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Subject: General Info and FAQ 
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     	      Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR)

			   General Information 
				  and  
                      Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

  
                          Compiled by Steven Minton
          Send questions/comments to jair-editor@ptolemy.arc.nasa.gov
			    Last Updated 5/15/95


TABLE OF CONTENTS
-----------------
Section 1: What is JAIR?

Section 2: How do I subscribe to JAIR?
 2.1) Accessing JAIR via World Wide Web
 2.2) Accessing JAIR via newsgroups 
 2.3) Accessing JAIR via FTP or email
  2.3.1) Obtaining announcements via the JAIR Mailing List
  2.3.2) How to find the file name of an article you want
  2.3.3) Obtaining articles via FTP 
  2.3.4) Obtaining articles via automated email
 2.4) How to obtain bound volumes of JAIR from Morgan Kaufmann.
 2.5) What if I have trouble printing/previewing an article?
 2.6) How should I cite JAIR articles?

Section 3: Features
 3.1) Online Table of Contents and Author Index
 3.2) Online appendices for source code and data
 3.3) Comments Facility
 3.4) PostScript previewers and where to find them
 3.5) Newsgroup for discussing articles
 3.6) Text search
 3.7) How you can help! A request for software/suggestions.

Section 4: Submitting papers to JAIR

Section 5: Masthead
 5.1) JAIR Staff and 1993 editorial board
 5.2) Publishers: AI Access Foundation and Morgan Kaufmann


----------------------------------------------------------------------------

		Section 1: What is JAIR?

The Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR) is a refereed
publication, covering all areas of AI, that is distributed over the
Internet.  In addition, each complete volume of JAIR is published by
Morgan Kaufmann.

JAIR offers AI researchers several advantages over traditional journals:

 --  To promote rapid publication of research results, articles sent to 
     JAIR are reviewed and returned to the authors in approximately
     5 weeks.  Electronic publication occurs immediately after the 
     editor receives the final version of an accepted article.

 --  Articles are distributed free of charge over the internet via FTP, 
     gopher, automated email, and a newsgroup.  Articles are published in 
     PostScript.

 --  A variety of electronic services are available that allow authors and 
     readers to take full advantage of the electronic medium.  Many articles 
     are accompanied by online appendices containing data and/or source code.

JAIR will only publish articles of the highest quality.  Submissions
in all areas of AI are invited, including automated reasoning,
cognitive modeling, knowledge representation, learning, natural
language, perception, and robotics.  Submissions will be evaluated on
their originality and significance.  All claims should be clearly
articulated and justified either empirically or theoretically.
Ideally, papers should describe work that has both practical and
theoretical significance.

We encourage authors to be concise. Short, high-quality articles are
welcome, in addition to the longer articles that traditionally appear
in AI journals. Research notes and survey articles may also be submitted.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------



             Section 2: How do I subscribe to JAIR?

To make it easy for you to obtain articles, we have established a
variety of ways to get JAIR.  These include newsgroups, gopher, FTP
and automated email.

2.1)  Accessing JAIR via World Wide Web

JAIR is available via World Wide Web via several avenues. The URL
(Uniform Resource Locator) for our home page is:

     http://www.cs.washington.edu/research/jair/home.html

JAIR is also available via gopher. The URL for our gopher server is 
gopher://p.gp.cs.cmu.edu/

If you use World Wide Web to access JAIR, we recommend you also check
out our newsgroups (above), or subscribe to our mailing list (below)
so that you will be notified when new articles become available.

Our HTML webserver includes several features that cannot be accessed
using the more primitive methods. These include an online author index,
and an experimental facility for commenting on articles (and reading
other people's comments).


2.2) Accessing JAIR via newsgroups

The easiest way to subscribe to JAIR is via the Usenet newsgroups
comp.ai.jair.announce and comp.ai.jair.papers.  As soon as a paper is
published, we post the title and abstract on the "announce" newsgroup.
The PostScript article and any online appendices are posted to the
"papers" newsgroup. (To read an article on the "papers" newsgroup,
write the PostScript article out to a file, strip off the newsgroup 
header, and print or preview the file.)

