In this way the ACM would like to encourage the researchers in computer science to make the results of their research immediately and widely available to the scientific community.

Posting the first paper at CoRR is longer, since one needs to acquire a password, but subsequent postings typically take 20 minutes or less. The submitted papers are automatically available to those who subscribed to the relevant areas of the repository. The subscription to any area of CoRR takes just a couple of minutes and is free. Furthermore, one can easily search within CoRR.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. If I submit a paper to TODS via CoRR the information that I submitted this paper to TODS will become known to others. So this is not an anonymous submission.

   Not quite so: Many papers posted at CoRR do not specify the current status of the paper. Obviously, you do not need to mention in the abstract or in the Comments field that the posted paper is submitted to TODS.

2. Why should I make the results of my research known to the scientific community when they are not yet in a final form?

   If you submit a paper to TODS, you are apparently convinced that it is a high-quality contribution. Why not to let the others know the results of your research immediately?

3. Posting a paper at my home page or my home institution repository will achieve the same effect.

   Not quite: Posting a paper at your home page or your home institution repository does not lead to sending any information to any subscription list. Also, putting all the papers in one central repository makes it easier to search for papers and link papers together.

4. In case I need to revise my submission to TODS, CoRR will contain the obsolete version of the paper.

   You can update the status of the paper you posted at CoRR by posting the final version with any information you find relevant, for instance that the paper will appear in TODS.

5. Isn't CoRR some new form of fad that is likely to disappear in a couple of years?

   The Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) archives of which CoRR forms a part have been widely used since 1992 by the physicists and mathematicians. The number of connections per day is around 100,000. The computer science part of the archives opened, in cooperation with the ACM, in August 1998.