Updating the IACR Publication Infrastructure by a Preprint Server

The publications sponsored by a scientific organization serve two main goals: fast publication of new research results and giving valuable credit to researchers for their works. The IACR is currently operating two levels for scientific publications: (1) the Journal of Cryptology publishes high-quality papers after a careful peer-reviewing process, and (2) the Crypto, Eurocrypt, and Asiacrypt (starting in 2000) conference series, in which authors present paper that are chosen by a program committee and proceedings are made available in Springer’s LNCS series. The current technology enables various other means for publication, which might serve the scientific community in addition to these established ways. Specifically, we propose to extend IACR’s publishing activities through a preprint server for timely and rapid dissemination of new results. No refereeing will occur except for checking scope and superficial compliance with IACR’s goals and the preprint server will be freely accessible over the Internet.