2.3) Accessing JAIR via FTP or email

2.3.1) Obtaining announcements via the JAIR Mailing List

If you do not read newsgroups, you can obtain the titles and abstracts
of recently published papers by subscribing to the JAIR mailing list.
Periodically we will send out a message to the list with the recently
published papers.  You can then obtain the papers you are interested in
via FTP or automated email (see below).

Of course, the disadvantage of the mailing list, compared to the
newsgroups, is that you won't hear about papers right away, since
we'll wait until we have a few papers to announce.  (You can think of
this as an "issue" of JAIR.) Furthermore, it's an extra burden for us
to maintain this mailing list, so we encourage you to use the
newsgroups if possible.  

To place yourself on the mailing list, send an email msg to
jair@cs.cmu.edu or jair@ftp.mrg.dist.unige.it.  The subject of the msg
should be "autorespond" and the body should consist of the word
"subscribe" followed by your email address.  If you don't get a
response, or you'd prefer to correspond with a human being, send an
email msg to jair-ed@ptolemy.arc.nasa.gov asking to be added to the
mailing list.  To unsubscribe, follow the same procedure, but
substitute the word "unsubscribe".

2.3.2) How to find the file name of an article you want.

JAIR announcements include the PostScript file name for each article.
For example, the announcement for the article by Matt Ginsberg
entitled "Dynamic Backtracking" will tell you that the PostScript file
is called volume1/ginsberg93a.ps.  Files with a "ps" extension are
PostScript files.  (Latex and other source files are also available in
the "sources" subdirectory for each volume.  The source files do not
include the figures, so they won't be very useful.)

JAIR also includes an online Table of Contents and a list of abstracts
for each paper, in the files information/table-of-contents and
information/table-of-contents-with-abstracts.

2.3.3) Obtaining Articles Via FTP 

You can use anonymous FTP to obtain a file from the JAIR distribution sites
at either Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) or the University of Genoa. 

CMU Machine:   p.gp.cs.cmu.edu        main directory: /usr/jair/pub
Genoa Machine: ftp.mrg.dist.unige.it  main directory:  pub/jair/pub

For example, to get the file volume1/ginsberg93a.ps from CMU, invoke
the FTP program, then type "open p.gp.cs.cmu.edu".  At the login
prompt, enter "anonymous", and at the password prompt, enter your net address.
You will then be logged in.  Typing "cd /usr/jair/pub" will put you
into our public directory. You can then type "cd volume1" followed by
"get ginsberg93a.ps".  Finally, type "quit".

To get the same paper from Genoa, you use the same procedure, except
that you type "open ftp.mrg.dist.unige.it" to get to the machine in
Genoa, and "cd pub/jair/pub" for our public directory.

2.3.4) Obtaining Articles Via Automated Email

As an alternative to FTP, you can use the automated email delivery
system at the CMU and Genoa jair distribution sites.  The address of
the CMU site is jair@p.gp.cs.cmu.edu, and the address at Genoa is
jair@ftp.mrg.dist.unige.it.  To request a file, such as
volume1/ginsberg93a.ps, simply send email to the site with the subject
"autorespond", and the body "get volume1/ginsberg93a.ps".  A message
containing the requested file will be mailed back to you.  (You can
only request one file at a time.) If you don't receive a reply, please
notify jair-ed@ptolemy.arc.nasa.gov.  To print or preview the article,
first write the message to a file and remove the email header.

In addition to the "get" command, the email delivery system also responds
to the "help" command, in which case it returns a copy of this information
sheet, and the "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" commands, which allow
you to get on/off the JAIR mailing list (see section 2.3.1). 


2.4) How to obtain bound volumes of JAIR from Morgan Kaufmann


Volume 1 of JAIR is presently being offered for sale in hardcopy 
by Morgan Kaufmann Publishers. It is available from your technical bookseller 
or directly from Morgan Kaufmann.

To order via email, send email to orders@mkp.com with your credit card
number and expiration date and a current shipping address. (Some
people are apprehensive about sending their credit card number by
email, but many people do it and to date Morgan Kaufmann hasn't experienced
any problems). You will get a confirmation of receipt. 

