Identification of the Algorithm

Once they start the submission procedure, authors must choose an identifier their submission. This identifier will be used in the web pages and demonstration addresses, and can only contain lowercase alphanumeric signs and underscore (a...z0...9_). Once chosen, this name will never be changed, so it must be carefully selected. This name can be different from the web page titles, which can be changed at will.

A short description of the algorithm (typically one sentence) should also be provided, and the names and e-mail addresses of all the authors.

Edition of the Web Page

The authors receive instructions to use the edition interface of IPOL, where they can start the redaction of their description page. The publication engine is a wiki, and the web page content is edited on line through a web page form, in a simplified syntax. Help and documentation is available in the edition interface about this syntax, the tools availables, and the possibilities and limitations of this publication engine.

Contrary to a traditional "paper publication", a web page has no inherent size limitation. Hence, authors are encouraged to include lots of details in their description of the algorithm: implementation pseudo-code, rationale for the choice of the parameter values, examples and counter-examples.

Copyright Policy

bullet go.png See also "Copyright and License".

The algorithm descriptions pages are distributed under a CC-BY-NC-SA license, requiring the use of the provided citation metadata (BibTeX) for research publications.

The copyright status and credits of all the data inserted in these pages (pictures, video, ...) must be detailed in a "credits" section of the pages, and reuse of all these data must be allowed by their original copyright holders.

Implementation of the Algorithm

bullet go.png See also "Requirements and Suggestions for Algorithm Implementations".

From the beginning of their submission, authors are encouraged to start the process leading to the elaboration of the on line demonstations. They need to provide

the source code of their implementation of the submitted algorithm;
a detailed explanation of how this implementation is to be used in the on line demonstration;
for demonstrations requiring multiple programs, a graph description of the process, connecting inputs and outputs, is required;
the demonstration interface has to be described exhaustively, including all of the expected interface content (text, images, controls);
for demonstrations going through multiple pages, a graph description of the navigation is required;
some sample input data files.

The online demo must depend on at most one parameter left to the user's choice. All of the algorithm internal parameters must be defined and explained. The algorithmic description must be as close as possible to the published code. The acceptation of an algorithm depends on the feasibility of an online demo.

Thus, algorithms which cannot run in less than 30 seconds once all classic acceleration means have been tried won't be published. Yet, help will be provided to the authors to accelerate their online code by classic techniques. The uploaded data (images, videos,...) may undergo size limitations to ensure a reasonable processing time.

The demo can include other algorithms as an image processing toolchain. All the submitted code must comply with the IPOL technical and quality requirements, but only the part of the code performing the algorithm described and submitted to IPOL will be certified by IPOL.

Copyright Policy

bullet go.png See also "Copyright and License".

IPOL needs a free software license for the algorithm implementations because we want anyone who downloads the source code to be able to try, use, modify and reuse it.

We propose three options to the authors for the copyright management of their works.

copyright assignment
Authors assign the copyright to IPOL. IPOL is free to manage the copyright and license of this work. Authors are credited as such in the source code and its documentation.
copyright agreement
Authors sign a conditional and non-exclusive copyright agreement with IPOL. Under this agreement, IPOL has the right to manage the licenses of this work as long as it complies with the Free Software and Open Access principles, and authors keep the right to manage it out of IPOL, including restrictive copyright management and commercial use.
accepted licenses
Authors keep the copyright of their works, but choose a free software license within this list : GPL, LGPL, AGPL, BSD.

With the first option, copyright management of the published works is made easy, but the authors have to transfer all their rights to IPOL. With the third option, authors keep as much rights on their works as possible while complying with the IPOL project goals, but IPOL is exposed to an increasing complexity in the copyright management after years when authors can not be reached anymore.

The second option is a compromise between the rights of the authors and the flexibility needed for a long-term management of IPOL. The current draft of this agreement, based on the FSFE Fiduciary License Agreement, needs to be reviewed by copyright experts. This option is not available for the moment.

A few things must be made clear, because people are often mistaken about software licenses and copyright:

GPL licenses don't allow "everything" with your code. Anyone reusing your code must provide the source code of his software, and use the GPL license too. This has proven to be a successful model for more than 25 years of free software, including research code.
A free software license is not exclusive. The authors can distribute their work under the GPL license and sell the right to use this software under a commercial agreement to a partner who prefers not to be bound by the GPL terms.
Algorithms can be patented, under some jurisdictions, but not copyrighted. The copyright applies to the creative work expressed in the source code, not to the algorithm implemented by the source code.