Appeal: Independent Submission Editor declination of draft-darley-cvss-v5-skull-emoji-01 (Trey Darley) - 2026-03-27
The IAB will not process this appeal - 2026-04-16

On March 27th, 2026, the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) received an appeal from Trey Darley, “Appeal: Independent Submission Editor declination of draft-darley-cvss-v5-skull-emoji-01”.

As per section 4.7 of RFC 4846, the ultimate decision to publish or not publish a document in the ISE Stream rests with the Independent Stream Editor. The requested outcomes in the appeal, namely for the IAB to judge the grounds for declination and direct the ISE to publish, are not consistent with the IAB’s role. As a result, this appeal will not be processed.

Refer to section 7.2 of RFC 4846 for options available to the authors of a rejected Independent Stream document.

7.2.  Rejected Documents

   If the RFC Editor rejects a document, the author has the following
   options for recourse.
   o  Request one or more additional reviews (Section 4.5) followed by a
      reconsideration.
   o  Request an IAB review (Section 4.5, Section 4.6) followed by a
      reconsideration.
   o  Request that the reviews be published on the RFC Editor Web site.

The procedure for requesting additional reviews is described in section 4.6 of RFC 4846.

4.6.  Document Rejection

   If any stage of the review process just described leads to the
   conclusion that the document is not publishable, the RFC Editor may
   reject the document.  Such rejection would normally be based on the
   conclusion that the submission does not meet the technical or
   editorial standards of the RFC Series or is not relevant to the areas
   that the series covers.

   If a document is rejected by the RFC Editor, the author may request
   an additional review from the IAB, as described below, but the IAB is
   not obligated to perform that review, nor is the RFC Editor obligated
   to publish it, even with a favorable IAB review.

Further, section 4.5 of RFC4846 clarifies that a review request is not an appeal process. The appeal process specified in RFC 2026 applies to the Internet Standards Process and not to the independent stream.

4.5.  Additional Reviews

   If the author is dissatisfied with one or more review(s), the author
   may request that the RFC Editor solicit additional reviews.  In
   exceptional circumstances, the author may request that the IAB review
   the document.  Such requests to the IAB, and any reviews the IAB
   chooses to perform, will occur according to procedures of the IAB's
   choosing.  The IAB is not required to initiate a review or comply
   with a request for one: a request to the IAB for a review is not an
   appeal process.

This note will be posted publicly to acknowledge the appeal and explain why it was not processed.