dctissued

dctissued is a metadata field used in some digital credential and certificate schemas to indicate the issuance event of a token, certificate, or credential. In practice, it labels when the item was created or issued by a recognized authority, and it is commonly used to support validation and trust checks within a system.

The exact meaning of dctissued can vary by implementation, but it is often paired with related fields such as dctissuedby (the issuing authority) and dctexpiration or dctexpires (the validity period). Together, these fields help verify that a credential is current and issued by an authorized source. In many schemas, dctissued is represented as a timestamp or date-time value.

Data formats for dctissued typically favor standardized representations such as ISO 8601 timestamps (for example, 2025-12-08T14:00:00Z). Some schemas may alternatively store a compact issuance identifier or reference to an issuance event, rather than a direct timestamp. The choice of representation can affect interoperability, especially when integrating across different systems or vocabularies.

In usage, dctissued plays a role in verification workflows, revocation checks, and audit trails. It can assist verifiers in assessing the freshness of a credential and in determining the appropriate trust anchors. Because naming conventions for such fields are not universal, practitioners are advised to align dctissued with the broader vocabulary or data model in use within their ecosystem and to document its semantics clearly.

See also: dctissuedby, dctexpiration, verifiable credentials, digital certificates, JSON-LD, metadata schemas.