Authoring Standards

1
Authoring Standards

• Fall 2007
• Publication Cycle Updates

2

• Note The following standards apply to all
  courses including updates to old versions.

3
Anonymous content

• When faculty or other content providers request
  anonymous publication, you can help ensure this
  actually happens without reworking/republishing/re
  indexing.
• PMs/DLs Check the document properties in the
  source document to be sure no author name appears
  when you spec the course.
• Authoring Check the document properties in the
  newly-created PDF when authoring the course.
• Prod Check the document properties of the PDF
  during FQA.

4
Student Notes are Commissions

• Any work commissioned by OCW - including student
  notes - are subject to the same standards
• All images require descriptive alt text (see
  slide 9 for details).
• All images require a caption and credit.
• At least 80 of text within a PDF must be
  selectable.

5
ISBN-13

• All ISBNs listed on the site should contain 13
  digits.
• What does this mean for links to Amazon? It means
  the product number and the ISBN are no longer the
  same. Which means (in turn) that Authoring will
  need to look up the links for each product
  instead of using a prescribed formula. Authoring
  guidelines for the Amazon links will reflect
  this.

6
Alt text

• All alt text begins with a capital letter and
  ends with a period, regardless of the grammar
  implications.
• Alt text and captions arent always the same
  thing. What information does the image provide?
• Be concise.
• Decorative graphics with no other function
  should have null alt descriptions (alt "").
• Provide meaningful, descriptive text for charts,
  graphs, equations, etc. whenever possible.

7
ocw.mit.edu Redesign

• Course Highlights are no longer required.
• Special features are now listed on the home page
  (complete list to come)
• Links to translations will now be automated.
• Video introductions must be identified on the
  CHP immediately after the Course Description.