publikasjonsdate

Publikasjonsdate, commonly referred to in English as publication date, is the date on which a work becomes publicly available. It is a metadata element used to indicate when content enters the public domain for readers, researchers, or users. The publication date differs from related dates such as the creation date, submission date, acceptance date, or the release date of a new edition; it specifically marks when the work is accessible to the intended audience, whether in print, digitally, or as a data release.

In scholarly publishing, the publication date is usually the date of final online publication or the issue date in a journal. For books, it is the edition’s publication year. For news media, it is the date displayed on the issue. For software, datasets, or multimedia, the corresponding release date is the point at which the item becomes available to users.

Dates are often presented in formats such as day-month-year or ISO 8601 (YYYY-MM-DD). In bibliographic records, the publication date is a primary field and may sometimes be approximate (circa) or recorded as a range when the exact date is uncertain.

Embargoes may delay public release until a specified date; after embargo, the publication date is used for indexing and citation. Changes after initial publication, through errata, revisions, or new editions, can introduce additional or revised publication dates.