Preamble
The idea behind the White Paper Section on the TM Forum Web site is to facilitate the free exchange of information and opinion on OSS/BSS and broader telecom industry issues between members and out to the broader IT community.
We are, after all, a ‘Forum’ and the exchange of information is our prime objective. This broad intention is subject to the following requirements and caveats.
Mechanical and procedural requirements
Who Can Submit?
Submission must be made by, or on behalf of, a TM Forum member or member company. So the content must be approved by the management of the member company. In normal circumstances, therefore, we would expect it to be submitted by the TM Forum principal contact, or the member’s marketing or public relations officers.
We may feel we have to make inquiries to ensure the paper has been approved if a paper is submitted directly from the author – so please don’t take offense if we check.
Must Include
Each white paper must include Title, Author, Company name, Abstract (50-100 words), and Date (when written, not when submitted).
Costs
Submission is completely free to members – this is a TM Forum member benefit.
Proof Reading
As well as the content having been approved, the paper should have been checked for spelling and grammatical errors before submission. This is YOUR White Paper and we don’t accept any responsibility for mistakes, even if we do the conversion.
Format
The paper should be submitted as a PDF (Acrobat file). We can accept content in other formats and convert it if necessary, but it’s best if we can post it up just as you’ve submitted it.
Vetting
It’s important that members understand that we’re not going to act as sub-editors for the content of a White Paper. If you leave minor mistakes and typographical errors in your paper, that will reflect on your professionalism, not ours.
However, we will obviously read the papers to ensure that the quality and usefulness of their content is high. We therefore reserve the right to reject or suggest amendments under the following circumstances.
TM Forum Information Misrepresentation
Where we consider that TM Forum-specific information is being misrepresented within a paper, we may suggest changes. We don’t want all mentions of the eTOM or the SID, say, to conform to a standard description, but we do want to avoid definitive errors, which could obviously confuse readers.
Being Overtly Commercial
The whole concept of a white paper (in our opinion) is to offer a relatively ‘disinterested’ set of ideas up for debate or as a body of information. While we obviously understand that commercial enterprises (and even membership organizations like the TM Forum) have a broad agenda to advance their branding, implant their approach in their community of interest, and persuade potential customers, we think that these objectives should be implicit, rather than explicit, in a white paper.
So it’s OK to: argue forcefully for an approach (say Java in OSS), but not to argue forcefully for the superiority of your own products. It is OK to mention your own products or projects in the context of providing an example or case study, but this should be restrained and informational.
Explicitly commercial announcements are the province of a press release (for which we also provide a service).
The Bottom Line
We all know what sort of information we expect to find in a white paper; and we all know what overt product or company promotion looks like when we encounter it. As readers we don’t expect to find product promotion in a white paper, so as White Paper producers it should be fairly easy to avoid the temptation.
If readers are interested in finding out more about your products or services, we provide a URL to your site so that they can make their own investigations.
To submit a paper or seek further information, contact:
Rebecca Sendel
Marketing Director
rsendel@tmforum.org