PRICE:  $39.95 (U.S. & Canada)/$43.95 International
ISSN: 1076-9757
ISBN: 1-55860-347-6 
1994; 314 pages; paper

ORDERING INFORMATION:
Available from your technical bookseller or directly from Morgan Kaufmann:

U.S. & CANADA: 	Phone: 	Within U.S.& Canada - (800) 745-7323 
			Outside U.S.& Canada - (415) 392-2665 
		Fax:    (415) 982-2665
		E-mail: orders@mkp.com
		Mail:   340 Pine Street, Sixth Floor 
                        Dept. EMJA
		        San Francisco, CA  94104


If ordering from our European and Australia distributors, please verify book 
price in that country.

EUROPE/UK: 	Phone: 	(0273) 748427
		Fax: 	(0273) 722180
		Mail:  	27 Church Road, 
			Hove, East Sussex, BN3 2FA
			England
			

AUSTRALIA:	Phone: 	(02) 566-4400
		Fax: 	(02) 566-4411
		Mail: 	Locked Bag 2
			Annandale P.O., NSW 2038
			Australia

ALL OTHER COUNTRIES, please contact our U.S. office at (415) 392-2665

PAYMENT METHOD:  American Express, Master Card, VISA and Personal Checks 
drawn on U.S. banks.

SHIPPING: In the U.S. and Canada, please add $4.50 for the first book and 
$2.50 for each additional book for surface shipping. For International 
shipping, please add $6.50 for the first book and $4.50 for each additional 
book.  Airmail shipping is $30.00/book.

2.5) What if I have trouble printing/previewing an article?

While standardization efforts are rapidly improving the situation,
occasionally you may have difficulty printing an article because of
PostScript incompatibility. In this case, try previewing the article
instead of printing it out. Often a file that will not print correctly
can be successfully previewed, and vice versa!  As a last resort, you
can try looking at the source file for the article (in the /source
directory), or contacting the authors directly and asking them to
send you a hardcopy of the article.


2.6) How should I cite JAIR articles?

There is no reason to cite JAIR articles any differently than you
would cite articles in "traditional journals", especially since each
JAIR volume will be published in bound form by Morgan Kaufmann.  For
example, an appropriate bibliography entry for Ginsberg's "Dynamic
Backtracking paper" would be:

   Ginsberg, M. "Dynamic Backtracking", Journal of Artificial Intelligence
   Research, Vol. 1 (1993), pp. 25-46.

To get the publication date and page numbers of an article, you can
either look at the article directly, or check out JAIR's table of
contents (in the file information/table-of-contents).  Note that the
date of publication is shown in the upper left-hand corner of the
first page of each JAIR article.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------



                     Section 3: Features


3.1) Online Table of Contents and Author Index

A table of contents for the journal and an author index can be found
using our WWW server. Only the Table of Contents is available using
the more primitive servers. It exists in the file
information/table-of-contents (There is also a file called
table-of-contents-with-abstracts that includes the abstract for each
paper.)  Note that the table of includes the file names for each
article.


3.2) Online appendices for source code and data

An article may be accompanied on online appendices containing source
code and data.  Each appendix is contained in its own file. If an
article is accompanied by online appendices, this will be stated in
the announcement as well as in the Table of Contents.


3.3) Comments Facility

JAIR is currently experimenting with a facility that enables anyone
to write a comment on an articles (and to read other people's comments).


3.4) PostScript previewers and where to find them

We recommend that our readers use PostScript previewers to read/skim JAIR
articles rather than always printing them out.  This will help save many,
many trees.  The Ghostview previewer (built on top of Ghostscript) is 
recommended. Ghostview can be obtained by anonymous ftp from prep.ai.mit.edu
from the direction /pub/gnu.


3.5) Newsgroup for discussing articles

Unfortunately, the USENET gurus requested (strongly) that we create
only two JAIR newsgroups initially, one for the announcements and one
for the papers/appendices.  They asked us to delay creating a JAIR
discussion newsgroup until we were sure that there would be sufficient
interest.  So, for the time being, we ask our readers to use the
comp.ai newsgroup for discussions of JAIR papers.  When posting a
comment/query about a JAIR article to comp.ai, please prepend the
subject line with "JAIR:...".  If there is a sufficient number of such
posts, we will attempt to create a separate discussion newsgroup.


