2017-11-16-rsoc-minutes
slides-interim-2022-rfcedprog-07-sessa-2017-11-16-rsoc-minutes-00

RFC SERIES OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE (RSOC)
November 16, 2017 RSOC Meeting

Reported by: Cindy Morgan, IETF Secretariat

ATTENDEES
---------------------------------
 Sarah Banks (Chair)
 Nevil Brownlee
 Heather Flanagan (RSE, non-voting)
 Joel Halpern
 Bob Hinden
 Cindy Morgan (Scribe, non-voting)
 Adam Roach
 Martin Thomson
 Portia Wenze-Danley (IAOC Liaison, non-voting)

REGRETS
---------------------------------
 Tony Hansen 
 Robert Sparks (Lead)

GUESTS
---------------------------------
 Sandy Ginoza
 Allison Mankin


MINUTES
---------------------------------

1. Administrivia

1.1. Approval of Minutes

  The minutes of the 11 September 2017 RSOC Meeting were approved.

1.2. Call scheduling December through April

  The RSOC was unable to agree on a recurring time for teleconferences 
  between December and April. The RSOC agreed to meet at 4:00 PM PST on 
  Tuesday, 5 December 2017, and revisit the schedule for future calls at 
  the beginning of 2018.

2. Agenda bash

  No new items were added to the agenda.

3. SLA check in

  Heather Flanagan reported that the SLA has been consistently met in 
  2017. She noted that the RFC Production Center has been warned that 
  there a number of Area Directors retiring in March, so they should 
  expect a surge in documents between now and then. Adam Roach added 
  that Cluster 238 is also about to be released, which will add an 
  additional surge of documents. 

3.1. RFC Costs

  The RSOC discussed RFC costs. Bob Hinden noted that the cost per RFC 
  has been increasing over time. The cost per page and cost per RFC 
  trends track consistently. Since 2013, the total RFC Editor costs have 
  risen independently of the number of RFCs published; this can be 
  attributed to bring on a new RFC Series Editor, as well as projects 
  including:

  - New RFC Format
  - Tool improvements (new search, RSS feeds, updated the publication 
    process page, updating author pages, updated reporting pages)
  - New RFC Style Guide
  - ESL lab experiment and "EFL Writing Resources"
  - Google Scholar-related changes
  - Research on digital signatures
  - DOIs
  - Statistics and metrics project
  - New RFC Editor Website
  - Internal training on format changes
  - Format tools testing

4. Format Update

  Heather Flanagan reported that the RFP for one of the new RFC format 
  tools has gone back out to bid, which will have some implications on 
  the overall timeline for the new RFC format project.

5. Content Discovery services

  Heather Flanagan asked if there is a better way to help people find 
  relevant RFCs, such as offering links to related documents. She noted 
  that RFCs already have keywords, but they would need to be cleaned up 
  significantly. Heather is planning to raise this issue with the IESG 
  during their 2018 retreat.

6. YANG Modules and Data sets

  Heather Flanagan noted that YANG modules and data sets are strongly 
  associated with RFCS, but not RFCs themselves. They need curation 
  (metadata for discovery and interoperability; archiving), and have a 
  different approval process than RFCs.

  Examples of data repositories include:

  - DRYAD (Dryad Digital Repository) – https://datadryad.org
  - CAIDA (Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis) - 
    https://www.caida.org/

  The YANG module stats have hundreds of small files. MAPRG and NWCRG 
  will both have data sets, but are not expecting to publish drafts or 
  RFCs any time soon.

  Heather Flanagan added that there is still more research to do in this 
  area to figure out what would be tractable for the RFC Editor.

7. IRTF open access journal possibilities

  The IRTF Chair looking to build an academic journal for the IRTF. 
  RFCs, as they relate to IETF work, would still be published. This is 
  also being discussed directly in the IAB; there will be lots of work 
  involved, and there are still many open questions. 

  Allison Mankin has been working with Stephen Farrell to put together a 
  proposal for this. Allison is interested in the RPC publishing the 
  journal as a parallel track. The current idea is to pilot the program 
  by publishing the ANRP papers in a journal, and then extending it from 
  there.

  Heather Flanagan replied that a journal would need some graphic design 
  that the RFC Series does not use, and the set of tools needed would be 
  very different from the set currently used by the RPC. The cost for 
  the journal would potentially be very high. 

  Joel Halpern asked if ISOC had indicated whether they would pay for 
  this, since money for the journal could not be taken from the current 
  RFC Editor budget. Allison Mankin replied that they would have to do 
  the pilot journal without a budget and see what happens from there.

  Discussions are still ongoing.

8. AOB: Editor Time

  Sandy Ginoza asked if the RFC Production Center still has approval to 
  bring on another part-time editor given that the new format tools are 
  not yet ready for testing. She noted that an additional part-time 
  editor would still be helpful, given the expected surge in documents 
  with the number of Area Directors retiring in March and the release of 
  Cluster 238.

  Heather Flanagan said that she would raise the issues with the stream 
  managers.