IACR Cryptology ePrint Server Announcement

Background

So far IACR's publishing activities included the Journal of Cryptology and the Crypto/Eurocrypt conference volumes. The journal represents the oldest and most established form of scientific publication; conferences and their proceedings have the advantage of faster publication. For IACR and cryptology, however, the publication delay for a new result can easily be half a year or more. This will soon change with the introduction of the IACR Cryptology ePrint Server.

In the recent years, many people have started to publish work on their personal webpages, either as a supplement to the conventional methods or uniquely publishing work in this way. Other societies have also started electronic servers for preprints, the largest of which is the Los Alamos ``XXX eprint archive'' (xxx.lanl.gov), started by physicists. A small preprint server for cryptology exists since 1996 (the ``Theory of Cryptology Library'', started by Oded Goldreich, currently hosted at UCSD).

The IACR Cryptology ePrint Server

The IACR board of directors has decided at their meeting at Crypto '99 to set up a preprint server for cryptology. It will be called the IACR Cryptology ePrint Server .

``ePrint Server'' stands for the new features of papers published there: electronically distributed, rapidly published, recent work, immediately accessible. However, an eprint server is different from other scientific forms of publishing because work is placed there by the authors and does undergo almost no refereeing. Work is only superficially checked to fall in the areas of interest.

Mihir Bellare at UCSD has kindly volunteered to host the eprint server at UCSD. He and Bennett Yee have been hosting the ``Theory of Cryptology Library'' at UCSD; the current plan is to integrate this library in the new server. We are about to set up the software and it is expected that the server is operational later this year. The URL will be http://eprint.iacr.org . In any case, check out http://www.iacr.org for more information!

Christian Cachin