PostScript depends on the word or text processing system that you originally used to create the technical report (for example, if you used LaTeX to write the technical report you would use dvips to generate a PostScript file from the dvi file).
   
   Leave the PostScript file on the file system until you receive notification that your technical report has been submitted.
   
   If you want to maintain control over the body of the report, you need to submit a postscript file that reflects that. Essentially, you will be submitting a postscript file of the report"s title page: authors, title, and abstract. But instead of the body, just create some text that looks something like:
   
   A copy of this technical report can be obtained by sending a request to email-address@cs.ucsd.edu
   
   Fill out all of the submission form fields as normal.
   
   With the current software, if you decide at a later time to submit the entire body of the report, we will have to give you a new TechReport number, and supercede the current report with that new one. We realize this is not ideal. A completely overhauled version of the dienst software is in the works, and we"re hoping that will make this process easier.
2. Use a web browser to fill out the submission form. The submission form contains the following fields:
   
   Title - Enter the full title of the TR.
   Author - Enter the author(s) of the TR. Each author should be in "last, first" format (e.g. Gorythm, Al) with multiple authors separated by the word "and" (e.g. Gorythm, Al and O"Grafic, Lex).
   Full pathname of PostScript file - Enter the full path of the PostScript version of your technical report, as discussed above.
   Abstract - Copy the text of your abstract to this field.
   Submitter"s e-mail address - Enter your e-mail address so the Publications Assistant can contact you.
   
   Note: In cases where the Title or Abstract fields contain specially formatted characters, such as equations in LaTeX, you should simply enter or copy the LaTeX source into the form. (An exception here would be if the commands were personal macros defined by you and were not general LaTeX commands.) If you use some other word/text processing system (e.g. Word or Frame), you will need to enter some ASCII approximation of the special characters in the form.
   
   When all fields of the form are complete, press the Submit button at the bottom. The server will perform some checking on the input and, if there are no problems, return notification that the technical report has been submitted. Note that this does not place the technical report in the database; the Publications Assistant will perform additional steps to complete the submission.

What will happen when you complete the submission:

1. You will be notified via e-mail by the Publications Assistant that the technical report has been processed and assigned a number.
2. The cleared technical report will be installed into the online database.