Working Drafts

Working Drafts are preliminary documents produced by one or more Members (typically editors) of a Technical Committee. They are sometimes (incorrectly) referred to as Editors' Drafts. They have no official standing with regard to the TC Process, yet they are the initial starting point where all of the writing, rewriting and editing happens for any Work Product.

While they have no official standing, there are a number of procedures and rules that must be followed when creating and maintaining a Working Draft that is intended to become an OASIS Deliverable:

1. When beginning a new Work Product, the Work Product Registration and Template Request form must be submitted to TC Administration. This ensures that Work Product titles, filenames, URIs, and namespaces to be used meet OASIS requirements.
2. Working Drafts must use the template that will be prepared by TC Administration and returned to the TC. Use of the provided template enables TC Administration to quickly and easily create committee drafts with the required introductory metadata and boilerplate copy.

NOTE: A submission of a Working Draft for Committee Note Draft or Committee Specification Draft creation and upload that has not yet been registered or does not meet the Work Product Quality requirements will be rejected by TC Administration.

3. Each time a Working Draft is edited and uploaded to the TC's document repository (which includes Kavi and SVN), the revision number and date must be updated.

FOR EXAMPLE:

• Working Draft 01 - 15 October 2010 (initial draft);
• Working Draft 02 - 17 October 2010 (1st edited draft);
• Working Draft 03 - 3 November 2010 (2nd edited draft).

4. A Working Draft must be approved by a Full Majority Vote of the TC as either a Committee Note Draft (CND) or Committee Specification Draft (CSD) before any further lifecycle progression can occur.
5. Further changes to the Work Product are made by continuing to revise the Working Draft.

NOTE:

• Working Draft 03 - 3 November 2010 (2nd edited draft) - approved as CND
• Working Draft 04 - 2 December 2010 (3rd edited draft)

IMPORTANT: Before a Working Draft is approved as a CND by a TC, the editor should carefully review the document to ensure it meets the Work Product Quality Requirements. The Work Product Quality Checklist is designed for this purpose. If problems are encountered during the quality review the editor will need to make the necessary changes, upload a new Working Draft to the TC repository, and then request the TC to approve the new Working Draft.

 

NEXT: Committee Note Drafts and Committee Specification Drafts

Please report any errors or corrections to the OASIS TC Administrator. Thank you!