Identification
Once you start the submission procedure, you must choose an
identifier for this 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.
Web Page
You will receive instructions to use the edition interface of IPOL, where you can start the redaction of the 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 available, and the possibilities and limitations of this publication engine.
Contrary to a traditional "paper publication", a web page has no inherent size limitation. Hence, you are encouraged to include lots of details in the description of the algorithm: implementation pseudo-code, rationale for the choice of the parameter values, examples and counter-examples.
Style and Guidelines
While editing your page, you should only think about its content and logical structure. All the layout and decoration is defined outside.
Keep in mind that, unlike a Word or LaTeX document, whose destination is a paper sheet with a fixed size, in web edition we don't control the user settings, such as screen size. That's why it's impossible to force layout details.
Content
The suggested content of an algorithm description submitted to IPOL includes:
- authors, with web pages, e-mail address and institution
- an overview of the algorithm
- references to other related publications,
with a downloadable version of the papers (PDF, published or preprint versions) - the theoretical background
- a description of the algorithm, with pseudo-code or a block diagram
- a source code implementing the algorithm
- examples and counter-examples
Links to the on line demonstration interface and to a web forum will be automatically added by the IPOL publication system.
The source code distributed through the web page will also be used for the on line demonstration interface. Technical and quality requirements and suggestions apply to this source code.
For more details on how to turn a scientific publication into reproducible research, we also suggest the article "Reproducible Research in Signal Processing - What, why, and how", IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, 26 (3). pp. 37-47.
References
You should always provide a link to the material cited in the references section, using the DOI system to identify the source and provide a persistent reliable hyperlink. crossref.org can be helpful to find and check a DOI.
If access to original material is restricted, a free preprint version can be added, either as a link to a preprint repository (HAL, arXiv, ...) or directly by uploading the preprint.
Pictures
Be careful with copyright and privacy issues with the pictures you use in your algorithm description or as a demo example.
Copyright
Every picture published on the IPOL website must fall into one of these categories:
- you are the copyright holder for the picture
- no copyright applies to the picture (free public database)
- the copyright holder of the picture explicitly allows reuse, redistribution and derivative works
You should detail which case applies, and provide this information (source, license, copyright holder) in a "credits" section of the web page all the pictures you use. You can find a lot of freely reusable materials through the Creative Commons search engine.
Privacy
Any person recognisable on a picture used in an algorithm description page or as a demo example must be mentally healthy and have given their written consent. A model of consent form is provided, to be filled and signed with the photographs attached and sent to IPOL (adult: en fr es ca, minor: en fr es ca).
If such pictures are needed to illustrate your algorithm, we suggest you to use some pictures of yourself when possible.
Standard Test Images
Some images are widely used by the image processing community as standard test images (Lena, ...). The copyright is usually owned by the original authors, who allow image processing researchers to use these images.
If you use such a standard test image, you should detail its origin. We will suppose the copyright and privacy issues have already been cleared.
The University of South California maintains a database of standard test images with their copyright information.
Copyright Policy
The algorithm descriptions pages are distributed under a
CC-BY-NC-SA
license, requiring the use of the provided citation meta-data (BibTeX)
for research publications.
Implementation
You must provide all the code necessary to build an executable implementation your algorithm. This code will be distributed from the algorithm web page and used for the online demo.
Some guidelines have been adopted on the software part of IPOL articles. They specify a set of requirements and recommendations on how the algorithm must be implemented and how this implementation must be distributed. In short, the implementation must be written in standard C/C++, using only a few allowed external libraries, and be very readable and commented.
IPOL requires 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. The guidelines allow the GPL/LGPL/AGPL or BSD licenses, with profitions for patent issues.
Note that free software licenses do not allow "everything" with your code. With the GPL license for example, anyone reusing your code must provide the source code of his software and use the GPL license too. This has been a successful model for more than 25 years of free software, including research code.
The current version of the complete guidelines is available at http://tools.ipol.im/wiki/ref/software_guidelines/. Authors should consult them before starting the submission process.
Web Demo
From the beginning of the submission, you are encouraged to start the process leading to the elaboration of the online demonstrations. Keep in mind that your implementation is not the demo. Your algorithm implementation is a simple classic command-line program transforming files into files (usually image files), and IPOL adds a demo environment around this program for web interaction.
Online demos are implemented in successive steps. Each step is displayed as a web page, and some data processing can be performed on the server during the transition from one page to another. You must provide a set of default input images, and a specification of these steps for your demo:
- from the user point of view
You must specify what appears on the demo pages, which interaction is possible, what is the navigation flow from a page to another. This includes all the text and images displayed, the list of interactive form controls of the web page, the proposed parameters (and their default values and acceptable intervals). The online demo should depend on at most two parameters left to the user's choice, and preferably one or zero. - from the data point of view
You must explain how the input data (uploaded by users) is transformed into the output data (displayed to users), using the program you provided. This includes preprocessing and postprocessing (image cropping, zooming and conversion, ...).
Depending on the complexity the demo, you can provide a more or less detailed specification, the ultimate form being a set of html files for the pages layout and content and a graph describing the data flow, with a command-line for every data transformation.
Examples:
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.