Document Preparation

Duplicate Submission Policy

Duplicate submissions are not allowed. A submission is considered to be a duplicate submission if, at any time during the time when the submission is under consideration, there is another paper with the following properties:

1. the paper and the VLDB submission have at least one author in common;
2. the paper is more than 4 pages long, when formatted in the VLDB format;
3. the main technical content of the paper substantially overlaps that of the VLDB submission; and
4. the paper is published or under consideration for publication in a refereed journal or proceedings (electronic or printed) that is generally available (e.g., not limited to conference attendees).

Authors are expected to agree to the following terms:

"I understand that the paper being submitted must not overlap substantially with any other paper that I am a co-author of and that is currently submitted elsewhere. Furthermore, previously published papers with any overlap are covered prominently in this submission."

Duplicate submissions will be rejected. Questions about this policy or how it applies to your work should be directed to the technical program chairperson, Christian S. Jensen (csj at cs aau dk).

Formatting Guidelines

It is the authors' responsibility to ensure that their submissions adhere strictly to the formatting detailed here. In particular, it is not allowed to modify the format with the objective of squeezing in more material. Submissions that do not comply with the formatting detailed here will be rejected without review.

General formatting guidelines may be found in the file format.txt. These guidelines apply to all the categories of papers to appear in the conference proceedings. Page limit for research papers: 12 pages.

In order to help you format your submissions, we have provided a few files for both LaTeX and Microsoft Word users:

• LaTeX:
  • vldb.sty is a LaTeX style file (it should work with both LaTeX version 2.09 and LaTeX2_e) which should be made to work by including it through a \documentstyle directive like this:
    \documentstyle[vldb]{article}.
    
    This style file will insert the required copyright notice automatically.
    
    Note that the "\topmargin -55pt" command in the style file is not a standard option and does not have a counterpart option (\bottommargin). If you experience problems with it, such as printing with no top margin, you might try defining standard LaTeX margins by setting "tmargin=0.75in,bmargin=1.125in" within the "\geometry" clause.
  • vldb.cls is the adaptation of the vldb.sty file to the LaTeX2_e class format. It should be made to work by including it through a direct \documentclass directive, like this:
    \documentclass{vldb}.
  • vldb_format.tex is a LaTeX2_e template (it uses the vldb.cls class file) and the file vldb_format.pdf illustrates how the resulting file should look like.

• Microsoft Word:
  • vldb_format.doc is a Word version of formatting guidelines, appropriately formatted.

Finally, the conference's copyright_notice.txt must be included in your paper. Note that it is already included in the LaTeX and Microsoft Word templates.

For ease of downloading, copies of all of the files linked to above are included in the archive all_files.zip.

Additional hints:

• A search on the web will identify a number of freely available tools that are able to convert different file formats into pdf format. It is particularly important that only standard fonts are used and that bit-mapped fonts are avoided. If non-standard fonts are needed they must be embedded in the submitted file.
• If you are planning to generate a Postscript file and then converting it into pdf using "ps2pdf" use the option -Ppdf with dvips, e.g., "dvips yourfile.dvi -Ppdf yourfile.ps" and then "ps2pdf yourfile.ps". Most systems should support the -Ppdf option; if yours does not, consider contacting your system administrator.
• Adobe Reader (which is freely available for a number of platforms) allows one to inspect the fonts used in a pdf file (typically under the option File/Document Info/Fonts). Before you submit your pdf file, it is recommended that you use that tool to make sure that all fonts used are listed as embedded.

Copyright Transfer Form

Authors of accepted papers must fill in the VLDB Copyright Transfer Form. By completing the form, the author grants and assigns exclusively to the VLDB Endowment all rights of copyright in his/her contribution. Notice that this is a post-submission step that applies to authors of accepted papers only.

Fax number where to send the copyright form: ++49/721/608-7343