GUIDELINES FOR REVIEWERS OF RFC INDEPENDENT SUBMISSIONS 01 November 2022 ________________________________________________________________________ GOALS An independent submission review is meant to achieve two overarching goals: 1. Is the document appropriate for publication as an independent submission? 2. What improvements to the work should be made prior to publication? Sometimes early work is not yet ready for publication but will be. ________________________________________________________________________ WHO MAY SUBMIT A REVIEW? Anyone may submit a document review at any time prior to publication of an RFC. The Independent Submissions Editor (ISE) solicits specific individuals to review each document, but more reviews are always welcome, and are likely to improve the quality of both the documents under consideration and the series as a whole. ________________________________________________________________________ DISSEMINATION OF REVIEWS All reviews (perhaps in summary) will be shared with the author(s), and many will be shared with the Independent Submissions Editorial Board (ISEB) for their information. By default, unless your review is unsolicited, the ISE will identify you as the reviewer to the author. However, you may request reviewer anonymity. TO REQUEST ANONYMITY, YOU MUST TELL US WHEN YOU SUBMIT THE REVIEW. Reviews may be posted publicly on the RFC Editor website, with author approval. In this posting, your anonymity will be respected if you requested it. ________________________________________________________________________ CONTENTS OF REVIEWS Questions that the ISE would like you to answer: A. Is the subject of this document relevant to the RFC Series? Although the series was originally broadly scoped to include any aspect of computer networking, its scope has become centered on the Internet. This includes changes to the TCP, UDP, and IP protocols, services atop those protocols, formats that are transported by those protocols, as well as related hardware issues (e.g., how to run IP over X hardware). More speculative are documents specific to particular link layer or physical layer technologies. Your opinion here will be useful, although the ISE, in consultation with the ISEB, will make the final decision. B. Is this document technically competent, as far as you can tell? Does the work build upon industry state-of-the-art? Are protocols and interfaces well specified? C. Is this document in reasonable (not necessarily final) editorial shape? Works should concisely and clearly make their point. Was it easy to discern the point, and could you understand the approach being offered? D. Are the Abstract and Introduction of this document reasonably clear? Does the Introduction provide enough background for those Internet techies who may not be experts in the particular subject matter? Do the Title and Abstract fairly and accurately summarize the contents? E. Does the document make clear upfront how the specification does or does not relate to past or current IETF activities? F. How else can the document be improved? Any additional suggestions that you can make to improve the quality and clarity of the document will be welcomed by the ISE and in most cases will be welcomed by the author(s). ________________________________________________________________________ QUESTIONS? Feel free to contact the ISE (rfc-ise@rfc-editor.org) with any questions you may have about document reviews.