Both the ACM and the IEEE allow researchers to place copies of their publications online for public download, on the condition that certain copyright notifications are in place. In short, all papers we host on our servers must, on the first page, include the appropriate copyright notice. As this can be difficult to do on camera-ready papers in which significant formatting work has already been done to ensure readability and figure placement, it is often easier to simply add a cover page with the relevant copyright notice.

For those students using LaTeX for their publications, we have developed a CoverPage.tex file that includes fields for title, author, abstract, the copyright notice, and the funding acknowledgements, making sure we both meet copyright laws, as well as enhancing the usability of the paper for the faculty. Once this CoverPage.tex file has been edited to include your paper's information, and the resulting one-page .ps or .pdf file generated, one can concatenate the existing camera-ready paper onto it, making a single unified document suitable for posting online.

To concatenate two pdfs together (you might have used PdfTeX) use the following command:

gs -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=merged.pdf coverpage.pdf yourpaper.pdf

If you've generated .ps files (by using standard LaTeX) use the following command:

gs -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=merged.pdf coverpage.ps yourpaper.ps

It is the poster's responsibility to ensure that works hosted on this server meet appropriate copyright regulations.

-- GregLink - 29 Aug 2005

• CoverPage.tex: .tex file (requires ieeetran.cls to use)

The MS Word version of the file is also available. Simply make the changes, insert a page break and attach it to the beginning of the paper.

-- SriHariKrishnaNarayanan - 01 Sep 2005
to top