The <pub-date> element should be used to capture control date and cover date. The <pub-date> element appears within the <article-meta> or <issue-meta> elements.
The control date is a date representation of the journal volume year and cover month for each issue in the volume and is based on the journal’s frequency of publication. For instance, if an issue’s spine reads “January 2013”, the corresponding control date for the issue will be
<day>1</day><month>1</month><year>2013</year>
The control date will normally be similar to, but does not have to match, the actual or estimated publication date of the issue. The control date controls the order in which issues appear on Taylor & Francis Online, and can affect what content a customer is able to access for date-based subscriptions.
The control date should be tagged in a <pub-date> element within an <article-meta> in article XML, or within <issue-meta> in Issue XML. The date should be formatted as
<day>D</day><month>M</month><year>YYYY</year>
For example:
<pub-date publication-format="electronic" date-type="epub"><day>2</day><month>10</month><year>2018</year></pub-date>
Control date is required in all article and issue XML files. Control date will normally be provided in cats.xml.
For example:
<onlinecontroldate>15 Mar 2013</onlinecontroldate>
For journals that use cover dates, the cover date should be captured in a
For example:
<pub-date publication-format="print" date-type="cover"><string-date>November 2018</string-date></pub-date>
The control date and the cover date (if used) will normally be provided for each issue in cats.xml. If control date is not provided, the following rules may be used to populate control date from the issue’s cover date:
| Rule | Example cover date | Corresponding control date |
|---|---|---|
| If cover date indicates a specific calendar day, that date should be used for control date. | March 15, 2013 | <day>15</day><month>3</month><year>2013</year> |
| If cover date indicates a range of dates, the earliest date should be used for control date. | January 15–February 15, 2013 | <day>15</day><month>1</month><year>2013</year> |
| If cover date contains only a month and a year, control date should be set as the first day of that month. | April 2013 | <day>1</day><month>4</month><year>2013</year> |
| If cover date contains only a year, control date should be set as the last day of that year. (Note: This instruction was previously to use the first day of the year.) |
2013 | <day>31</day><month>12</month><year>2013</year> |
| If cover date contains a season, the season should be mapped to a month as follows, and set as the first day of that month: |
|
<day>1</day><month>3</month><year>2013</year> |
For articles at the just-accepted/AMO/tagging stage, and for ahead-of-issue/Preview articles, the control date should be populated based on the current date. Typesetters should set control date to the next calendar day from the date the article files are supplied. For example, if just-accepted or ahead-of-issue files will be delivered to Taylor & Francis on 4 May 2013, control date should be set as <day>4</day><month>5</month><year>2013</year> Cover date should not be present in just-accepted or ahead-of-issue files.
Articles published in a build-issue-online (BIO) journal should have a <pub-date> that contains a year value based on the issue metadata and has attribute @date-type with value volume-year. The day and month should be omitted. Take care that the year value is the year of the issue and not the year in which the article is being published.
<pub-date date-type="volume-year"><year>2018</year></pub-date>
Within <article-meta> or <issue-meta>
<pub-date publication-format="electronic" date-type="epub">
<day>2</day><month>10</month><year>2018</year>
</pub-date>
<pub-date publication-format="print" date-type="cover">
<string-date>November 2018</string-date>
</pub-date>
<pub-date date-type="volume-year">
<year>2018</year>
</pub-date>