3.6) Text search

We are planning to provide simple facilities for searching through JAIR
articles for a given text string. We are looking for volunteers who might
be able to provide us with more sophisticated search mechanisms to
experiment with! Please contact minton@ptolemy.arc.nasa.gov if you
have anything to offer.


3.6) How you can help! A request for software/suggestions.

JAIR can be improved with your help.  In particular, please let us
know about suggestions/software that you think might be useful to our
readers.  In particular, we are interested in software for intelligent
text search (see above).  Ideally, JAIR could serve as an interesting
testbed for new AI technologies.  We would be willing to provide
experimental software that our readers could use if they choose to.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------

		Section 4: Submitting papers to JAIR


Information on submitting papers to JAIR, including our submission
requirements and reviewing policies, can be obtained from the JAIR
distribution sites at CMU and Genoa (see section 2).  The file name is
information/submission-info.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------

		Section 5: Masthead


5.1) JAIR staff and 1995 editorial board


			    EXECUTIVE EDITOR

		              Steven Minton


			  ASSOCIATE EDITORS

	      William Cohen                  Lawrence Hunter
              Jon Doyle                      Wendy Lehnert
              Fausto Giunchiglia             David McAllester
              Henry Kautz                    Richard Sutton
              Richard Korf 	             Daniel Weld
					     


			    EDITORIAL BOARD

Jan Aikins		     Steve Hanks                 Toyoaki Nishida
James F. Allen 		     David Haussler              Christos Papadimitriou
Yuichiro Anzai 		     Barbara Hayes-Roth          Michael Pazzani 
Andrew G. Barto 	     Julia Hirschberg            Judea Pearl
Ivan Bratko 		     Haym Hirsh                  Tomaso Poggio
Gerhard Brewka 		     Toru Ishida                 Martha Pollack
Rodney Brooks 		     Leslie Pack Kaelbling       Ross Quinlan
Wray Buntine 		     Subbarao Kambhampati        Edwina L. Rissland
Murray Campbell 	     Takeo Kanade                Paul Rosenbloom
Adnan Darwiche  	     Hiroaki Kitano              Stuart Russell
Thomas Dean 		     Craig A. Knoblock           Erik Sandewall
Rina Dechter 		     Kurt Konolige               Bart Selman
Gerald DeJong 		     Benjamin Kuipers            Jude W. Shavlik 
Johan de Kleer 		     Pat Langley                 Stuart Shieber
Bonnie J. Dorr 		     Ramon Lopez de Mantaras     Douglas R. Smith
Didier Dubois 		     Alan Mackworth              Luc Steels
Edmund Durfee 		     Kathleen McKeown            Anthony Stentz
David W. Etherington 	     Raymond J. Mooney           Peter Struss
Oren Etzioni 		     Joanna D. Moore             William Swartout
Douglas Fisher  	     Stephen Muggleton           Hozumi Tanaka
Kenneth Forbus  	     Hideyuki Nakashima          Austin Tate
Michael Georgeff 	     Bernhard Nebel              David Touretzky
Matthew Ginsberg 	     Nils Nilsson                Michael Wellman
Walter Hamscher 	




                            ADVISORY BOARD

   Jaime Carbonell           Kenneth Forbus              Paul Rosenbloom    
   Thomas Dietterich         Peter Friedland             Bart Selman
   Oren Etzioni              Matthew Ginsberg 

		          PRODUCTION SUPERVISORS

	     Martha Del Alto                  Helen Stewart


5.2) Publishers: AI Access Foundation and Morgan Kaufmann

JAIR is produced by AI Access Foundation, a nonprofit corporation
whose purpose is to facilitate the dissemination of scientific results
in artificial intelligence. AI Access Foundation is currently applying
for tax exempt status as a 501(c)(3) public charity. We thank NASA and
AAAI for their help in starting JAIR.

The hardcopy version of JAIR is published by Morgan Kaufmann
Publishers.  The price has not yet been finalized. For further
information, send email to morgan@unix.sri.com or write to Morgan
Kaufmann Publishers, 2929 Campus Drive, San Mateo, CA, 94403

