Policy Statement on RFC authors

[Joyce Reynolds <jkrey@ISI.EDU>]

http://www.rfc-editor.org/policy.html#policy.auth2
Posted 19 August 2003


Questions are still arising about the editorial policies on RFC
authorship, and the contents of the first page, the Contributors
section and the Authors' Address section.  We will attempt to clarify.

1. When the RFC Editor refers to "authors", we mean exactly the set of
   names listed on the first page of an RFC.

   These people are considered to be equally responsible for the
   contents of the document, and all will be asked to read and approve
   it before publication.

2. When the RFC Editor refers to "contributors", we mean people
   other than the authors, who also contributed significantly to the
   RFC.  They should be listed in a Contributors section of the body of
   the document.

3. The last section of the document (before the ISOC copyright
   statement) has traditionally been a section listing contact
   information for authors.  The intent of this section is to tell
   readers how to get in touch with those people responsible for the
   document, to seek clarification, make comments, etc.  This section
   must include contact information for all authors; it may contain
   contact information for some or all contributors.  In unusual cases
   it might even include useful contacts who are highly relevant but
   are neither authors nor contributors.

   This section has been titled "Author(s)' Addresses", but this title
   is misleading.  It really should be "Contact Information".  It is
   the RFC Editor's intent to change the title of this section in the
   future to "Contact Information", after the community has had time to
   digest and accept the change.

4. The issue has arisen: can/should the Contributors section
   include contact information?  With the clarification above, it
   should be clear that the answer will be: "No, contact information
   should be in the Contact Information section." The Contributors
   section should just list the contributors.  (It can also provide
   more fine-grained information about contributions.)